-7- 



Some of the mistakes made by gro;7ers have been the use of southern plants that 

 have failed to live up to catalog advertising. Those who have used their o;vn plants 

 or purchased plants from recommended grov«3rs in liassachusetts have established good 

 plantings. Some have made the mistake of planting more acreage than the y have been 

 able to take care of properly. Smaller plantings ^fith good cultural practice 

 would have undoubtedly produced more berries with less work. 



One grower in particular has demonstrated the value of planning ahead a year or 

 two in preparing the site for the future strawberry bed of one-quarter acre. 



He has grown three cover crops in a season, thereby building up the organic 

 matter so important to strawberries and at the same time gotten very good control 

 of weeds. When plants were set weed control was not much of a problem. 



This grower had as fine a bed of strawberries as I have ever seen in this area. 

 Varieties grown were Temple, Sparkle and Fairland. 



Paying attention to some of these details which are well outlined in Extension 

 Leaflet #29 - Strawberry Growing - makes the difference, it seems, between a 

 mediocre crop and one that is high yielding. 



■Jt re ■«■ « Bert Tomlinson, Barnstable Co. 



From what I was able to observe of our Falmouth situation, I would say that the 

 serious Black Root trouble was caused by a combination of weather and soil conditions. 

 In the many years that I have been on the Cape I have never seen anything just like 

 it. Of ccurse, in the past I have seen strawberry plants affected by Black Root here 

 and there, but nothing like the serious situation we had this year. I estimate that 

 Black Root cut the yield in Falmouth about ^0%, and some groi7ers have lost a much 

 higher percentage than that, 



I think the long period of cloudy weather prevailing in the early spring had 

 something to do with itj then too, we had a very cold, wet spring which retarded 

 growth fully a week or ten days. Ordinarily, we never consider this ^i^^J^J^^" T^^ 

 serious, but it ^vas apparent early in May that the plants were not developing right, 

 and some fields that started out quite promising were almost a complete failure. 

 For example, in connection with the strawberry festival we had selected one good 

 grower as the site for the strawberry-picking contest. Up tothe middle of aay 

 the strawberry plot looked very promising and remained promising until the latter 

 part of that month, when it commenced to deteriorate very fast. About three days 

 prior to the date scheduled for the event, this field had so deteriorated that we 

 were obliged to select another location. 



It is also quite possible that the heavy amount of snow may have had its 

 affect, too. This snow came the latter part of February and at that time the soil 

 was not frozen. It was followed by mild weather and the snow went very fast, ana 

 I have a notion it caused considerable leaching of plant food. At any rate it is 

 rather interesting to note that the fields that have the heaviest infection gave 

 very low pH readings, down around U.5 or lower. I ara also rather certain that tne 

 growers who have the worse trouble were those that were not building up the 

 organic matter as fast as they should. 



I was also interested and somewhat surprised to learn that the Howard 17, which 

 has proved so hardy in the past to all our various troubles, vras quite susceptible, 

 to injury ty Black Root. This observation was made by a number of Sf ^^f f"^ » !^%°J;^ 

 course they are satisfied now that the Howard 17 has run out just like the old n-cno, 

 so they need to get some new variety in. 



