The Strawberry Book. 57 



erous scale, pick and eat ad libitum; not harassed by 

 being limited to a given number of " boxes," but revelling 

 in fresh, sound, unpacked, and uninjured berries. This 

 luxury, which habit soon makes a necessity, and which is 

 not a mere gratification of the taste, but is really condu- 

 sive to sound health, costs but a trifle. I believe that ten 

 dollars will establish, and less than that amount expended 

 annually will maintain, a strawberry bed large enough to 

 meet through the season the demands of any ordinary 

 family. But ten dollars will not go far in buying choice 

 strawberries by the box. Knowing by experience how 

 pleasant it is to have good strawberries in abundance 

 through the season, I advise every owner of a garden to 

 set apart space enough for a good bed, to manure it well, 

 plant it with some good, productive kind, and never there- 

 after to be without a supply of luscious berries in their 

 season. 



It is worth noticing, that in most cases the neatest and 

 best beds of strawberries, except those of the market gar- 

 deners, are in gardens owned, or perhaps hired, by me- 

 chanics and laborers, who somehow find time to weed 

 and tend them before and after their hours of labor, and 

 whose success very often puts to shame their wealthier 

 neighbors, and affords a parallel to the Lancashire work- 

 men's gooseberry bushes. 



It cannot, then, be bad advice to urge those who have 

 the land and the means to plant strawberry beds. For 

 three weeks in the year, at least, their families will call 

 them blessed. 



