PLANTING SMALL FRUIT. 91 



of the ground before covering it up, so that when it is filled up finally 

 it will be about four inches deep. 



Mr. Beltzer: The raspberry plant is a good deal like the story told 

 of a mother who had two sons and the way they treated their mother. 

 One boy lived in California and the other lived in the north. She wrote 

 a letter to one and said something about coming to see him. The one 

 in California said, "Dear mother, we would like to have you with us. 

 but it is too warm out here;" and the other one in the north wrote, "Dear 

 mother, we would like to have you with us, but it is too cold here." 



There is something peculiar about the raspberry plant. If you plant 

 it shallow in dry weather it will just dry out. If you plant it too deep, 

 and especially in wet weather, it will die out. I remember what a time 

 I had, and I have just one recommendation to make and I think if you 

 follow that you will succeed. I don't dig the plant until the tip has 

 sprouted and growing and has got a body or stem from one to two 

 inches long, then I take them, box them for shipping, and I will venture 

 the statement you will not lose one out of a hundred. It may be that 

 everybody is not situated so they can do that, but you had better do 

 the same as they do with strawberry plants, about setting them out in 

 the fall. They don't ship strawberries now, very much, until spring and 

 that is the only way to do with the raspberry plant. Don't let them 

 ship them to you early. 



Mr. Marshall: If these remarks are not enough to set the average man 

 crazy, I am a fool [Laughter]. It makes me think of the man who had 

 a sycamore tree and he wanted to trim it. He got out where the tree 

 was, ready to go to work to trim it, and he asked everybody who came 

 along how to trim that tree, and he would note it down. After he had 

 got all this information he trimmed his tree, and when he had trimmed 

 it he had a pole sixteen feet high. This is the way you are doing in 

 regard to the raspberry plant. One says plant it shallow, the other says 

 plant it deep, another says plant early, another late. The only thing I 

 can do is to speak from my experience. I have planted many thousand 

 plants and the only general rule I can give is to use common sense. 

 If it is a wet season, plant shallow; if it is a dry season, plant deep. 

 There is one thing true that when you plant deep if you leave a basin 

 about it in Nebraska you are running a great risk or danger, because 

 if a hard rain should come on you can say, "Gk)od-bye raspberry plant." 

 It will never come up. Another trouble in planting deep is that the 

 plant gets up and has three or four leaves, it is in danger of the cutworm, 

 and then it will never come up. On an average we should throw a little 

 dirt over them and plant early. We have planted early, have planted 

 medium and planted late, but the success was when we had the plants 

 at home and planted early. If we had got them at home, we waited 

 until they came up. I have seen a team stuck in the field in pulling 

 out plants on account of so much dirt being moved with them. If you 

 have got to ship them, you don't want to ship them with the dirt on. 



