1 88 MINNESOTA STATE HORTR'lJl^ TURAL SOCIETY, 



show itself in the potatoes, and he said he did not see what use 

 there was in hoeing if there were no weeds. I tried the hoe- 

 ing on three patches of five hundred plants each. That was 

 after the cultivator had been run through and as close up to the 

 rows as possible. It took me less than an hour to run over the 

 whole patch with the hoe. I can remember hoeing potatoes for 

 a neighbor when I was a boy when I had to press down the 

 earth around every vine after the weeds were pulled out, and I 

 can tell you it was an entirely dififerent sensation from that ex- 

 perienced in hoeing the strawberries. I skipped him the next 

 day, it was too much like work ; but when I hoed those straw- 

 berries it wasn't work, it was just going along admiring the 

 plants and watching them grow. If this cultivating is done 

 through the season every week, following it with the hoe you 

 don't have to use much muscle, it is only fun. With just a little 

 work of this kind every week you can keep the plants vigorous 

 and thrifty during the whole season. 



Those plants should be set a foot and a half apart in the row. 

 and the rows at least four feet apart. Those five ro\\s that I 

 mentioned will furnish plenty of berries. 



Now in what I am going to say I may get into trouble with 

 some of the horticulturists. In the southern part of the state we 

 cover our strawberries after the ground is frozen hard. We cov- 

 er them with wheat straw if we can get it, and we cover them not 

 four or five inches deep, but a foot deep. We take the hay rack 

 and load it up with straw and cover the whole thing solid. When 

 it comes time to uncover in the spring I walk down there every 

 little while and dig a little straw away and look at the vines, and 

 as soon as I find they are inclined to do a little growing I take 

 a garden rake or a pitchfork, and I do not rake this stufif entirely 

 off the vines but heap it up between the rows and leave just 

 enough on the vines so they can grow^ through the straw that is 

 left. In that way we are not troubled with weeds and only a few 

 straggling spears of wheat or oats show through. There is no 

 hoeing to do, nothing but to eat. (Laughter.) To show you 

 how much fun it is I want to give you an example. My wife sat 

 down on the clean straw — you know there is no dirt on the ber- 

 ries when you have that straw in there — she sat down with a 

 four quart dish and without moving along the row filled that 

 four quart dish. F"rom one of those rows, 150 feet long, we pick 

 ed something over forty quarts at one picking, and this was when 

 we were growing strawberries just for our own use. INIost peo- 

 ple who are not in the habit of growing strawberries have an 



