8 ABC OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



buying luxuries, and that was honest and square. Just for this 

 reason, thousands will never have berries unless they raise 

 them. Even if they are not in debt they may be short of mon- 

 ey to buy with, and berry time will slip by and they will not 

 have any to am-unt to any thing. There are many ways for 

 money to go, on many farms. I know that many farmers went 

 ^without apples last year because their own crop was a failure. 

 I have also known many to go without potatoes when they 

 failed to grow enough for their own use. In view of all these 

 facts I feel certain that the great mass of our farmers have got 

 to raise their own strawberries or practically go without. 



Possibly what I have written in the past may have caused 

 some farmers' families to go without berries. They gave up 

 trying to grow them, because Terry said it did not pay, and 

 they could not buy them. In fact, some ladies have told me 

 that this was the case at their homes. After this I am going to 

 take human nature as we find it, and urge every farmer to grow 

 all the strawberries his family can possibly use not merely to 

 put out the plants, for that, as it is usually done, is not much 

 better for the family than depending on buying would be. A 

 well-known grower of plants, in answer to a direct question at 

 one of our institutes, acknowledged that he did not think that 

 one farmer in ten who bought plants of him ever made any 

 thing out of them worth speaking of. 



Another well-known berry-grower, Mr. L,. B. Pierce, says in 

 the Ohio Farmer, in regard to this point : "Almost every farm- 

 er of my acquaintance has tried the experiment (of growing his 

 own strawberries), and I have furnished in my time not less 

 than one hundred personal acquaintances with plants for the 

 experiment, and these were not novelties, but well-tried stan- 

 dard varieties, such as the Wilson, Charles Downing, Green 

 Prolific, Cumberland, and Glendale. Less than half a dozen of 

 them kept their plantations up after two years, and the rest 

 either buy berries or go without. The berries had to go, be- 

 cause there was already on the farm an abundance of work that 



