CHAPTER III 

 ROTATIONS, MANURING AND FERTILIZING 



Usually, strawberries are grown in short rotations. 

 Throughout the North, the plants rarely occupy the 

 ground longer than fifteen months ; in many parts of the 

 South, barely half a year. The nature of the other crops 

 in the rotation, and the treatment given them, determine 

 the fertilizer treatment of strawberries fully as much as 

 the native fertility of the land and the demands of the 

 strawberry crop itself. 



In early years, strawberries almost invariably were 

 planted on virgin land. This is still done whenever 

 practicable, especially in the South. Land which is 

 planted to strawberries year after year becomes "straw- 

 berry sick.'' Heavy annual applications of manure or 

 green-manuring will prevent this, to a large extent. The 

 Seth Boyden farm, of about nine acres, at Hilton, New 

 Jersey, has been in strawberries almost continuously for 

 over fifty years, yet still produces undiminished crops 

 with heavy manuring. Land that had "berried out" 

 was common in the older shipping districts of Florida 

 until the growers resorted to green-manuring. In Mis- 

 souri and Arkansas, land that has been in strawberries 

 for three or four years should not be set again for at least 

 four years. Along the Atlantic coast, the crop may recur 

 at shorter intervals since but one crop is taken from most 

 plantings. In irrigated regions, if strawberries follow 



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