THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN" GUIDE. 30 



management those just planted will bear next season, abundance of 

 good iruit may be reckoned upon. As this is a good time for making 

 new beds, the first thing to be done is to fix upon the sorts you 

 intend to patronize. The varieties are very numerous, and fresh 

 competitors for public favour are constantly appearing, so that there 

 is room for caprice or experiment, or love of novelty. If neither of 

 these impulses is very strong within you, and you feel that you can 

 be satisfied with good tried sorts, take these three — Keen's Seed- 

 ling, the British Queen, and the Elton Pine. 



These are deservedly favourites, as having fine flavour and being 

 plentiful bearers ; they also come in in succession, which is a great 

 advantage. If you have no old beds, you must procure runners 

 elsewhere, with all the delay consequent upon having young plants 

 with the roots exposed and somewhat dry. But if you have old 

 beds, and have neglected to plant out the runners into a nursery 

 bed in the summer, you cannot do better than adopt the following 

 rules, which for several years have been found effective for securing 

 good crops of this delicious fruit. Let the ground be well dug, 

 and incorporated with good rotten dung from an old cucumber or 

 melon-pit. I prefer growing strawberries in double rows, at the 

 edges of beds in. the kitchen garden, and I think the plan has many 

 advantages. But, whatever mode you prefer, do not allow the plants 

 to be more than two rows in depth, but interpose a path half a yard 

 in width between every phalanx of two rows. The object is to have 

 every plant distinct in the rows, so that air and light may be fully 

 enjoyed, and runners may be easily cut off" as they appear; and also 

 that a space may be allowed wide enough to walk down the beds, 

 to get at the fruit. Having your ground marked out with a line, 

 proceed to the old bed, and take up the young plants which have 

 rooted in it with a trowel. Choose those which appear to be 

 most strong and established. Then dig holes with the trowel 

 along your line, and carefully deposit the plants in them, about 

 a foot apart every way. As the strawberry has, even in its 

 young state, a vast quantity of root fibres, the process of 

 taking up with a trowel preserves these, and prevents the plants 

 being much checked by removal. By this process some fruit 

 may be expected next year, although not so much as a more scientific 

 plan would have secured. These plants, removed from an old bed, 

 have been denied many advantages which a little forethought would 

 have given them ; they have been crowded together and shaded by 

 the old leaves, so that they are not so fully developed as they might 

 have been if the runners had been planted in a nursery bed in the 

 summer as soon as they were old enough to be removed. As the 

 treatment needed afterwards can be dwelt upon more usefully at 

 the proper season for applying it, more need not be said upon the 

 subject. If not done before, your old bearing beds should now be 

 looked ovei\ Remove all runners and dead leaves, but do not inter- 

 fere with those which are healthy, as they have even now more 

 work to do in maturing the future buds. A little dung may be laid 

 upon the surface, and worked in with a fork, but do not let the 

 prongs go too deep to interfere with the roots. I have sometimes 



Ootober. 



