A B C OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 23 



cover the matter. Even as young a man as Charles A. Green, 

 the well-known horticultural authority, says that, when he was 

 a boy, he cultivated imperfectly blossoming strawberries year 

 after year, receiving no fruit, without knowing the cause of 

 failure. A great many have had the same'experience. 



Growers usually have about every fourth or fifth row of a 

 perfect-flowering variety in a field of imperfect ones. You may 

 ask, "Why grow the imperfect kinds at all?" They are 

 usually more productive, hence in field culture they are largely 

 used with just enough perfect ones to do the fertilizing. There 

 is some difference of opinion about what proportion should be 

 perfect plants. Probably the season and locality have some- 

 thing to do with it too. Mr. Theodore F. Longenecker, of 

 Dayton, Ohio, a very careful grower, would set out nearly as 

 many rows of perfect plants as of imperfect never less than 

 three-fifths as many. I noticed when Mr. Crawford sent my 

 plants the first year (some- 1500) he sent half and half. 



It is claimed that the variety used for fertilizing has an in- 

 fluence on the imperfect one. For example : Putney and 

 Woodward say, if you want firmness you should fertilize with 

 Wilson ; if sweetness, use Sharpless ; if dark color is wanted, 

 fertilize with Longfellow, and so on. But tke farmer will hard- 

 ly care to delve into. the subject as deep as this. Leave it with 

 the grower of plants to send you the proper varieties for fertil- 

 izing, or buy all perfect ones. The pollen is carried from one 

 variety to another by wind, bees, wasps, etc., probably ; but we 

 hardly know all about this just yet. A case in point about this 

 fertilizing business has just occurred on my own place. A 

 farmer called, and said that, from what he had learned, the 

 Haverland and Bubach were about as promising berries for his 

 soil as there were, and wanted to know if I could advise him of 

 any better ones to send for. I told him I could not, and he 

 started off, saying he would send for a thousand plants of each. 

 Just in time it occurred to be that he might not know they are 

 both imperfect varieties. He did not know, and would have 



