ANNUAL rVIEETING AT LEXINGTON. 283 



Carthage, Mo., December 2, 1886. 



To the Members of the Missouri State Horticultural Society, Lexington,. 

 2Iissouri: 



Dear Brethren— It would give me great pleasure to be with 

 you at your animal gathering, but a combination of circumstances 

 keeps me away. 



Our long continued drouth with pretty hard freezing is liard on all 

 our small fruits, especially strawberries. They made but few runners 

 iu the fall and consequently will stand thin in the rows. Our crop the 

 past season was rather lighter than usual, doubtless on account of the 

 being too thick to stand the severe drouth. My experience is that 

 the thinner the plants are in hills or rows either, the better they will 

 stand the drouth in fruiting time, and if we could always tell when the 

 dry season is coming we could always have good crops of berries. I 

 believe in plenty of manure and thorough cultivation for strawberries, 

 and here I will enter my protest against what is called the easy or lazy 

 man's way of raising strawberries. It has had a great tendency to 

 demoralize horticulture and I blame some of our nurserymen, for in 

 their eagerness to sell plants, they are too apt to make it appear that 

 anyone can raise fine crops of berries, if they will only set out the 

 plants. Now my view of horticulture is that it is a business of itself,. 

 and requires theory, skill and practice combined, with more of prac- 

 tice than any thing else; whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing 

 right. The idea of a man setting five or ten acres in small fruits and 

 cultivate and care for it at odd spells when he has nothing else to do 

 on his farm, is simply preposterous and should be discouraged, raising 

 not only enough weed and foul grasses to seed his own land, but to be 

 drifted by the winds all over the community. Such a man, and we 

 have many of them, should be frowned down wlien they come into the 

 meetings of the horticultural society. No, what we want is thorough 

 cultivation, allow nothing to grow but what is useful and I think rais- 

 ing small fruits will pay. 



I am now cultivating but five vvarieties of strawberries, namely : 

 Charles Downing, Crescent Seedling, Miners Prolific, Boydens No. 30 

 and Bidwell. Downing rusts some; Crescent, my stand by; Miners, 

 for showy fruit,; Boyden, for home use and especial friends; Bidwell, 

 for early. 



As for Kaspberries I have the Souhegan for early, so as to get 

 the big prices ; and then the Hopkins for its wonderful prolificness as 

 an intermediate; then the Gregg, as we sometimes say, for our main 



