90 THE STRAWBERRY IN NORTH AMERICA 



becomes covered with a mass of starved and weakly 

 plants, choking each other in a hard uncultivated soil 

 and producing a sparse crop of small, insipid berries that 

 dry up on their stalks before they are ripe unless rain 

 happens to fall every day." By calling it "the lazy 

 man's method" they endeavored to shame cultivators 

 into adopting hill training. In 1862, Thomas Meehan 

 said, " There is no question but that growing strawberries 

 in hills, instead of letting them run in beds, will be the 

 rule with all cultivators who are industrious." This 

 subtle implication must have failed to hit its mark, for 

 we read that in 1869 he took a 3000 mile trip through 

 the leading strawberry districts of the Mississippi Valley 

 and Atlantic States and "found the hill system nowhere 

 in use except at York and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania." 



The evolution of the matted row. — Broadcast training 

 prevailed until about 1870. By that time complaints about 

 small berries and loss from drought had become too nu- 

 merous to be ignored. When the plants were crowded 

 closely together over the entire area, with no opportunity 

 for tillage, a severe drought not only reduced the yield 

 but also killed the vines in many cases. It became 

 necessary to seek a compromise between hill and broad- 

 cast training which would permit some degree of tillage, 

 so as to prevent loss from drought, yet at the same 

 time not sacrifice the heavy yield resulting from a thick 

 stand of plants. This compromise was the matted row. 

 At the same time methods of renewing the beds, so as to 

 get a new stand of uncrow^ded plants, came into vogue. 

 In some cases, especially in the Northeast, the life of the 

 plantation was shortened from ten years to two years. 

 Since 1870, the matted row has been the dominant method 

 of training in commercial culture. The introduction of 



