FRUIT-CULTURE. 291 



apart is sufficient. The objection to keeping wide spaces is, 

 that you have got to mulch the whole of that space to keep 

 your fruit clean, whereas, under the matted-bed system, you 

 have simply got to mulch between the beds ; but the result 

 of wide spacing is, that the fruit is always larger, and is more 

 easily picked, and, while there is but a single row, you will 

 be astonished at the pile of berries you will get from it. 

 Then there is another thing in its favor over the matted bed. 

 When you leave them, after the spring cleaning and mulch- 

 ing the rows is done, you are supposed to start in clean ; but, 

 by the time you have done picking, there are a good many 

 weeds in j^our strawberries, if your land is rich. Now, by the 

 matted-bed method, it is a good deal of work to clean out 

 those beds. Under the other method, I found it very little 

 work last year. I wanted to see how I could clean that bed 

 in the easiest way. I had an old cultivator the frame of 

 which was good. I pulled all the teeth out except the front 

 tooth, and went to a blacksmith and had him make a steel 

 knife, with arms turning up, on precisely the same principle 

 as a horse-hoe, and had that put on the hind part of that cul- 

 tivator, just wide enough so that I could leave about four 

 inches each side of those rows of strawberries. Before we used 

 that, some time, perhaps, about the 10th of July, we mowed 

 every thing down clean. You could see nothing but the mulch 

 of old hay, and the leaves that were drying up. We cut them 

 all down clean, raked up the leaves, and went on with a horse 

 and cart and carried them off. You will see at once that we 

 could not clean that ground properly without getting that 

 stuff out of the way. We have that stacked up, and have 

 since been using it for bedding. Then we took this instru- 

 ment which I have described, and run it through the rows, 

 cutting three or four inches deep, with a good strong horse. 

 That is the kind I use on my place, — a horse that weighs 

 thirteen or fourteen hundred pounds, and has enough to eat. 

 The instrument drew pretty hard, but the. horse took it 

 through the row without any trouble. There were enough 

 weeds to hold the earth together, and it did not turn it over 

 nor break it up. I have found since, that there can be some- 

 thing in the shape of a clothes-pin rigged on to tear that up. 

 After doing that, we took French's cultivator and went 

 through, and every thing was killed except on the space of 



