STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 359 



of all time and expenses and charge it up, but mind you want to agree to take and 

 use in the family all the fruit they can raise for five years on one quarier of an acre 

 of this garden at a fair market price. 



Now my boy, with the ground properly prepared, have the plants on hand early, 

 but not befere the ground is ready to look nicely, set immediately, cultivate and 

 hoe every ten days, keep them clean, run tlie strawberries up and down the rows 

 forming narrow beds two feet wide, pinch off the fruit stems so as to give vigor to 

 the plants, and be sure to keep the weeds down before they get an inch high. 



In November before the ground freezes, take a six-tined or spading fork and 

 loosen about the raspberry and blackberry roots and with the foot at the ground and 

 the fork on the top, tip the plants all one way and cover with earth; from two to 

 five minutes will cover a plant that will give you from two to ten quarts of nice 

 fruit. The grapes cut back to one foot and cover the same. When it freezes so to 

 bear a team, cover the strawberries with marsli hay or straw manure free from weed 

 seed just so you cannot see tlie foliage, and cover well the patch and outside of the 

 rows. In spring leave this all on, if tlv; plants can't get through open up a little; 

 do not cultivate or hoe until after fruiting, hand weed what is necessary. The 

 plants that have been bent over and protected should be uncovered as soon as frost 

 is out, raised in position and earth pressed around tliem to hold them up, and a 

 good mulch of manure given them each spring; cultivate lightly, thoroughly, but 

 not deep. Keep this part of the fruit garden clean, and if raspberries and black- 

 berries send up sucker-plants cut them off as weeds. 



When strawberries ripen, pick one-half the beds each day, keep account of each 

 day's pick and charge them up at what they are worth in market, but don't com- 

 pare them with the sour berries shipped a thousand miles. 



As strawberries give out, raspberries will need picking — then will follow black- 

 berries. 



As strawberries get very plenty, hold the proprietor who furnished the land and 

 the ten dollars to his agreement, eat all you can three times a day, can all j^ou can, 

 and then rather than have any family trouble, buy boxes and furnish your grocer. 



An old plan of picking strawberries, cut from Green's Fruit Grower is still often 

 prac Juiced: 



The strawberries blossomed and gave great promise of an abundant harvest. It 

 seemed evident that we sliould not only have a supply for ourselves, but for our 

 neighbors also. Therefore I invested $10.00 in crates and baskets, for the purpose 

 of marketing our surplus. We did not have the least trouble in getting our berries 

 picked. We had an old hen with a brood of ten chickens that picked every one of 

 these strawberries. The old hen was the most successful strawberry picker I ever 

 met. 



Thus I have briefly described the first season. Early in the spring after the first 

 planting, prepare another strip for two rows of strawberries and be sure you set 

 plants that have not mixed; these can be taken from the outside of your beds. 

 Keep the kinds pure, and keep this new planting clean as before— and be sure to 

 set a small bed each spring. The strawberry bed after the first crop will become 

 weedy; cultivate, hand-weed and mow and let it remain as long as it will yield at 

 the rate of 100 bushels per acre; then plow under, for this reason the strawberry 

 bed should be on the outside of the other fruit, these will increase in productive- 



