1 66 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



STRAWBERRIES. 



T took me ten years to learn to grow strawberries, so that 

 a good crop of fine berries could be depended on with 

 reasonable certainty every year. The three principal 

 reasons were varieties not suited to my soil, lack of potash 

 in the ground, and allowing the plants to stand too thick. 

 Of a good many varieties tested thus far, the best four, all 

 things considered, are Jessie, Haverland, Bubach No. 5, and Sharpless, in the 

 order named. Our strawberries, following a crop that has been grown on a 

 well manured clover soil, need no fertilizer except potash, and this is supplied 

 by a moderate dressing of unleached wood ashes. The plants are set in April, 

 just after growth has begun, in rows four feet apart, and two feet in the row for 

 vigorous growing varieties, and eighteen inches for those that do not throw out 

 many runners. My experience is that to produce the finest berries, the plants 

 in the matted row should be six to eight inches apart. Not one farmer in a 

 hundred will take the pains to thin them, and I am not that one, but I can 

 approximate to these distances by thin planting. The past season being so 

 extremely dry just at the time the sets should be forming, we failed to get a 

 good stand of plants. But this is the first time it has occurred, and we shall 

 not abandon the thin planting just at present. 



Before setting, the ends of the roots are taken off by a slanting cut with a 

 sharp knife. All dead leaves are picked off. The most satisfactory method of 

 planting we have ever tried is to stretch a line lengthwise of the plat, one man 

 sinks a spade near the line at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and raises 

 the handle nearly straight up, while another straightens out the roots, dips them 

 in water, and puts the plant behind the spade in a natural position, with the 

 crown a very little below the surface. The first then withdraws the spade, and 

 firms the ground by treading firmly just in front of the plant. As a rule, not 

 more than one plant out of four or five hundred fails to grow. Almost immed- 

 iately the cultivator (with narrow steels) is started, and the whole of the surface 

 is stirred every time we cultivate the garden or after every rain. No fruit is 

 allowed to set the first season, and the runners are kept off until about the first 

 of July. Sets are then allowed to root in a row about two feet wide, care being 

 taken to always pass with the cultivator the same way so as not to disturb the 

 young plants. 



I have never heard of clover straw or haulm being used for the winter 

 mulch, but find it an excellent thing for this purpose. The broken straw and 

 chaff sifts down among the plants, and the course straw above serves to shade 

 them and hold the snow. In spring, the coarse straw only is raked off and the 

 rest is allowed to remain on the rows to hold the moisture and keep the berries 

 clean. We hire all the berries picked and sell nearly all of them direct to 



