The Small Fruit Garden. 325 



patch quite as cheaply as we have figured, but it was right in the 

 field with potatoes, so we could do all together. A man in the 

 business largely would get plants set out much cheaper than I 

 have figured. Not being used to it, this is as cheap as we can do 

 it well. It may seem to you that we could hardly hoe one-tenth 

 of an acre for twenty cents. Where rightly cultivated, and no 

 weeds allowed to start at all, a man can stir the little strip of soil 

 that our fine-toothed cultivator leaves, with a pronged hoe, in 

 one hour and twenty minutes, easily. The " hoeing five times " 

 was done after they were too large to use a horse any more. It 

 took a man with pronged hoe about two hours each time. 



Now as a result we had all the berries we could possibly use 

 and many to give away, and had to sell quite a few to get rid of 

 them. In one day we made use of seventeen quarts, gave away 

 twenty -six and sold thirty for $3. Fifty dollars would not buy the 

 berries we eat ourselves, fresh and canned, etc., of the same 

 quality. Some would call this extravagant, but I do not think 

 it is, to devote one-tenth of an acre to giving us three weeks' 

 delicious eating, and many for winter, and a chance to give bushels 

 of berries to friends, with, perhaps, enough that we are obliged to 

 sell to pay all cost. 



Many farmers think and say that they cannot afford to fuss 

 with strawberries, and that it is cheaper for them to buy them. If 

 two or three men in each town would make a business of it and 

 produce the berries for all, and people would buy them and use 

 them as freely as though they grew them, this would be a business- 

 like plan. But it is few berries that the majority of farmers would 

 buy. I do not guess at this. They have told me so and their wives 

 have, too. They must raise such luxuries in order to have them 

 in the greatest abundance. And few farmers are situated so they 

 can buy anything like as nice fresh strawberries as they can raise, 

 even if they would. So I urge you all to grow strawberries at 

 least. No matter if you have too much to do now, or if you are 

 poor and just starting. This is one luxury that you can have. 

 Systematically worked, the cost is small. Strawberries are the 

 finest spring medicine in the world, and you need them, not in 

 little doses, but all you care to eat at every meal for about sixty 

 or seventy meals. But do not set them out unless you are deter- 

 mined to make a success of them ; better save the money the 

 plants cost and buy a few berries. 



But I have given time enough to the strawberry. Now for a 

 few words about the other small fruits in our garden and how we 

 treat them. We set out currants, raspberries and blackberries in 

 the spring about the same time we did strawberries, or a little 

 earlier. The first year we cultivated and hoed them often, and 

 just as we would a growing crop of potatoes, only for potatoes 

 the hoeing can be done with harrow and weeder, and around berry 

 bushes it must be done by hand. The land was clover sod, with- 

 out manure, but rich enough to bring thirty-five bushels of wheat 



