4-O The Strawberry Book. 



layer the plants in small pots. This should be done early 

 in July. The first runners from good plants should be 

 taken and layered in thumb-pots, filled with any good soil. 

 Before the first of August the thumb-pots will be filled 

 with roots, and the young plants will be ready for a shift 

 into three or four-inch pots. 



The compost now employed should consist of thoroughly 

 decomposed sods and top-soil from a pasture, with one third 

 well-rotted manure. If this mixture has lain in heaps sev- 

 eral months, all the better. 



The plants having been shifted, the soil should be firmly 

 pressed around the roots, and the pots should be liberally 

 watered and set in a cold-frame, which will hasten their 

 growth a little, and at the same time protect them from 

 too severe rains. When this set of pots is well filled with 

 roots, the vines should be shifted into a larger size. 



Here growers differ. Some transfer the plants into the 

 six-inch potsj in which they are to fruit, and others put 

 them into .five-inch pots, and give them a final shift into 

 eight-inch pots. The two most successful growers I know 

 use, the one six, and the other eight-inch pots for fruiting. 

 It must, however, resolve itself into a question of room in 

 the green-house; and it seems reasonable to think that a 

 plant whose well-grown roots fill an eight-inch pot will 

 give more fruit than one whose pot is two inches less in 

 diameter. 



If the plants are in a frame, it should be left open, ex- 

 cept in a storm after the first of October, the vines watered 

 sparingly, and allowed to ripen off very thoroughly. By 

 the middle of November the cold weather will check all 

 growth, and the vines, if all has gone well, will be healthy, 

 stout, and plump. The frames may now be filled with 

 leaves, and covered with boards, until the vines are needed 

 for forcing. The best growers are strongly inclined to 

 think that a month's rest and inaction after the plants are 

 ripe, and have stopped growing, lead to much better re- 



