MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 397 



Winter Protection For Strawberries. 



In a recent New York Tribune, Waldo F. Brown told of the fine 

 success he had the past season with his strawberry bed, notwithstand- 

 ing the drouth, and added : "It is easy to grow an immense supply 

 for the family use, and the statement we so often hear, 'I can buy straw- 

 berries cheaper than I can grow them.,' is a mistake. If a farmer buys 

 his berries he must pay retail price, and usually the farmer who buys 

 them furnishes his family about three meals a week of them instead of 

 twenty-one meals as we did. Strawberries are a surer crop than corn 

 or potatoes. I have grown them for 37 years with only one failure, and 

 that was caused by continued heavy rains washing off the pollen, so 

 that the blossoms were not fertilized. 



'•I owe my good crop this year as much to good winter protection 

 as to any one thing. I always cover the rows with manure the first 

 time that the land freezes. As soon as corn fodder will do to feed in 

 the fall we stop hay feeding and cut the fodder up in lengths of eight 

 inches to the foot, and after the horses have eaten the blades and 

 husks we bed with the waste. The horses tramp the stalks flat and 

 they absorb all the urine, and we allow it to accumulate in some shed 

 or box-stall and use it for covering the strawberries. It is the best 

 mulch I have ever used, as it contains no seed and is light, and the 

 winter rains and melting snows leach the fertilizer down to the roots 

 of the plants." 



Two-Crop Strawberries. 



The National Stockman says that in the latitude of Ohio it is pos- 

 sible to grow two crops of strawberries in a year with such varieties 

 as the Enhance, if suitable special management is adopted. The sec- 

 ond crop comes in October and the point of management are, a rich 

 soil well manured ; when the last berries of the first crop are not quite 

 ripe they are pulled off', or, what is probably better, the blossoms may 

 be pulled off about the time the fruit begins to form; the cultivation 

 should begin at once on pulling off the berries and should be almost 

 continuous, or at any rate, very frequent. This plan is practically a 

 kind of forcing, producing a crop not three or four weeks in advance 

 of the usual time, but six or eight months. It would probably not 



