62 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Everbearing Strawberry Field. 



A. BRACKETT, FRUIT GROWER, EXCELSIOR, MINN. 



Mr. Brackett : I T vish to say a few things about something 

 that came up before I s^art on everbearing strawberries. I have 

 had at least fifty years' experience in growing strawberries, and 

 I don't think it would pay to try to irrigate strawberries in Iowa 

 or Minnesota. I know a gentleman, and a great many of you 

 no doubt know him, out at the lake who has spent hundreds of 

 dollars putting in an irrigating plant that he never got a dollar 

 from, and it stands there idle today. I know this, that straw- 

 berries very often are injured in the winter by root killing and 

 will only bear one crop of berries, that is, just one picking, and 

 then they will dry up. In my first experience with that root 

 killing I thought it was the drought, and I tried irrigating, but 

 I couldn't revive those plants. If your strawberry plants have 

 gone through the winter and have roots that are perfect, haven't 

 been injured by winter, I have never seen a year so dry in Minne- 

 sota but what they would mature a crop of berries if the ground 

 was well fertilized and well mulched. The expense of irrigating, 

 no one appreciates that until he has tried it. You have got to 

 keep that up all the time. Lots of years you won't need it. This 

 year during the severe drouth it might have been a small advan- 

 tage on the everbearing ; I know of one irrigating plant at Excel- 

 sior ; I don't think the man got any benefit from the use of that. 



Now, we can't say whether a crop of strawberries or a 

 crop of corn or any other crop will pay us by just one year's 

 experience. If that was a fact the corn raisers of Minnesota in 

 1915 would have told you that corn did not pay. It wasn't a 

 paying crop that year. The wheat raisers in Dakota, many of 

 whom didn't cut their grain, if they should base their opinion on 

 this year's crop would tell you it doesn't pay to grow wheat. We 

 have got to take several years to decide on whether it is a paying 

 crop or not. There are no doubt lots of people who have tried 

 everbearing strawberries, and if you should ask them no(w 

 whether they thought it would pay they would tell you no. For 

 some reason they didn't get any berries; I know lots of them 

 didn't get berries enough to pay for the plants, but it wasn't the 

 fault of the everbearing strawberries. 



You don't need to irrigate the strawberry plant if you handle 

 it right. Now this year I anticipated it might be dry, and as a 

 precaution I mulched my strawberry bed in the fall of the year, 

 and I mulched it heavily. Some people will say, "You smother 

 your strawberries out." For the last fifty years I never saw any 

 strawberries smothered out. Last year if they would smother 

 out mine would have smothered out, because we covered them 

 heavily with slough hay, and then I put on fifty loads to the acre 

 of stable manure. Then we had two or three feet of snow on 

 top of that last year. 



The present season of 1916, with the severe drouth in the 

 latter part of the season, has been very hard on a great many 



