THK CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



171 



I 



he would carefully destroy every weed 

 and blade of grass to be found in the 

 plantation, and then put on a heavy 

 dressing of well rotted manure, say 

 fifteen to twenty loads to the acre, or 

 if to be had, fifty to seventy-tive bushels 

 of unleached ashes per acre : if leached 

 ashes, thcai twice the quantity. Keep 

 the beds free of weeds at any cost. If 

 tlie ciop promises to be extra large, an 

 additional coat of manure will assist 

 the late berries to keep up their size, 

 and thus add very much to the value 

 of the crop. 



For some years he has not had any 

 vines beyond reach of artificial water- 

 ing, but as regards the expense that 

 may be incurred for tliis purpose, each 

 grower must decide for himself whether 



o 



the increased value of the crop will 

 warrant the outlay. After harvesting 

 a large crop, if the plants look exhausted 

 and are throwing out but very few run- 

 ners, he advises to plough under the 

 plantation, as they will not pay for 

 further cultivation. In this remark 

 he refers to the Wilson only, ncv^er 

 having been able to make any other 

 variety bear itself to death the first 

 bearing season, though he has repeatedly 

 had the Wilson coine so near it as not 

 be worth caring for another year. If 

 the yield has been only moderate, the 

 second crop will [)robably be as good, 

 if not better, than the fii-st. 



Such is Mr. Smith's method of culti- 

 vating the Wilson Strawberry after ' 

 over twenty yeai-s of experimenting, I 

 and he does not consider two hundred 

 bushels per acre an extra crop, for he j 

 has rej^eatedly had much more, and j 

 sometimes double that quantity — in 

 fact, will not cultivate for any length 

 of time any variety that will not yield 

 at least six thousand quarts per acre ; 

 though he must confess that he has 

 never succeeded in getting it from any 

 other variety, the Crescent Seedling 

 aloue excepted. 



Of other varieties, he says he did his 

 best witl) Jucunda, but does not believe 

 that he ever grew a quart of them that 

 cost less than fifty cents; Seth Boyden's 

 No. 30, Triomph de Gand, Sharpless, 

 and many others, are large and beauti- 

 ful, but not profitable i'ov him, while 

 Captain Jack, Red Jacket, Piouty, and 

 Duncan, have borne with him about 

 one-half of what the Wilson would have 

 done under the same circumstances. 



Such has been his experience in 

 strawberry growing, and but once in 

 more than twenty years has he failed 

 to have at least a paying crop, and most 

 of the time his crops have been \erv 

 profitable. These large crops have been 

 by no means the result of chance or 

 hap-hazard cultivation, but of very rich 

 land, well drained, heavily manured, 

 thoroughly cultivated, well protected 

 during the winter, surface manured in 

 the spring, and well watered, if dry 

 weather come on during the bearing 

 season. His experience has taught him 

 this lesson, tint other things being 

 e^ual. the richer the land rlie larger 

 t,Mv^ crop. 



At the (; nclusion of the reading of 

 Mr. Smith's i)aper, the President called 

 upon Dr. H. E. McKay, of Madison, 

 Mississippi, to read his paper on Straw- 

 bei-ry Culture in the South, in which 

 he stated that their largest yields and 

 finest berries are obtained from a clay 

 loam. As to varieties, he said that up 

 to the present time he had found no 

 single variety to be trusted so implicitly 

 as the Wilson. Banish it from our 

 lists and culture, and you remove the 

 l»enf'on light that guides us to the goal 

 of ...ijcess in strawberry culture. The 

 next most valuable variety for the 

 south is the Charles Downing. 



Some discussion was had upon the 

 subjects covered by these papers, in the 

 course of which Mr. Hale, of Connecti- 

 cut, remarked that the cutting off of 

 the blossoms from newlv planted straw 



