292 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



six or eight inches where the plants stood. I can take one 

 of these scuffle-hoes that we use to weed onions, and just run 

 that through, and it is but very little work to weed the 

 plants. Now I have the weeds out, and have nothing but 

 the stems of the plants sticking up. But by the middle 

 of August or first of September there was not so hand- 

 some a strawberry -bed in Concord as that. It is no injury 

 to take those leaves off; it is a benefit: and it is by mow- 

 ing, and carrying off the leaves, that you get rid of the little 

 flea that eats the tender leaves that come up. 



My neighbors wondered why my strawberries grew so well. 

 I got a fertilizer. It was not a high-priced fertilizer, though 

 it was a fertilizer that analyzed high in value. Professor 

 Goessmann made it to be equal to some of the best Stock- 

 bridge fertilizers. My first idea was to put on about a ton 

 to the acre. I thought that was a fair thing to do : and, if you 

 are going to cultivate strawberries, it is no use for you to 

 give them fertilizers in homoeopathic doses ; it will not answer 

 the purjDose. I finally concluded that I would not put on a 

 ton to the acre, but I would take out two or three hundred 

 pounds, and substitute for it two or three hundred pounds 

 of muriate of potash. The leaves had started somewhat 

 before I got that ready to put on, and I thought that I might 

 have some trouble from burning the leaves ; but I took the 

 fertilizer and the muriate of potash on a day when there was 

 no dew, and put them on, and I was so afraid that it would 

 not be done properl}^ that I followed with a corn-broom, and 

 swept the whole of those leaves afterwards, and I had no 

 trouble. But I left the business to be finished by the men. 

 A shower came up : and one row that was not swept looked a 

 little sick for a few days afterwards ; the leaves were burned. 

 So that you will find that j^ou can use a good corn-broom to 

 advantage in just such places as that. I do not claim that 

 as any new invention, for I presume other people have done 

 the same thing. 



Now I have as fine a bed of strawberries, and perhaps as 

 good-looking a bed, as there is in the town of Concord. I 

 have a matted bed besides ; but the cost of cleaning the bed 

 to which I have referred would not be half as much as the 

 cost of cleaning the matted bed, although the cost of clean- 

 ing a matted bed is not so much as you wo^lld take it to be 



