94 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Downing and Kentucky were at their best their daily gatherings reached 

 over one hundred and thirty quarts each. The price paid was one cent 

 per quart, which was higher wages than could have been received from 

 almost any other employment ; and this might justly have been somewhat 

 reduced ; in fact, some producers paid but three-fourths of a cent per quart 

 this year, and it is safe to calculate that with the best modes of culture, 

 and growing those varieties best adapted to each kind of soil, the price of 

 picking will be reduced to one-half cent per quart, and the actual cost 

 of production to two cents per quart. 



Planting and Cultivation. — Another year's experience in planting 

 has not changed my practice, described last year, of setting each plant 

 upon a mound in a hole with roots spread and crown scarcely below the 

 general level, and of using freely weak liquid manure at time of planting 

 and before the surface earth is placed around the plant. The August, 

 September and October plantings, however, were nearly all of pot-plants, 

 which are more expeditiously planted and more satisfactory, since there 

 is no such thing as failure with a single plant where the work is well done, 

 the plants each receiving from a half a pint to a quart of manure-water 

 when the earth is half filled in about the ball. 



The plants set in spring should be about eighteen or twenty 

 inches apart in the rows, which should be three feet apart. Thorough 

 cultivation should be commenced early and continued well through 

 autumn, running a narrow shovel-plow deep in the center of the space, 

 and pulverizing and leveling with cultivator, leaving the row of plants from 

 one foot to eighteen inches wide. At the first hoeings the plants should be 

 layered along the row within this limit, and all others treated as weeds. In 

 late autumn, and after the ground has frozen so as to bear a team, the 

 mulch maybe put on, which may consist of horse-stable litter — using only 

 that made where prairie hay is fed. Where this is not obtainable 

 planing chips, cut corn-stalks, slough grass, whole corn-stalks or oat 

 straw may be used. As heretofore I still use corn-fodder cut into short 

 lengths with a horse-power cutter, as I stated at our last annual meeting. 

 This, shaken from large baskets over the plants, settles into the spaces 

 between the leaves and gives sufficient protection without smothering the 

 plants, and does not require removal in spring, but remains as a 

 summer mulch .to keep the vines fresh and the fruit clean, and as it 

 gradually decays gives stimulus to growth and fruitage. 



In addition to this it has been for several years my practice to sow 

 along the rows a mixture of ashes, plaster and hen-manure, adding a little 

 salt — using six to eight bushels of this mixture per acre. This is applied 

 early in spring, and sometimes a slight sprinkling, thoroughly pulverized 

 and mixed, is again applied just at blossoming time. 



After the crop is harvested — as soon as condition of the soil will 

 admit — plow the spaces with a one-horse mould-board plow, turning two 

 furrows together, and harrow the entire ground level. The runners will 

 then occupy the spaces, and early in autumn they may be again plowed, 

 or, if it is desired to renew the plantation, the old strips may be plowed 

 under and leave the young plants only for next year's fruiting. Where 



