32 The Strawberry Book. 



ner gently into the ground, and laying a small stone or a 

 little earth upon it. 



Again, in garden culture, where neat, compact rows are 

 desired, it is well to lay in the straggling runners, and press 

 their roots into the soil among the parent plants, thus leav- 

 ing the space between the raws clear for the use of the hoe. 



Where the cultivator has a bed of a choice variety, and 

 wishes to obtain from it every possible plant, he may go 

 over his bed late in the season, take out every small, weak 

 plant, and every tip of a runner just rooting, and set them 

 an inch or two apart in a spent hot-bed. If there is a little 

 heat left in the bed, and the vines are watered and shaded 

 a very little, they will all grow, and make fine strong plants 

 in a few weeks. 



But the most practicable way of obtaining fine healthy 

 plants, that will suffer but little from being transplanted, is 

 to layer the runners in small flower-pots in the open field. 

 The pots, in any convenient number, should be plunged 

 to their rims along the rows in July or August, and filled 

 with soil. Runners just beginning to root are pressed into 

 the soil in the pots without detaching them from their par- 

 ent plant, and in a week or two the whole pot will be filled 

 with roots. The runners may then be cut off, and the new 

 plant transplanted wherever it is needed. I have said this 

 may be done in July and August, but of course it may be 

 done at any time, a week or two before the plants are 

 needed. The size of the plant depends upon that of the 

 pot. Three and four inch pots are generally employed by 

 the propagators of strawberry vines, who have begun of 

 late years to offer for sale plants thus layered. In sending 

 such plants to their customers, they turn them out of the 

 pots to pack them, the numerous fibrous roots holding the 

 earth together in a compact ball. 



The value of such plants, especially for early fruiting, is 

 very great. They do not sutler at all from transplanting ; 

 and vines carefully layered thus in the fall, and removed 



