A B C OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 89 



practice rotation with clover. It is cheaper to get more manure 

 from the city, and keep it in garden crops all the time. 



Hon. H. C. Adams uses about 60 loads per acre of manure, 

 drawn from the city, for the most part, although when I was at 

 Madison he was keeping a fine lot of Jersey cows to make ma- 

 nure. His sales of strawberries and cream to one restaurant in 

 the city he told me had been $1000 in a season. Thirty or forty 

 cords of good stable manure per acre are probably necessary to 

 raise such crops as these men do on land of moderate fertility. 

 Of course, much of this manure will remain in the soil for fol- 

 lowing crops. On land as good as mine, with clover worked in 

 every three years, I doubt whether more than fifteen to twenty 

 cords of manure could be used on an acre to advantage, and 

 perhaps not that. But still, I may be wrong. 



Mr. Putney, in his admirable little book on strawberries, 

 says : " All heavy crops are grown on rich soils. Measure the 

 profit by the amount of manure." 



Friend Crawford evidently speaks from experience when 

 1ae says : "It is a mistake to grow strawberries, or any other 

 crop that requires hand labor, on poor land. The same labor 

 that will produce 50 bushels on poor soil will produce 150 on 

 rich. (This extra hundred bushels will pay for all the manure 

 needed to make it rich, and a very large profit besides. See ?) 

 He who cultivates poor land works for small wages. It is too 

 much like running a ten-horse-power engine with a three horse- 

 power boiler ; or like driving a poor horse that can draw but an 

 empty wagon." 



But now the question will come up with some who haven't 

 stable manure in abundance, and can not buy it, whether com- 

 mercial fertilizers can be made to take its place. On my own 

 soil they can not. I have tested this matter most thoroughly 

 during the last two years. Bone meal was tried, and also 

 Mapes' special vine manure, made on purpose for strawberries. 

 We put on large quantities, in the most approved style ; but 

 'they did us no good whatever. It is strange, but we have had 



