MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 145. 
ed in the fall by fine, healthy canes. Remove every alternate row, 
and if the bushes in the row remaining are too thick, thin; then 
leave for fruiting. 
Currants are usually three or four years old before bearing a full 
crop, and in our light soil bear but threé or four good crops before 
beginning to decay. The past two years the currant worm and 
borer have made sad havoc with our bushes, but at the present time 
I see signs of coming off victorious with the help of Paris green and 
hellbore, either of which are sure exterminators of the larva of 
these pestiferous insects. I usually hire children to pick the fruit, 
paying one and one and a half to two cents a quart, using tickets 
as tallies, and each night taking tickets and paying for them. The 
most satisfactory way of selling is by weight; as, if I market cur- 
rants by the bushel before the stems wilt, the purchaser, after 
keeping 24 or 48 hours, is obliged to resort to wine measure to sell 
the number of quarts bought; but by weight, every one gets proper 
quantity. A bushel of good plump currants weighs forty pounds. 
I would like to have pruning of the bushes discussed at the next 
winter meeting. Some recommend tree form, single stem; others 
the bush, six or eight canes to a bush, some shortening of tops, 
others catting out old wood each year, some spring, some fall 
pruning. All have their advocates; but which is best, or is there 
no choice between them? 
Manuring, cultivating and muiching are recommended; clean 
cultivation has always proved most satisfactory to me—mulching 
with manure in the fall pays omrcrnely, well, as soil cannot be too 
rich for currants. 
Gooseberries with me are not and have not been a success, as far 
as fruit is concerned, being, like the currant, subject to the goose- 
berry or currant worm, which eats the leaves and stems off the fruit 
and soon kills the bud. The same remedies are recommended as 
for the currant. Gooseberries are not as easily picked as other 
small fruit, on account of (as the children express it) the prickers, 
and as a paying crop are a failure; yet I think a few gooseberries 
should have a place in every collection of fruit. 
Strawberries, the queen of small fruits, as far as pleasure and 
profit are concerned, are very much sought after in their season, 
by both rich and poor, adorning with no better grace the sumptu- 
ously spread table of the rich than the plain unostentatious board 
of the working man; possessing no more delicious flavor for the 
rich man’s lordly palate than for the undefiled taste of the humble 
mechanic. They are the people’s choice of the small fruits, easily 
cultivated by amateur as well as professional gardeners. They should 
have a place in every garden: A small patch well tended gives a 
family a delicacy fit for the highest in station. 
The strawberry is a native, growing luxuriantly and producing 
fine fruit in many localities, The Wilson Albany Seedling is gen- 
erally conceded to be most productive and most successfully culti- 
vated in all locations. In place of irrigating strawberries in fruit, 
mulching between the hill and rows with meadow grass or clean 
straw is very beneficial. I have used straw, hay, leaves and saw- 
dust as coverings for winter protection. Hay is the best, leaves 
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