Miscellaneous. 207 



Poor plants of any variety will never give profitable returns. Good plants 

 of almost any productive variety will at least give fair results. 



To begin with, plants for setting should never be selected from an old 

 strawberry plantation. Those for planting this fall or next spring should 

 be taken from runners which have been produced this summer on plants 

 set last spring. The prevalent custom of taking plants from any old straw- 

 berry plantation is the cause of more failures, perhaps, than any other mis- 

 take in the growing of strawberries. Every year that a plantation grows 

 the individual plants become weaker and weaker. They get crowded by 

 rooting down runners every year and become devitalized in their struggle 

 for room. Weeds, grasses and other plants become more and more abun- 

 dant in the plantation every year that it stands. Again, the older the plan- 

 tation the more difficult it is to give the right kind of cultivation on ac- 

 count of the new runners that are rooted down. As an example of this, 

 during the past year we had a 4-year-old strawberry plantation on the 

 Missouri Experiment Station grounds. The plants during this year were 

 so badly attacked by rust that nearly all of them actually died soon after 

 the fruiting season. New runners that were put down by the surviving 

 plants were small, weak and slender ; a very poor stand of plants, with 

 practically no hope of a crop from them was the result. Nevertheless, 

 this bed was renovated as soon after the fruiting season as possible, and 

 has been given the best of cultivation during the sunmier. We wanted 

 to see what would ha[)pen to an old l)e(l that is kept a long time in one 

 place. 



The casual observer would say of this old bed that it is of varieties 

 which have so great a tendency to rust that they ought not to be planted. 

 However, a new bed, set with strong plants of the same varieties last 

 &I)ring, has made magnificent growth in the same kind of soil, and as a 

 result has produced an elegant stand of plants that show no tendency to 

 rust. The fact that the old bed rusted is not due to the varieties; it is due 

 to the fact that the plants had become so crowded and weakened that 

 they were not able to resist the rust, while the young, vigorous plants of 

 the same varieties, freshly set, have resisted rust almost perfectly. 



Plants to be set now should be taken, then, from a new patch which 

 has never fruited. The strongest plants should be selected before trans- 

 planting. These should have a thick, stout crown, not smaller than a lead 

 pencil, and as much larger as possible ; the leaves should be thick-stemmed, 

 stout and vigorous. The roots should be of that light yellow or white color 

 customary to new plants and should show none of the old, dark, black, 

 wirey looking roots which occur on old plants. The center of each crown 

 should show a tendency to produce new leaves in abmidance. Such plants, 



