132 A B C OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



carefully turn the pot over, and knock with your trowel oil the 

 edge, and out will come plant, roots, dirt, and all, just as it 

 looks in the cut. You can look at your plant every day if you 

 wish, and see when the first white roots reach the outside of 

 the pot. Then you can watch them night and morning, and 

 see how fast the little roots grow. This frequent handling will 

 do them no harm, providing you do not let so much air get to 

 the roots as to dry out the soil. In that case you would have 

 to water it frequently. When the pot is filled with roots, as in 

 the cut, or even before, you can clip off the runner, and your 

 plant is independent. If you are in too much haste, the infant 

 plant may not be able to stand the scorching heat of the sun 

 that is, after severing the connection with the mother-plant. 

 On this account, pots are frequently moved to some shady place 

 and watered until they get thoroughly " weaned," as gardeners 

 term it. They can then be put out in the field. How many 

 such plants can you grow from one old one, do you ask ? Well, 

 there is hardly a limit. The variety of plant, and the expert- 

 ness of the operator, would have much to do with it. I fre- 

 quently have had one dozen fine potted plants growing around 

 a single old one all at once. We spread out the runners like 

 the spokes of a wheel. This same runner, after it has made 

 one plant, will start right out to make another, and so on. 

 Sometimes we have half a dozen plants strung along from a 

 single runner ; and when you take up a potted plant you can 

 take the runner with the attached plant beyond it. If the first 

 plant has a good mass of roots, like the one shown in the cut, 

 it will sustain and keep alive three or four beyond it until they 

 can take root and sustain themselves. Besides this main run- 

 ner that goes straight ahead, a strong vigorous runner will send 

 out branches at the different joints. These branches, however, 

 are small, and not as strong as the main runner ; but with very 

 rich soil, such as I am going to describe, you can get splendid 

 strong stocky plants, even from these secondary runners, if it 

 is a choice variety that you are anxious to propagate. 



