24 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICUIiTURAL SOCIETY. 



started in the direction yon want them to run and they will not trouble 

 you so much afterwards. 



The first freezing weather that comes, mulch the entire ground 

 over with prairie hay, or straw. If you have some coarse stable ma- 

 nure free from timothy, clover, or weed seed, it makes good mulching. 

 Corn-fodder, cut in four to six inch lengths, is excellent. I use at 

 least three good two-horse wagon loads of straw per acre. As soon 

 as freezing and thawing is over in spring go over the field and loosen 

 up the mulching on the plants. If too thick for them to come through 

 easily, remove some of it into the space between rows. 



The varieties to plant depends much upon what you want to do 

 with them, as well as your soil and location. For all purposes, so far 

 as I have tested them, the Warfield, Crescent, Wood, and Robinson 

 come about as near filling the bill as anything. The Haverland and 

 Bubach are both large and productive, but too soft to ship. The 

 Woolverton, Lovett, and Saunders are all good berries and good ship- 

 pers, but not generally as productive as some of the first named. We 

 have some new varieties on trial that are claimed to beat any of these, 

 but I have not tested them long enough to say so, but will say that 

 Bissell and Gardner, as well as Brandywine, all promise to be valuable. 



The strawberry's great want from the time it commences to blossom 

 until done fruiting is water, water, and where irrigation is practical, 

 the crop is almost a certainty. It takes from thirty to thirty-five days 

 from the time the blossom appears until the fruit is ripe. If you 

 have all the water you want during these thirty-five days, and know 

 how to use it, you have the result in your own hands. 



You may want to know how many quarts I got per acre. The 

 frost in May, 1894, and May, 1895, destroyed my crops both seasons. 

 With these exceptions the smallest crop I have had for fourteen years 

 previous was 2,000 quarts, the largest, 6,000, that I picked, and from 

 one to two thousand that a heavy rain storm destroyed, which we let 

 the pickers take, as they were so soft and price so low it did not pay to 

 pick them after the storm. My soil is part upland prairie and part 

 second bottom, about sixty miles east of the Missouri river. 



BLACK RASPBERRIES. 



The same soil and preparation for these as strawberries. I use a 

 single shovel plow for making a furrow for planting these, running it 



