THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 231 



ing; now makes the pickers do their work well, for which he pays two cents a 

 quart; uses the 24-quart case, with shallow quart boxes; shipping to distant 

 markets has the berries jjicked before fully ripe — in fact partly colored ojaly — 

 for which Cumberland Triumph and Wilson are well adapted; has founa that 

 strawberries may be successfully shipped in refrigerator cars; thinks the 

 defect of too much moisture might be remedied. lu managing the pickers 

 uses checks; has picking cases holding six quarts for each. Mulches always, 

 uses straw mostly and between the rows only, thus saving the labor of uncov- 

 ering in the spring; recommends sorghum bagasse as the best mulching mate- 

 rial. 



ORNAMENTAL AS WELL AS USEFUL. 



Charles A. Green says : Bore 50 holes in a barrel with an inch augur, and 

 sink the bottom of the barrel an inch or two in the ground. Fill the barrel 

 with rich loam to the level of the first row of holes, then insert the straw- 

 berry plants in the holes bored, taking cure that the roots are well secured. 

 The row completed, fill up the barrel to the second row of holes and set out 

 another row of plants, and so on till the barrel is full. For watering and 

 fertilizing set into the top of the barrel an old tiu can with a perforated 

 bottom, filling the can with proper fertilizers. The barrel of plants can 

 be kept irrigated by water enriched by passage through the can, or good 

 results can be obtained by irrigating with soapy wash water without fertilizers. 

 Fifty well nourished plants will furnish a family with many messes of berries, 

 and three or four barrels covered with plants would be equal to a good sized 

 strawberry bed. The plants should be set out in the fall and might be covered 

 for protection during the winter. 



THE VALUE OF HUCKLEBERRY SWAMPS. 



People in this State seem to have everywhere regarded a huckleberry marsh 

 as of no value. It was a good place to resort to in the season of picking, to 

 procure the berries, but no one would have thought of such a swamp as possess- 

 ing a money value, or as land over which any person could exercise exclusive 

 proprietorship. Such places have always, in Michigan, been considered in 

 popular estimation as public property, free to everybody, and no one would 

 think of buying such a piece of land, or of estimating it as having a saleable 

 value, unless it could be drained,of water and cleared of the worthless huckle- 

 berry brush. They never stopped to consider how much greater revenue the 

 land would afford in its native State with its annual yield of berries than could 

 be derived from the best cleared lands in the neighborhood. A notable instance 

 of this occurs in this county. A few years ago a Mr. Ringolds exchanged his 

 farm of forty acres near this place for one of eighty acres northwest of Law- 

 rence, receiving several hundred dollars to boot in the trade. The eighty-acre 

 farm is well located, in a good neighborhood, and is good land, but unfortu- 

 nately (?) it contains a huckleberry marsh of ten or fifteen acres that never 

 failed to afford yearly a crop of fruit. Many people thought the farm would be 

 a very good one were it not for tliis unsightly, worthless swamp — so much waste 



