BLACKBERRIES AND RASPBERRIES 311 



spring. Treated in this way there will be no need for the application of 

 nitrogenous fertilizers, but a fair supply of the mineral elements should be 

 given annually, making the mixture about 4 parts of acid phosphate to one 

 of sulphate of potash. Allow no more canes to grow in the hill than can 

 have room for full development, and shorten them back annually, or, what is 

 better, pinch in summer to induce the growth of side shoots and to make 

 bushy canes. 



PROPAGATING THE PLANTS. 



Many growers depend on the suckers from the base of the blackberry and 

 red raspberry plants for planting. But it will be found that far better plants 

 can be grown from cuttings of the roots made in the fall. We make these 

 cuttings about three inches long, mix them in moist sand in boxes and bury 

 the boxes outdoors during the winter, with a mound of earth over them to 

 prevent access of water. They remain there till early spring and are then 

 planted in the open ground in rows wide enough for horse cultivation, and 

 dropped about four inches in the rows. These root cuttings make a strong 

 growth during the summer, and are far better plants than those cut from 

 the old plants as suckers. With new and rare varieties that are high priced 

 we have adopted another and more rapid way. Years ago when there was a 

 furor over the Herstine raspberry a friend bought two large plants for which 

 he paid $5. He received them late in the fall and asked me how he had better 

 treat them. I told him that if he would give me the plants I would propagate 

 them and give him one-half the plants I made, as I thought I could put him 

 just as far ahead in the spring as with the plants he had. He brought me 

 the plants, which were very fine ones, with long roots. These were cut into 

 pieces about an inch long, placed thickly in shallow boxes of light soil, and 

 covered half an inch. The boxes were then placed on the propagating bench 

 in the greenhouse, where there was a good bottom heat. There they started 

 rapidly and as soon as leaves developed were set in two and a half inch pots, 

 with the ordinary potting compost, and placed in a cool greenhouse, and a lit- 

 tle later were shifted into three-inch pots. By the time frost was over in the 

 spring I had 250 strong plants with tops a foot or more high, and these, 

 planted in the open ground, each, during the summer, made a plant as strong 

 as we would have had from the original plant had it been set, and we had 

 250 plants instead of two for the $5. Of course, with raspberry plants at the 

 usual price per thousand it would hardly pay to adopt this method, but with 

 plants selling at fancy prices it will enable the grower to got a stock in advance 

 of tho lower rates. Blackberries are propagated from root cuttings in the 

 same way as red raspberries. 



