26 The Strawberry Book. 



Mr. Augustus Parker, of Roxbury, Mass., a very suc- 

 cessful cultivator of strawberries for market, gives his 

 method in Tilton's Journal of Horticulture, vol. vi., p. 

 281, as follows : 



"I set my plants about the first of May, about a foot 

 apart, in a single row, and the rows four and a half feet 

 apart, on good, well-manured ground. I keep the culti- 

 vator going between the rows till about the 8th of July, 

 when the runners begin to run, and then go over the 

 ground with a rake and make it level ; after this I go over 

 the beds and place the runners so that the plants will 

 be as near four inches apart as possible. With me the 

 runners cover all the ground between the rows. Keep- 

 ing the ground light till you set the runners gives the 

 young plant a chance to make good roots, which stand 

 the dry weather the next summer when they are in bear- 

 ing. If you let the ground get hard for the new plants, 

 the roots will be short, and the plants will not be able to 

 carry their fruit to the size -and quantity they otherwise 

 would. I cover my beds, when they are frozen in the 

 fall so that I can drive my team over them without leav- 

 ing a mark, .with fine, light horse manure ; cover as light- 

 ly as possible, and yet have them covered. In the spring 

 I let the plants come up through the manure, which serves 

 as a mulching to keep the berries clean. As soon as the 

 plants are started enough in the spring to see the old 

 plants that were set the spring before, I put a line on the 

 beds, and take out the old row, and make the path about 

 fourteen inches wide, so as to keep the pickers in their 

 proper places. I do not set every year, as some growers 

 do ; but, as soon as I get through picking, I dig or plough 

 up the sides of my beds to a strip eight or ten inches 

 wide ; from this strip new runners will start, which I set 

 over the ground as at the first season. I cart off all the 

 plants I plough up, and make the ground as light as pos- 

 sible ; then, the next spring (of course, manuring in the 



