SUMMER MEETING. 41 



sides the annoyance of being: disappointed. I can call back to mind 

 many instances of such disappointments, one in which I paid a tree 

 agent $3 for 100 blackberry plants and cultivated them three years and 

 gave a darky 50 cents to dig them up and throw them over the fence. 

 They were wild ones. So much for that agent. I have paid as high as 

 50 cents each for strawberry plants and after cultivating them two or 

 three seasons plow them under for fertilizer, and some of them have 

 been of so poor a quality that I doubt if they made good fertilizer. 



The strawberry has its peculiar notions "same as uder beople," 

 and in its cultivation, soil and climate has much to do with its thorough 

 development. A variety that do well on one kind of soil may prove 

 worthless on a different soil, even with the same kind of treatment. It 

 is an old maxim among strawberry growers than any soil that will pro- 

 duce a good corn crop will raise a fair crop of berries, and perhaps 

 this will hold good with certain varieties and in the hands of an ex- 

 pert, but I find much good corn land that is not naturally adapted to 

 strawberry culture, and berries can only be made to grow by artificially 

 bringing the soil to that point of fertility that they require. I have 

 seen corn grow tine on what is called wet bottom land. While every 

 strawberry grower of experience knows that the strawberry plant can- 

 not stand wet feet and be healthy. The best soil for strawberries is a 

 high, dry, timber land, and the higher the better, provided the soil is deep 

 and rich ; if not rich, make it so by a liberal application of well-rotted 

 barnyard manure. To get best results I should the year before setting 

 plant the ground to some hoed crop that it might be kept tree from weeds. 

 In early fall plow the ground with a turning plow, breaking it much 

 deeper than if preparing it for corn — that is, if the deep plowing did not 

 turn uprtoo much sub-soil ; if it did, do not plow so deep, but follow each 

 furrow of the turning plow with a large single shovel, running it in the 

 bottom of the furrow left by the turning plow and run it as deep as a 

 good, strong horse could pull it; this breaks up the hard pan under 

 the soil and forms a kind of under drainage without throwing the sub- 

 soil on top. Cover the surface with manure and leave until spring. In 

 spring rebreak, turning the manure well under, pulverizing the soil 

 thoroughly. Set in rows four feet apart, with plants about two feet 

 in the row. Plants should not be set until bloom buds begin to show 

 or the first blooms to open, which should be pinched off, for if left to 

 fruit the plant exhausts itself trying to ripen its fruit. 



All plants should be taken from rows of the previous year's setting 

 which have not been allowed to fruit. It is a mistake that many people 

 make in taking plants from old beds that have borne one or more crops, 

 as in the bearing and ripening of the fruit the plant becomes partly 



