356 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



agemeut the fruit is medium size, ^vell colored, and good, while in a tangled 

 mat, neglected, the fruit is small, soft, and poor. It should always alternate in 

 rows with a good pollenizer, such as Wilson or Charles Downing. The Wilson 

 •with us this year has done its very best, and has caused exclamations by its 

 wonderful load of fruit; has produced a larger aggregate of fruit than any 

 other variety. But the future is to tell a different story. Hybridizers will 

 never be content till we have a berry as productive as the Wilson ever was, as 

 good a shipper, and in quality equal to the best. 



STRAWBERRY FARMING. 



In the Home Farm we read of J. A. Tolman's method of raising strawber- 

 ries in Maine for the Boston market: 



Coarse marsh hay is placed between the rows before blossoming time to keep 

 the berries clean. As soon as the harvest is over the mulch is forked up in 

 piles and hauled off. It is considerable work to handle it, but he has found 

 that it more than pays. Then he goes through with a sharp-cutting cultivator 

 and cuts the rows down to about one foot in width of plants, cutting off all 

 the runners, then cultivates through the rows to remove all weeds, and as soon 

 as it can be done after the crop is harvested, or at any rate in the fall, manures 

 with about eight cords of old stable manure. This is worked in with a fine, 

 spike-toothed cultivator, the teeth running deep and not throwing the earth 

 toward the plants. A harrow-toothed cultivator is better for this purpose than 

 one with plow-shaped teeth. He covers in the fall just as soon as the ground 

 freezes. He has become satisfied that evergreen boughs arc the best protection. 

 They do not lie down too close, and he thinks them better than marsh hay. 

 He lets them remain on till about the 10th of May — it is wrong to remove 

 them too early in the spring. 



Some kinds bear a very heavy crop for one year and then do not seem to do 

 so well afterward. The Wilson, especially if it bears a heavy crop, appears to 

 have its vitality exhausted. The Crescent will do fairly for two or three 

 years, but in his practice he renews all fields after tlie second crop — that is to 

 say, he sets an acre each year and after a field has yielded two crops he puts the 

 land into something else. A little experiment in irrigating the plants was 

 tried this season. On the sides of the mountain west of the road reservoirs 

 were formed in natural basins by raising an embankment and storing the water 

 occasioned by surface drainage and meltings of snow last spring. This was kept 

 back and let on to the strawberry fields by means of open furrows during a dry 

 period. The result was so satisfactory that systematic irrigation will no doubt 

 be one of the future means of success. 



PLANTING OUT STRAWBERRIES. 



President Gal usha tells the Farmer's lleview how he has '• luck" in trans- 

 planting strawberries on a large scale. He says : 



Mark the ground by stretching a cord where the row is wanted, walking over 

 it and then removing it, making the lines three and a half or four feet apart, 

 so that cultivation can be given with a horse cultivator. Keep the roots of the 

 plants constantly in damp earth or moss until taken out, one at a time, for 



