354 THE GARDENER. [Aug. 



And now I am going to analyse one or two of Mr Hinds's " foibles " 

 in Strawberry-culture, which are so much superior, according to his 

 own account ; and I think I will show before I have done who it is 

 that follows the practices of their grandfathers, and "pursue phan- 

 toms," &c. &c. ; and moreover, that Mr Hinds has not apparently 

 made up his own mind on the subject of which he writes, and which 

 I imagine to be an essential qualification in those who aspire to teach 

 others their duties. In ' The Gardener ' some time ago, and in the 

 ' Chronicle ' lately, he has, as usual, been correcting " a fallacy " of his 

 neighbours'. This " fallacy " consists in supposing, according to Mr 

 Hinds, that Strawberry plants for forcing can be got up properly in 

 less than two years. Most, indeed all, Strawberry-growers raise their 

 plants and force them at the end of the same year and beginning of 

 the next; but if Mr Hinds wanted plants to force — say in 1881 — he 

 would begin to propagate stock in 1879. In case I may be credited 

 with exaggerating, I will give Mr Hinds's own directions. In preparing 

 plants for forcing he "every year," layers in pots plants which he 

 does not force that year but plants out in August. If these show a 

 crop of fruit the season following, he cuts it off and reserves the plants 

 for 'producing runners for forcing exclusively ', which runners are layered 

 in turn and forced the succeeding year. Thus he occupies a piece of 

 ground to no purpose for a whole year, and to accomplish that which 

 any other Strawberry-forcer accomplishes equally well in one year ! 

 and this is the practice recommended in the ' Gardeners' Chronicle ' 

 by one who accuses his neighbours of being behind the times ! Like 

 most Strawberry-growers, we also make autumn plantations, but not 

 every year, nor yet with the special object of getting runners from 

 them, but for a crop. At the present time our autumn-planted runners 

 are producing an enormous crop — nearly 200 berries to each stool. 

 These, if we followed Mr Hinds's advice, we should destroy, and keep 

 the plants for next year's forcing-plants — 1880! If Mr Hinds had 

 anything to show in support of the practice he advocates, it would be 

 different, but he has not. We have seen the best forced fruit he was 

 able to produce at the most favourable season of the year, both pot- 

 plants and gathered fruit, and while we quite willingly admit it was 

 good, still it was no better than that of his neighbours, and certainly 

 not so fine as many examples we have seen by other growers who pro- 

 pagated their plants in a much speedier manner. But the queer thing 

 about Mr Hinds's practice is, as he tells us, that his object is to 

 procure runners earlier than he would otherwise do. "Earliness in 

 procuring the runners is an object always to be aimed at." Old 

 forced plants planted out, he says, do not produce runners early enough 

 — not so early as his autumn-planted runners, which must at that rate 

 put out runners very easy indeed ; but after all this trouble in getting 

 runners so early in the season, what does he do with them when he 

 has them 1 Why, keeps them till the end of July, when most people 



