80 Second Annual Report 



take one full crop off the plantation and then plant another new 

 one wherever you have the ground. In this way you avoid the 

 difficulty of contending with weeds, which I think are on every 

 farm ; the longer you leave a strawberry plantation the more 

 weeds there are. 



It is very important in this climate, in the State of Vermont^ 

 to protect the plants in winter from change of temperature. 

 Now if we were sure of a covering of snow all winter, from 

 autumn to spring, and that there would be no sudden changes 

 of temperature in the spring, it would not be necessary. In 

 some winters a covering might do more harm than good, but this 

 is not often the case. What the covering does is this : By put- 

 ting it on in the fall after the ground freezes hard, you protect 

 the plants from any sudden changes in temperature which may 

 take place when there is no snow on the ground. You know it very 

 often happens we don't have a hard freeze until after Christmas, 

 and sometimes don't have snow until then ; and sometimes frequent 

 thaws, and sudden changes in temperature ; these are all hard 

 on the plants and liable to kill them ; by having a covering, like 

 straw,, which is the best; just a light covering, it protects them 

 from these sudden changes and leaves the plants in a frozen 

 condition. We have found that coarse straw is about as satis- 

 factory to use as anything, unless you can get marsh hay, and I 

 think that is best. It is coarse and doesn't lie close to the 

 plants. You can understand, if the straw lies very close to the 

 plants it is liable to cause heating in the spring, unless you are 

 very careful to remove it at the proper time. In Prince Edward 

 Island, where a late market is so important, they are making 

 a practice of leaving the covering on as long as possible. This 

 delays the growth of the plants, and delays the ripening of the 

 fruit, and they are able to prolong their season in this manner. 

 We have to be careful not to leave this covering on too long. 

 If we leave it on a little too long it will mold and do more harm 

 than good. Our practice at Ottawa is to leave it on until there 

 is growth outside, until the plants begin to show signs of grow- 

 ing, and then we take the covering off. We leave it on as long 

 as possible, because sometimes even in May there will be frosts, 

 and the strawberry is very liable to suffer in the flower bud in 

 those early frosts ; even when the bud is scarcely through the 

 ground it will be injured by a slight freeze in the spring. We 

 have paid particular attention to this the last two years when the 

 May frost came, and found when they were injured 

 that they were simply coming through the ground, 

 the inner parts of the flower, namely the pistils, were all des- 

 troyed, all brown. Of course the fruit would not set when this 



