130 ABC OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



It may seem a little strange, but I shall have to confess that 

 I had eaten strawberries and raised them a good many years, 

 before I was even aware of the way in which the plant is prop- 

 agated. Let us suppose that you have a single strawberry- 

 plant, say in the month of April. You plant it out in good 

 soil, keep the weeds down, keep the ground mellow around 

 them till it begins to put forth leaves and enlarge. Pretty soon 

 you will notice a crown, or a larger bud, starting up from the 

 center. This puts forth a fruit-stalk with blossoms. Not long 

 after this, most varieties will send out an occasional runner. 

 The runner looks exactly like the stem of a leaf, only that it is 

 much longer and ends in a bud, as it were. There are also em- 

 bryo leaflets at certain distances, making joints, so to speak. 

 These runners grow from a few inches to a few feet in length. 

 They start along the ground, as if their plan and purpose were 

 to get as far away from the parent plant as possible. Finally 

 the bud on the end of the runner sends up little leaves like the 

 parent plant ; and from the under side, little white roots go 

 down into the soil. If the ground is hard and the weather dry, 

 these little white roots sometimes have much trouble in getting 

 a foothold. Where plants are wanted, you can assist them 

 greatly by keeping the soil mellow, and still more by laying a 

 lump of dirt across the runner, just back of the plant. A lump 

 of good old stable manure is much better than a lump of dirt ; 

 for when a warm rain comes, the strength of the manure will 

 go right down by the new little roots. When every thing is 

 favorable it is absolutely wonderful to see these little roots push 

 down into the soil and get hold so as to be independent of the 

 mother-plant. Now, if this little plant is made to root inside 

 of a small sized pot, such as is used by florists, we have a " pot- 

 ted " plant. The pot should be filled with rich soil or compost. 

 Set it in the ground right under the plant ; lay a little stone, 

 lump of dirt, or a chunk of manure, as comes handy, on top of 

 the runner ; and in ten days, or even less, the roots will so fill 

 the pot as to be just a solid ball or mass of roots. See cut. 



