rHIRTEEXTli .IXXCAL MEETISG. 117 



Yorker, and to protit h\ them and criticise them, bnt to stand 

 before \o\\ and give my experiences never entered my head, 

 and to say that I esteem it an honor, is putting it mildly. I 

 hope, my brother fruit growers, that I may be able to treat the 

 subject so well that you may not be dissappointed, but be pro- 

 fited. When I received your Secretary's invitation to come and 

 address vou, I said, "Oh, my! every one of those fellows 

 down there can teach me. — I am nothing but a little fellow in 

 the berry business," but the invitation was so kindly given, 

 and along with it a very interesting letter from my friend Sharp, 

 saving, "]\Iy brother, you cannot afford to miss the chance to 

 get acquainted with the brightest lot of fruit growers you ever 

 met," I made up my mind that I would try it ; if I make 

 mistakes and get criticised, w^ell I will surely come out ahead, 

 for criticism makes men grow. 



Strawberry growing, commercially speaking, is no funny job,- 

 or bov's play, although industrious boys w^ould succeed most 

 certainly. You all know that, for you have the success of 

 the push-cart fellow right here tjefore you. Preparing the 

 ground is the first and by no means the least essential thing 

 to getting good results. Any land that will grow corn or 

 potatoes will grow good strawberries, and the same treatment 

 that corn needs is what strawberries need. As to growing the 

 plants, I have tried several different ways of preparing a bed, 

 all with success, but will give the one that I now have, which 

 is the most promising bed that I ever had. I plow^ed the land, 

 two acres, which was a clover and timothy sod, mostly clover, 

 early in the fall of 1901. In the spring of 1902 I planted 

 potatoes, and was very careful to keep them well cultivated. 

 I used Stockbridge potato manure plentifully on my potatoes. 

 Potatoes, before a crop of strawberries, where a heavy sod is 

 taken, are the best to mellow the ground, of any cultivated 

 crop that I have ever tried. The only drawback that I find 

 is that June-bugs are more apt to lay their eggs in a potato 

 field than in any other field of cultivated crops except straw- 

 berries. They seem to prefer strawberries to anything. Some- 

 times I think that they know that I am going to set strawberries 

 after the potatoes, and pitch in and fill the field with eggs. 

 They have given me, at different times, a great amount of 

 trouble, and thev seem to be increasing, which gives me some 



