426 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



SOME NOTES ON BERRY GROWING. 



ED raspberries are about as profitable as any that can be raised. As 

 a rule they sell higher even than strawberries, and when properly 

 treated will yield a splendid crop. Mine I suppose are the Cuth- 

 bert variety, although they were transplanted from an old garden, 

 and I never knew positively what the variety was. They are as large 

 as the end of one's middle finger, and very aark red when ripe. In 

 fact, they should never be picked until they reach that color, as they are dry 

 until that time. But when ripe they are sweet and delicious, with the true rasp- 

 berry flavor. They are also quite firm, and will bear transportation well. My 

 method of growing is to plant in hills four feet apart each way. We leave from 

 five to seven canes to grow each year, cutting out all the rest, as well as all the 

 suckers that come up in the early part of the season. After the crop has been 

 gathered, we cut out all the old canes in order to give the new ones a better 

 chance for the rest of the season. The new are cut down to about one-third 

 their length late in the fall, and then bent over and covered with straw and earth 

 to protect from frost. We uncover them early in the spring and tie the canes 

 up to stakes, of which we use only one for each hill. We give them the same 

 dose of liquid manure that is given the strawberries. It is very little trouble to 

 keep the soil between the rows free from weeds and cut out the many suckers 

 that appear. If the canes are not very vigorous, we leave six or seven in a hill, 

 but generally five canes are enough to secure the best results. 



I am satisfied that a moderate amount of shade is beneficial to red rasp- 

 berries. The general theory is that no kind of plant will grow as well, or pro- 

 duce as well, when it stands near to trees, which are supposed to absorb nearly 

 all the nutriment there is in the soil, leaving very little for any other plants. 

 But when raspberries are treated in the way I have described, the shade of trees 

 seems to give them extra vigor, the berries grow larger as well as the canes, and 

 the yield is very much larger. In order to test the matter, I selected eight hills 

 growing together in the shade, and eight growing in the open sunlight. For 

 eight pickings I counted the berries from these sixteen hills, in all of which the 

 canes had been treated in precisely the same manner. From the eight hills 

 growing in part shade we gathered 3,167 berries; from the eight growing in 

 open sunlight only 2,123 berries. Here was a difference of one-third in the 

 number of berries alone, which was still farther increased by the size of the 

 berries, those in shade being about one-third larger than those in sun. The 

 eight best hills averaged nearly 400 berries each, from these eight pickings, and 

 according to count, it took 200 of the berries to make a quart. There was a 

 good d^al of difference even among these, but six hills which were most in the 

 shade gave respectively 351, 366, 422, 573, 483 and 414 berries. Taking the 

 season of picking right through, these hills and others like them yielded from 



