58 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



way, because men may be successful in growing strawberries 

 for market by using some other method, and I would not pre- 

 tend to say whether you had better burn over your old bed or 

 not. Our bed now is three years old and is in fine condition 

 for fruiting next year if frost does not take the fruit. It gave 

 us a good crop this year. I think, also, success depends a good 

 deal on renewing the young plants occasionally. If you can 

 plow out the rows and get some young plants, it would be well, 

 because, I imagine, after three or four years the old plants 

 would not give you as good fruit. Where the rows are plowed 

 out, you can keep the rows successful for ten years. I do not 

 know that it is as profitable as to plant them every year. I think, 

 probably, that men growing strawberries for the market, mak ■ 

 ing that their business, would want to plant them at least every 

 other year, if not every year, but I will say we have been ex- 

 ceptionally successful in keeping them two years, and next 

 year will be the third crop. 



Mr. C. Wedge: I would like to have Mr. Underwood tell us 

 how he set out those plants. I saw a very fine stand of plants 

 at his place. 



President Underwood: I have been corrected so much this 

 past summer for telling about that strawberry bed and speak- 

 ing about it as though it was my production, that I have to be 

 very careful, although Mrs. Underwood is not here. It was 

 Mrs. Underwood who did the fine work, the successful work. 

 I can speak, perhaps, more freely because it was not my own. I 

 think she has the finest five acres of strawberries I ever saw, 

 planted on ground that had been cropped to small grain for five 

 years. She had the ground harrowed over and smoothed in 

 good condition for planting, marked the rows four feet apart — 

 and as we always use a rope for marking we get the rows ab- 

 solutely straight, as straight as you can shoot a gun. Then 

 we use a planter, the "Baldridge," a cut of which is shown in 

 our magazine, and it is the finest thing for planting strawber- 

 ries you can possibly use. (Mr. Underwood here exhibited the 

 instrument). You can set it to any depth you want it by means 

 of a gauge and thumbscrew. You have got to have good soil to 

 use the planter in. In soil where you can work it, it is a fine 

 thing, indeed. You put the planter over a plant and press it 

 down, then withdraw it with the plant and deposit the plant in 

 a box. A man can do that very rapidly, almost as fast as he 

 walks; he picks out the plant and sets it down in the box, and 

 they are taken wherever you want to plant them. They take 



