The Strawberry Book. *2i 



If everything goes well, by the first of October, and some- 

 times much earlier, the ground should be completely cov- 

 ered with a green carpet of vines. A walk a foot wide is 

 then sometimes cleared out in the middle of the rows, 

 leaving beds three feet wide and solid with plants. But 

 where there is a demand for strawberry vines early in the 

 season, this operation is deferred until spring. 



On the approach of winter the beds are covered with 

 some protecting substance, generally three or four inches 

 of old hay. This hay, except enough to fill the foot-wide 

 alleys for the pickers to walk in, is raked off in the spring, 

 and stacked, to be used again the ensuing autumn for the 

 same purpose. 



The berries being picked for market as fast as they 

 ripen, the whole crop is off in this latitude by the loth 

 of July, and the entire plantation is then immediately 

 ploughed under, vines, weeds, and all, another bed 

 having been made in the spring to take the place of the 

 one that is destroyed. 



The advantages of this method are obvious. 



First. The first full crop from a strawberry bed is the 

 largest and best; and here, the vines being in perfect 

 health and vigor, and the soil very rich, the plants are 

 made to do their very utmost, no regard being had to in- 

 juring them, for they are to be ploughed up as soon as the 

 fruit is gone. 



Second. In this method a few weeds, more or less, are 

 not the very serious annoyance that they prove in a bed 

 that is to be kept up year after year, for before they can 

 go to seed they are turned into the soil. 



Of course the best grower will have the fewest weeds, 

 other things being equal ; but I have sometimes seen quite 

 a little crop of grass and weeds in the beds of one of the 

 best growers I know grass and weeds derived from the 

 seed in the hay used for covering. But they never were 

 numerous enough to do any harm, and were all destroyed 



