I>f DIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 607 



tJiinking of the acre, anu I aui going away now. but I do not want yovt 

 to forget to think about tbe acre. Are you satisfied when it takes the 

 acre two years to do what it should do in one? 



Prof. Troop: Isn't it better to raise three hundred bushels tnan only 

 one hundred V 



Mr. Swaim: I would say that we raise a potato crop after we get the 

 strawberries off. 



Mr. DeVilbiss: I would like to hear Mr. Henry's experience in regard 

 to late cultivation. 



Mr. Henry: We grow ten acres every year. We cultivate just as 

 long as we can. I had a good example of this last year. I have a peigh- 

 bor across the fence. Our soils are exactly the same, and he is a man that 

 likes to copy. He can not get away from home long enough to attend one 

 of these Institutes. . He told me this spring that I was the luckiest man 

 he ever saw, for I had a crop of berries last year and was going to have 

 one this year. There was no luck about it: it was- all good management. 

 In the first place he planted the weakest plants he could find. That is 

 a wi'ong thing; I would not do it. After he set them out he let them get 

 so weedy that when he went to clean them out he couldn't tell where 

 the straw^berry plants were. He never puts any manure on the patch. 

 Now it was not on account of good luck that I have berries, but on ac- 

 count of management. This same man spoke of his varieties. He had 

 Warflelds, and he seemed to think they were no good at all, and I showed 

 him Warflelds which I had. and he wouldn't believe they were War- 

 fields. My rule is to do the thing (not just think about it) which I think 

 is the very best thing to do. Last fall about the middle of October I went 

 over the rows with a garden rake and raked with all my might, and pulled 

 all the runners out and stirred them up, and in a couple of weeks I 

 mulched them. You ought to have seen the difference between the ones 

 that I treated like this and the ones that I didn't. I believe this is a good 

 plan. 



I want to say something about Michigan. I am in competition with 

 Michigan berries. My market is the Chicago market, and I can con- 

 scientiously say that I know I get double for my berries what they get 

 in Michigan. I will tell j^ou the trouble with Michigan. They have about 

 two-thirds of their berries frozen out. Whenever the* Michigan berries 

 come into the market the market goes down. The trouble is, Michigan 

 raises too many berries, and their berries are poor. If they would raise 

 berries like Indiana ihere would be no kick coming. They raise too 

 many, and therefore raise poor ones. Instead of raising ten or fifteen 

 acres and not attending to them well, they should raise two, three acres, 

 or a half acre, like the people in Indiana do. We put a better class of 

 berries on the market. Tney generally sell theirs from sixty to ninety 

 cents. 



