64 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ing they had made such a fine showing there I planted it again 

 this year on a heavy rich soil thoroughly manured, and they 

 bore a good crop of fine large berries. I think it very essential 

 that all everbearing strawberries have the rows thinned down to 

 about six inches wide, with plants six inches apart, which gives 

 larger and finer berries, and the plants are better able to stand 

 the dry weather than they would be if left in a matted row. 



The United States government sent out an expert to investi- 

 gate the everbearing strawberry throughout the United States. 

 He stopped at my place last spring. He went through Iowa and 

 Missouri and worked west to the Pacific Coast, spent the sum- 

 mer in his investigations and came back over the same route 

 and was at my place again this fall. His verdict was that where 

 people had planted the everbearing strawberry on suitable 

 ground and taken the right care of them they had proved a great 

 success. When they are as extensively grown as the June bear- 

 ing varieties we cannot expect the fancy prices that we are now 

 getting. 



A Member : I would like to ask Mr. Brackett if he cut out 

 the old plants this spring and got a spring crop off of his berries 

 from the new plants? 



Mr. Brackett: It is a very good plan to take out the old 

 plants for this reason: Everbearing strawberries bear up to 

 the time the ground freezes up, and I think I had at least 

 twenty-five bushels of green berries on my plants this fall that 

 were frozen up. This heavy crop has weakened them to some 

 extent while the runners have not been weakened so bad. You 

 want to uncover your strawberries early; let them get started, 

 and then if the frost comes along and kills the blossoms it don't 

 hurt them at all, they will go ahead and new roots will get started 

 and there will be another set of blossom stems. It doesn't 

 hurt them to get frosted that way, while with your common 

 berries if they get uncovered too early and get killed that is tHe 

 end of your crop. 



A Member : I would like to ask how to treat the everbearing 

 strawberry for plants, if you want to get plants from it. 



Mr. Brackett : I will tell you how I do it. I plant my ever- 

 bearing plants early in the spring. They will start out runners, 

 and we let them do that. Those runners nearly all of them will 

 bear, and in the spring — or next spring, as I told you — I take up 

 all those runners except just to leave that little narrow row, only 

 six inches wide and plants six inches apart. You can keep an ever- 

 bearing strawberry bed year after year if you take care of it, and 

 you can grow June-bearing berries if you take care of them, but 

 show me the man that will do it. Not one in five. They will let 

 the weeds grow up, intending perhaps to do the weeding at some 



