PLANTING STRAWBERRIES. 147 



Prea. Underwood: Mr. Gardner, if I were to ship you one hundred 

 strawberry plants, and you were to receive them on a hot, dry day, 

 will you please tell us how you would go to work to set them out, 

 how you would fit them for planting, and how you would plant 

 them. This is on the supposition that Mr. Gardner is a farmer and 

 I were to ship him a hundred plants, and we want to know what he 

 would do under the conditions named. 



Mr. C. F. Gardner (Iowa): If I should receive the plants in a dry 

 time, one hundred strawberry plants, I should take them as soon as 

 I could g-et my hands on them into the cellar, open them and put 

 some wet moss on the roots, and along towards night, about four or 

 five o'clock, perhaps later, I should take them to the ground that I 

 had already prepared before I ordered them, and plant them out, 

 and if there were no signs of rain I should have some — well, if I 

 were a farmer, I do not know of anj^thing better than a wisp of ha)"^, 

 a little handful, as big as I could grasp in my hand, I should put a 

 handful over each plant at the least, and let it remain there until it 

 rained. I should keep that straw or hay there until it rained or they 

 were watered by hand. I seldom water plants by hand, and until it 

 rained, if I wanted to make a sure, certain thing to make every one 

 of those plants grow, every night before dark I would take an iron 

 rake and lift the hay off from those vines and rake the ground care- 

 fully just as close to the plant as possible, and the whole ground 

 that was occupied, rake it over very carefully every night, and after 

 they had commenced running I should continue that raking, or 

 something equal to it, immediately after everj' rain, as soon as the 

 the ground had dried enough. 



Pres. Underwood: That point will come up under cultivation; we 

 will take that up a little later. 



Mr. C. L. Smith: Mr. Gardner did not say how he would plant 

 them. 



Mr. Gardner: Roots down and tops up. (Laughter). 



Mr. Dewain Cook: I would like to know what he would do if there 

 were five thousand instead of one hundred. 



Mr. Gardner: In a dry time I should be very sorry that I ordered 

 them. 



Pres. Underwood: I would like to answer that question. I would 

 put them in a cellar and keep them there until it rained. You can 

 keep them for a month as well as a minute. 



Mr. Kellogg: Would it not be better to loosen them first? 



Pres. Underwood: Yes, it would be better in my estimation. lam 

 surprised that some of you do not take some of those tops off. I be- 

 lieve there are more strawberries killed by not taking the tops off 

 than in any ether way, and if I were buying strawberries and the 

 tops were taken off before shipping I should think they were worth 

 more. This gentleman who wants to know abaut planting five 

 thousand plants, I would say they are planting now with machin- 

 ery, but I think the dibble or spade are better. 



Mr. Gardner: In this " suppose " we have been speaking about, I 

 would suppose the tops to have been removed before the plants 

 were shipped. 



