50 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE 



water, or liquid manure, pulverizing it and making it level. 

 Sometimes I have used boxes for this purpose. Little girls will 

 soon learn to do the work which follows, and enjoy it very 

 ranch. As you cut th^ runners from the fruit-beariug vines, 

 reduce each eye to a convenient length and prick out in this 

 nursery-bed, two inches apart, keeping the whole shady until 

 the plants have well struck. These eyes will strike whether 

 they have roots when pricked out or not. In this way we can 

 obtain both plants and fruit from the same vines ; the fruit 

 will be larger and the plants more abundant than if you had 

 allowed the runners to strike in their native beds, and the 

 plants thus nursed will be strong and vigorous for planting 

 as soon as the ground can be prepared, — some of them as early 

 as July. 



BEST TIME FOR PLANTIN^G. 



Of course, in speaking of summer or fall planting, I do not 

 recommend it as the best. But when the ground has to be got 

 ready the same season, it is better to plant in the fall, in 

 ground that has been well prepared by summer-fallowing, than 

 it is to plant in the spring, on ground rank with grass and 

 weeds, it being much less labor to destroy these before planting 

 than after. 



Mr. Peabody prefers the first of July for planting strawber- 

 ries, and with the method of having nursery-beds as just 

 described, the operation of transplanting can be performed at 

 any convenient time, commencing when the runners first 

 pricked out in the nursery-bed become good strong plants. 

 They can, and if the weather be very dry when transplanted, 

 had better be removed with the soil about them from the 

 nursery-bed to the row'S, without checking their growth, 

 making planting in summer almost as good as in the spring, 

 so far as the next year's crop is concerned. The convenience 

 of this method consists in having a ready and abundant sup- 

 ply of plants whenever opportunity occurs to use them, and 

 without damaging the bearing vines by digging around them 

 for new plants. 



