PACKAGES, TRAINING, POLLINATION 87 



Early Methods of Training 



Until about 1840, most of the strawberries grown in 

 North America were trained in hills. English methods 

 were sedulously copied here before our fruit growers had 

 developed sufficient initiative to question the fiats of 

 Loudon, Miller and other great English gardeners. Hill 

 training had been practiced in England for centuries. 

 In his "Paradisus Terrestris," published in 1629, John 

 Parkinson says, "Bohemia and all other strawberries will 

 not bear kindly if you suffer them to grow with many 

 strings, and therefore they are still cut off." As long as 

 strawberries were grown only by country gentlemen 

 who employed English gardeners and by a few market 

 gardeners near the larger cities, hill training prevailed, 

 even in the rigorous climate of Massachusetts. In 1835, 

 C. M. Hovey wrote :^ "Strawberries are cultivated in 

 beds, rows or hills ; some adopt one and some the other 

 method, and each has advocates." He contended, how- 

 ever, that hill training was the only really satisfactory 

 method and gave the following explicit instructions: 

 "The beds should contain three rows and should be six 

 feet in width; and the alleys between each, three feet. 

 The plants should be eighteen inches apart in the row and 

 all runners kept off." 



As more people began to grow strawberries for home 

 use, most of them unable to afford the luxury of a private 

 gardener, there was a tendency to let the plants run; 

 it was less trouble and expense. The old line horticul- 

 turists protested against this with vigor. In 1845 Wil- 

 liam Cobbett voiced the outraged feelings of every true 

 English gardener at this unseemly departure from the 

 1 Mag. HorL, 1835, p. 304. 



