76 A B C OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



grows, and I may be partly wrong. How many things we have 

 to learn yet, and how circumstances alter cases ! I wish I could 

 tell every grower who is just starting out in the business, ex- 

 actly what to get and what to do, but I can not. This would 

 be an impossibility for any mortal man. Selling plants is no 

 part of our business, or such a wholesale thinning-out of plants 

 in the fall would be wasteful. We grow berries and sell no 

 plants. Some grow plants and sell no berries. Mr. Chapman 

 thought we might sell the plants we destroyed in the fall, and 

 make considerable. Well, I would not set plants under ordi- 

 nary circumstances in the fall, for myself, nor would I advise 

 others to. If I sold a man plants, I should want him to have 

 them when there was the best chance for him to get some good 

 from them. It wouldn't be right, even to keep still and make 

 money out of my brother's ignorance.* I do not know a mar- 

 ket-grower in the State who practices fall planting. Again, 

 these plants taken out are mostly the poorest. In this respect 

 I should not like Mr. Farnsworth's way of getting plants from 

 the outside of rows for setting. They would hardly be the best. 

 The first runners to +ake root around the old hills will 

 usually be the strongest, thriftiest plants. To get plants to set 

 myself, I prefer to take the row clean, as far as I go, throwing 

 away all poor plants. This saves tramping the ground, too, as 

 one would in taking up plants all along between the rows. 

 Usually in the early spring I should not want any one tramp- 



* Friend T., I fear this remark is a little too sweeping, and perhaps 

 unjust to some. I am very well aware that there are plant sellers who 

 recommend the fall of the year, in the fall, and then in the spring they 

 recommend the springtime; but with the excellent success we have had 

 in receiving plants, both by mail and express, during all the summer and 

 fall months, we can not feel that it is a risky business. Besides, there are 

 quite a few people who have leisure in July and August, or in September, 

 who have not at other seasons of the year. They can attend to it then, 

 and do well, whereas they could not in the springtime. Another thing, 

 untidy gardens may be slicked up and made a thing of beauty and a source 

 of profit by planting strawberries during the months when gardens as a 

 rule look most untidy. Yes, this can be done, and a crop of ' erries secur- 

 ed in It- ss than one year from the time the plants were put out. Very like- 

 ly, where land is plentiful, and where berries are grown largely for mar- 

 ket, the springtime is preferable. A. I. R. 



