396 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



by the palate or the stomach, with other succulent kinds, even though they 

 contain in the same bulk, a far greater amount of nutriment. A little of such 

 fruit is enough for digestion, and that little is best cooked. Nevertheless, if 

 we take fruit as a whole, ripe and sound, of course, and consider the variety, 

 its lightness and nourishing properties, whether eaten alone or with other food, 

 and its cheap abundance, we cannot hesitate to add our voice in support of its 

 just claim on public attention. 



STRAWBERRIES. 



Planting. — Parker Earle says, in preparing to plant strawberries, take good 

 land if you can get it; if not, take poor, and enrich it if you can. If you are plant- 

 ing for home use, be sure to plant on some kind of land ; if you can't get good, 

 take poor. For commercial purposes, the conditions must be decidedly favora- 

 ble. Plow well in the fall; plow well in the spring. Don't fool away money 

 in trenching. Plant in the spring; not in the fall, not in the summer. Mark 

 the ground; trim the plants; dip them in water and place in a pail; thrust the 

 spade in before you at 45 degrees; a boy puts a plant in, while you withdraw 

 the spade and press the earth with your foot. A man and a boy will thus put 

 in four thousand plants in a day. 



Mr. L. B. Pierce of Ohio gives his method of planting: 



A rich sod is plowed up, planted with corn, and the year after planted to 

 potatoes or tomatoes. The following spring it is plowed early, harrowed 

 twice with a fine harrow, and leveled with a heavy* float. It is then allowed to 

 lie until after a rain, when the ground is firm, level and moist. As soon as 

 possible after the rain has soaked away the planting is done. A piece of wool 

 twine twenty rods long is prepared by stitching red yarn through it at inter- 

 vals of sixteen and a half inches (twelve to the rod) and this is used to guide 

 the planting. 



A measuring stick three and a half feet long is provided, also an armful of 

 sticks half an inch big and a foot long, cut from a willow thicket. These 

 sticks are stuck three and a half feet apart across either end of the field and 

 also in the middle if the land is rolling. The line is set by these stakes and 

 the planting begins. For this two active, intelligent young men are preferred, 

 and the tools are common bricklayers' trowels. One man takes a basket of 

 plants and a trowel and drops a plant at every red mark; the other takes his 

 trowel and proceeds to plant by inserting the trowel at an angle toward him, 

 opening the ground while the plant is placed with left hand and the dirt pressed 

 upon the roots with the left knuckles. In gravelly soil it is often necessary to 

 use the right hand also, dropping the trowel for an instant. When the man 

 that drops gets to the end of the row he plants back until the two meet. 



Yesterday, with rather an indifferent helper, I put in 720 plants per hour. 

 The wind was blowing a gale, and the rows run across a hollow eight feet deep 

 that made it troublesome to set the line and hindered the dropping of the 

 plants, so that the dropper only planted 40 in a row of 180. I put in the 140 

 in seven minutes by the watch. Last year with an active, intelligent young 

 man to help, we easily averaged 1,000 per hour and less than one per cent, 

 failed to grow. The plants grown by myself were very heavy-rooted ; had they 



