HARDINESS AND CULTURE OF STRAWBERRIES. 21 



cept with Jucunda and Triomphe de Gand. The old foliage was all 

 cut off after fruiting, and during the growing season I was care- 

 ful to keep the beds free from weeds and moist during the dry 

 "weather of June. In the early part of June they were mulched 

 with fine grass clippings from the lawn ; this I consider an excel- 

 lent material for the purpose, as it is wholly free from seeds, which, 

 in other kinds of hay and straw, often prove troublesome by propa- 

 gating weeds or grass in the beds. 



Mr. Smith added that the result of his experiments was that his 

 Jucnndas took the first prize for the best four quarts of any variety. 



John B. Moore remarked that, as Mr. Smith had said, this test 

 was confined to a clay soil, and therefore was not a criterion for 

 varieties adapted to a sandy soil. Charles Downing, for instance, 

 succeeds only on light soil, and in such soils the nuinber destroyed 

 would be much less than in Mr. Smith's experiment. The Jucunda, 

 President Wilder, and Triomphe de Gand are best adapted to 

 heav}^ soils. The treatment of cutting off the runners should not 

 be applied to varieties which, like Hovey's Seedling, throw up but 

 one fruit stem. In an observation of twenty-five years, Mr. 

 Moore had never seen more than a single fruit stem on a plant 

 of that variety. Tlie President Wilder produces two fruit stalks. 

 He doubted whether a great quantity of stable manure was bene- 

 ficial to the strawberry. On his land he had found vegetable mat- 

 ter, such as peat composted with ashes, much better. He also 

 doubted whether liquid manure would grow as good strawberries 

 as pure water, if the soil was in good condition. There is no secret 

 in growing strawberries ; they will grow in almost any soil, and 

 are not an exhausting crop, for any crop will succeed after them. 

 Every one who has ploughed up an old strawberrj^ bed has noticed 

 that the soil is so mellow as to be difficult to turn over. 



Mr. Moore said that he had grown seedlings for many years, 

 but had just found out the best way. If, instead of going to work 

 to .hybridize by hand, he had planted a staminate alongside of a 

 pistillate variety, away from any others, the fruit of the pistillate 

 kind would certainly be a h^^brid. He now gets plenty of hybrids. 

 He took seed from Rivers' Eliza, a strong growing English variety, 

 and got three hundred seedlings, the same in fruit and habit as the 

 parent, except that some were, perhaps, a little worse. The case 

 was the same with seedlings from the Early Virginia. Of course 



