256 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



clean, and strict sanitary measures should be enforced among the 

 pickers. Any field foreman that has the ability can, by a little 

 friendly talk and showing, impress the importance of these matters 

 on each and every picker with good results and be instrumental in 

 helping to make the strawberry crop pay its owner a fair profit. 



After harvesting the strawberry crop comes the preparation of 

 the bed or field for the subsequent year. Past experience seems 

 to have proven that to mow the old vines close to the ground is the 

 best method. Rake off clean and burn the rakings. The plants will 

 start new growth in a few days, when the cultivator should be 

 started between the rows, narrowing them down to about ten inches 

 wide. Soon new runners will begin to grow, but no matted rows 

 should be allowed to spread wider than from sixteen to twenty 

 inches for best results. 



The ripening and gathering of currants, raspberries, black- 

 berries, dewberries and gooseberries all come under the head of this 

 paper of small fruits in July and August and play a very prominent 

 part in the domestic fruit supply of the northwest. What is not 

 put upon the general market and sold or eaten fresh from the gar- 

 den is canned, jellied and jammed for winter use. The methods of 

 gathering the strawberry applies to the raspberry as well. Touch 

 the fruit lightly and deftly that it may not be crushed, whereby it 

 may retain its natural shape and show well in the market place. 

 It is supposed that these latter named fruits have had good and clean 

 cultivation up to about the fifteenth of June, when they should have 

 received a good, generous mulch of rotten straw or strawy manure. 

 This mulch keeps the ground cool in the later hot months, stops 

 weeds and succors growth largely, and prepares the ground for a 

 subsequent crop another year as nothing else will. The foregoing 

 is supposed to apply to an acre or more of small fruits as well as 

 the garden. 



Mr. Husser : I would like to know whether Mr. Moore would 

 burn over his strawberry bed after the first year's picking or after 

 the second year's picking. 



Mr. Moore : I think the gentleman misunderstood the paper. 

 I do not advocate the burning over of the strawberry bed at all, 

 but what I said was to burn the rakings. This burning over of a 

 strawberry bed is a very particular job. The conditions must be 

 just exactly right in every respect. The rakings should be dry, very 

 dry, and if the straw is burned with it everything should be abso- 

 lutely dry, and the wind must be just in the right direction and be 

 just right, so that when you set the fire the strawberry bed may be 

 burned over quickly. Unless this is done, and what you choose to 

 burn is wet or damp, the fire will linger and smoulder, and the 

 plants will be more or less injured. I have never myself risked this, 



