Summer Meeting: 39 



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It is an old saying, "bought wit is the best wit if you don't pay to 

 dear for it;" but there are different ways to buy it, one way is by ex- 

 perimenting, another by reading and taking the experience of others, 

 and I have come to the conclusion the latter is by far the cheaper. 



As far back as I can remember any thing about strawberries, about 

 the year 1870 or 1871, my mother planted a small patch in the garden, 

 and when it came time for them to bear they had a nice crop of bloom, 

 but very few berries, so she thought she had planted them in the wrong 

 sign, and the next spring she took some plants from this same patch and 

 planted another bed ; taking special care to plant them in the right sign, 

 and the result being the same as the first patch she gave up trying to grow 

 strawberries. I don't remember of ever seeing strawberries on my 

 father's table. I would be ashamed to tell this if there were not hundreds 

 and thousands of families all over our land just the same. No wonder 

 so many of our farmer boys want to go to the towns and cities. After 

 I was married and had a home of my own, I concluded I would grow 

 some strawberries ; and being told to plant them in the light of the 

 moon, I thought I would make it doubly sure, so waited until the night 

 the moon fulled, and planted them by moonlight, but it happened to be 

 a dry moon and my berries all died. Then, after T came to Missouri — the 

 land of big red apples, where strawberries can be raised by planting 

 them in the ground, instead of the moon, I thought now I will grow 

 strawberries; so about the first of August I prepared the ground, and 

 the latter part of the month we had a good rain, then I drove 20 miles 

 to a nursery and bought two thousand plants, i.ooo Crescents, 500 Green- 

 ville, 200 Warfield, 200 Parker Earl, 100 Miner's Prolific. I commenced 

 on the west side of the patch and planted four rows of Crescents, then 

 the next four rows I planted half through with Greenville, and finished 

 out with the Parker Earl, Warfield and Miner's Prolific; then I had 

 thirteen rows left, so I went to a neighbor that had an old patch that he 

 intended plowing up, and got plants enough to finish the patch. Then 

 the work began. I soon found the ground was pretty foul, and I had 

 a tussle with the weeds, but it was not my first experience with weeds. 

 I knew what to do with them, and I succeeded in getting a fair growth 

 of vines that fall. I became interested and began to read up some and 

 soon found I had made one serious mistake in setting each variety sepa- 

 rate without some fertilizers with them, but fortunately they were con- 

 siderably mixed and had enough perfect flowering varieties with them to 

 fertilize them. As stated above, I planted in August. The next spring 

 we picked a few messes, the following spring we had a fair prospect, 

 but on the 19th of May. just as the berries began to ripen a hail storm 



