1879] POTS FOR STRAWBERRIES. 477 



As the journal you, Mr Editor, conduct, is the best medium by 

 which to approach this subject, it is hoped you will give your edi- 

 torial adhesion to these remarks. 



A Member of the R. C. H. S. 



POTS FOR STRAWBERRIES. 



While your correspondent, Mr Hinds, is writing on Strawberries in 

 ' The Gardener,' I should feel obliged if he would explain to me and 

 others the incomprehensible statement of his in his "calendarial 

 writings" in the ' Gardeners' Chronicle' lately. He says : — 



"A correspondent inquires whether I have found in practice that 

 the yield of plants potted into 5-inch pots a fortnight later is better than 

 that to be obtained from 6-inch pots, the plants of which are equally 

 well rooted and ripened. My experience is that the produce of the 

 former is equal in all respects to that of the latter, with this addition, 

 that a good many more plants of the 5-inch size can be put into the 

 same space, thus yielding a larger supply of fruit from any given space. 

 This experiment was tried side by side with others last year, and the 

 results inspected by competent authorities, whole lines of plants being 

 submitted to the test and brought into bearing at the same time." 



This we understood, but a little further on, in a sentence quite un- 

 connected with the above, he says : " No size surpasses the 6-inch pot 

 for all round work." What I wish to know is, how he makes this 

 appear, after telling us that " the produce of a 5-inch pot is equal in all 

 respects to that of a 6-inch pot," with this addition, that the 5-inch pot 

 " yields a larger supply of fruit from any given space " ? We are given 

 to understand that the sorts experimented with by Mr Hinds were his 

 " all round " favourites — viz., Sir C. Napier and Vicomtesse Hericart de 

 Thury ; and it puzzles one to understand why he should elect to use the 

 6-inch pot for "all round work," or most extensively, when he has proved 

 to his own satisfaction, and the satisfaction of " competent authorities," 

 that the 5-inch pot is by far the best, or, in other words, that it sur- 

 passes the 6-inch. The use of 5-inch pots means a gain of about 17 

 plants in every 100, or nearly 340 plants in 2000— the number, I be- 

 lieve, Mr Hinds forces, as he has somewhere stated; and if that alone 

 is not a sufficient proof that the 5-inch pot surpasses the 6-inch for 

 " all round work," I misapprehend the meaning of figures, and the 

 meaning of Mr Hinds's experiments. Mr Hinds's statements simply 

 amount to this — that the 5-inch pot produces nearly 20 per cent more, 

 and equally good fruit, than the 6-inch pot, space for space ; but for 

 some unaccountable reason he prefers the latter for general purposes, 

 and recommends as the best. 



Lkakn ek. 



