PLANTING, CULTIVATION AND PRUNING. 259 



pronged hoes or forks. If a liberal topdressing of compost 

 or some other fertilizer was not given in the autumn, which 

 is the best time to apply it, let it be spread over the roots 

 (not up against the stems) before the first spring cultivation. 

 While the bushes are still young, they can be cultivated and 

 kept clean, like any hoed crop ; but after they come into 

 bearing, — say the third summer, — a different course must 

 be adopted. If the ground is kept mellow and bare under 

 the bushes, the fruit will be so splashed with earth as to be 

 unsalable, and washed fruit is scarcely fit for the table. We 

 very properly wish it with just the bloom and coloring which 

 Nature is a month or more in elaborating. Muddy or rinsed 

 fruit suggests the sty, not a dining-room. A mulch of 

 leaves, straw, evergreen boughs, — anything that will keep 

 the ground clean, — applied immediately after the early 

 spring culture, is the best and most obvious way of preserv- 

 ing the fruit ; and this method also secures all the good 

 results which have been shown to follow mulching. Where 

 it is not convenient to mulch, I would suggest that the 

 ground be left undisturbed after the first thorough culture, 

 until the fruit is gathered. The weeds that grow in the in- 

 terval may be mowed, and allowed to fall under the bushes. 

 By the end of June, the soil will have become so fixed that, 

 with a partial sod of weeds, the fruit may hang over, or even 

 rest upon it, without being splashed by the heavy rains then 

 prevalent. This course is not so neat as clean cultivation 

 or mulching. Few fruit growers, however, can afford to 

 make appearances the first consideration. I have heard 

 of oats being sown among the bushes to keep the fruit clean, 

 but their growth must check the best development of the 

 fruit quite as much as the natural crop of weeds. It would 

 be better to give clean culture, and grow rye, or any early 

 maturing green crop, somewhere else, and when the fruit 



