1884.] THE farmer's small-fp/jit garden. 39 



plans for an enormous crop the next season; but somehow it never 

 quite keeps its promise, making a much greater show of foliage 

 than fi-uit, and what fruit there is, is watery and insipid in flavor, 

 and will keep but a short time after being picked. While, on the 

 other hand, 1 have found that a manure of raw ground bone and 

 wood ashes, or muriate of potash, encourages a much less rapid 

 plant growth early the first season, but that it is steady and even 

 the whole season through, and by fall we have a fine stand of well 

 developed, but not rank, foliaged plants that will always at fru t- 

 ing season the next year give a heavy crop of firmer, brighter col- 

 ored, and better flavored berries than can be grown on the same 

 soil by the aid of manure containing a large percentage of nitro- 

 gen. Whatever manure is used, it should be applied broadcast 

 after plowing, and harrowed in thoroughly, not by going over 

 once or twice, but a dozen times, or till the whole field is as mel- 

 low as the best of our old onion gardens. 



While the strawberry may be planted with fair prospects of suc- 

 cess any month in the year that the ground is free from frost, the 

 best time is early in the spring, while the plants are in a dormant con- 

 dition. For a small family garden, they are often planted in beds, 

 with plants fifteen to eighteen inches apart. However, as they can 

 be grown more cheaply by the aid of horse cultivation, they should 

 be planted in rows sufficiently far apart to admit of it. In fact, I 

 often wonder why it is that all garden vegetables are. not so 

 planted, instead of, as at present, in small beds or narrow rows, 

 where all of the labor of cultivation must be done by hand in the 

 most expensive way. 



We are improving greatly in all of our methods of culture and 

 in the implements used, yet it is safe to say that the right instru- 

 ment to cultivate berries with, to the best advantage, is yet to be 

 invented. Many that are effectual in destroying weeds are also 

 very destructive to the roots of the plants. Rows, three and 

 one-half to four feet apart, and plants ten to twelve inches, with all 

 runners cut, will, in my opinion, give the most and best fruit at 

 the least expense, although it must be admitted that many of our 

 most successful growers still practice growing them in thick matted 

 rows one and one-half to two feet wide. The great bugbear of 

 narrow row or hill culture is cutting the runners; but this is a 

 mere nothing to the labor of picking out the weeds from a matted 

 row during the last three growing months of the season. And 



