STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 255 



4. A further advantage of this form of top is found in the recent 

 tendency to grow for quality rather than for quantity of fruit, necessitat- 

 ing thinning, a process which is well-nigh impossible and certainly, to 

 say the least, laborious on high and close-headed trees, while on the other 

 hand with the modern open-head tree it is a comparatively easy process 

 to thin as well as to gather the fruit. 



Those who attended the meeting of our horticultural society this 

 season will recall that these sayings were approved, at least, in principle, 

 by Messrs. Surface of Pennsylvania, and Drew of Connecticut, recording 

 their experiences in their respective states. This last, both in justice to 

 these men of eminence and because "a prophet is not without honor save 

 in his own country." E. F. COLE. 



Virginia. In Fruit Grower. 



STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



The market wants your early berries, not only in car lots, luit train- 

 load lots, and will pay you a good price to get them if they possess the 

 desired quality; but will not accept inferior fruit in such quantities at 

 a price which will justify you in growing it. The difference between 

 growing, say, one thousand bushels of strictly fancy berries and the com- 

 mon berries is not so great as you may imagine. The express charges, 

 however, are just the same on both lots. 



There must be a change in the method of growing berries as well as 

 a better understanding of the laws of nature in plant life which govern 

 the development of fruit. Many of us are setting and cultivating too 

 many acres for the amount of fruit we are getting. We must concen- 

 trate our efforts on fewer acres; fertilize better; cultivate better and 

 propagate our plants in such a manner that they will respond to better 

 tillage by devoting their energies to the development of fruit instead of 

 runners. 



The assumption that one plant is just as good as another for the 

 purpose of propagation is no more true than that one animal of a certain 

 breed is just as good as any other. It does make a difference as to how 

 they are bred to develop good qualities. Strawberry plants propa- 

 gate themselves sexually, or by seeds, and asexually, or by runners. 

 When grown from seeds they receive two parental impressions just the 

 same as an animal, and may take a greater impression from one parent 

 than the other. Because of this we can never be sure of the kind of 

 fruit or foliage we are going to get. Not one seedling in ten thousand 

 will equal our standard varieties, because the latter have been culled from 

 hundreds of thousands of seedlings, or found by chance in some out-of-the- 

 way place where the seed happened to fall. All fruits — that is the flesh 

 — grows as a substance for seeds to develop in, and whenever the seeds 

 are wanting there will be no fruit, or it will be badly deformed. 



Some one has prophesied that we would soon have seedless berries 

 because the banana and some oranges and other fruits grow without 



