1891 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



671 



SPECIAL DEPARTMENT FOR A. I. ROOT. AND HIS 

 FRIENDS WHO LIKE TO RAISE CROPS. 



HOW TO RAISE STKAWBERRIES WITHOUT SO 

 MUCH HARD WORK. 



Candidly. I do not know, and that is what 

 troubles me; and I will tell you how far I have 

 got in loolving over the matter. Friend Terry 

 thinks tlie plants might be as near as six inches 

 apart; and if the ground is rich it will give us 

 tine large fruit. Where ground is expensive we 

 wish to have it fully covered- that is, to its ut- 

 most capacity. If the plants are nearer than (3 

 inches each way, they crowd each other so 

 much as to diminish the size of the berries if 

 not the number of quarts. Well, we must have 

 paths to walk in, for the ground \\'ill all be 

 tramped hard, and the plants injured: there- 

 foi'e friend Terry has 3 feet of matted row and 

 then one foot of path, and so on. Now, it is an 

 awful big job (if you will excuse the phraseolo- 

 gy) to get the matted row 3 f(;et wide, and thin 

 out the plants so they are about (i inches apart. 

 Then in ordinary soil it is a big task to get the 

 weeds out. 



The ideal way would be to have the plants set 

 in a bed 3 feet wide, and just (3 in. apart; and, 

 in fact, one of our leading strawberry-growers 

 does recommend just this way. Make long 

 beds 3 feet wide, with paths one foot wide be- 

 tween, them; then set your plants on these 3- 

 foot beds 7 inches apart. But now comes in the 

 matter of runners. If runners are allowed to 

 put out and take root, where would be our ideal 

 bed of plants all 7 inches apart? There is no 

 way but to keep picking out or cutting off the 

 runners; and unless you let runners grow, your 

 bed is good for only one season, or at most two 

 seasons. You see, the second season the plants 

 would all be old; and Terry, and. I believe, 

 almost everybody else, has demonstrated that 

 the best and largest fruit comes from vigorous 

 young plants; therefore for garden culture I 

 would advise just the plan given above. If the 

 plants are put out with the transplanting-tubes 

 in July, August, or even September, they will 

 be strong enough to bear a fine crop of fruit the 

 next season. After the fruit is gathered I would 

 give good cultivation (by hand or wheel hoes) 

 and keep off all runners. By fruiting time the 

 second season they would be tremendously 

 strong plants, and pretty severely crowded; yet 

 they would give an enormous crop of fruit, even 

 if not quite so large in size as at the first season. 

 Plants crowded like this will do very well with- 

 out mulching, for the fruit-stalks will grow 

 longer than ordinary to get to the light; and 

 this, with the great masses of foliage, will keep 

 the berries from the ground. If the fi'uiting 

 season should be very wet, however, the berries 

 would be, very many of them, very soft, and 

 not as sweet as where they have more room to 

 get sun and air. If. on the contrary, we should 

 have a dry time during fruiting, these strong 

 plants would shade the ground so thoroughly 

 that they woulil give tine fi'uit when otTiers 

 wider spaced miglit be dried up. This does 

 very well for the garden or small plantations; 

 but I suppose the majoiity of our readers are 

 more intei'ested in strawberries out in the fields, 

 cultivated by horse- power. 



And now we come back to the fact that by 

 far the easiest and cheapest way is to let each 

 plant send out runners. The spacing would be 

 a great deal better, it is true, if the runners 

 could be made to go out like the spokes of a 

 wheel, so as to cover the ground equally; but 

 this is a difficult task too. and requires an ex- 

 pert. Just after fruiting, some of our Haver- 

 lands got to be veiy weedy — so much so that 



one of the men decided that the cheapest way 

 to clean them out was to pull up plants that 

 had rooted; then, with cultivator and i-akes, 

 clean out the weeds completely, then take the 

 other side of the i-ow. throwing the plants and 

 runners over to the side already cleaned, and 

 clean out that side, then put each runner in its 

 place, covering each plant with dirt. How do 

 yon suppose it turned out? Why. the first time 

 through there wei'e so many plants with their 

 roots sticking up in the air that I sent the boys 

 back to do it over again; and after the boys 

 had sijent more time on that one row than I 

 could afford. I sent a man to space the runners, 

 and put the plants in the ground where they 

 ought to be. But I never want to do that way 

 again. It cost a good deal more than to have 

 got the weeds out by hand. In our plant-gar- 

 dens we have often taken some valuable variety 

 and trained the runners by looking after them 

 every day. In this way we can carry each one 

 straight out from the mother-plant, to give all 

 the jjlants their proper share of room, and make 

 the mother-plant cover quite a large area— sav 

 three or four feet in every direction from the 

 center. Now, this gives us beautiful strong 

 plants and the finest berries. But you can not 

 do any cultivating— or, at least, not very much. 

 You can cultivate them about as you do water- 

 melons when they begin to set fruit. All the 

 weeds that come up must be got out by hand. 



And now we begin to long for some soil that 

 is rich and strong, but which does not have any 

 weed - seeds in it. The strawberry - grower 

 should harve a piece of land specially for the 

 purpose, where no weed of any kind is ever allow- 

 ed to go to seed. Neither should any weeds be 

 allowed to go to seed in fence-corners or on 

 neighboring land. In fact, no weeds should 

 produce seed within a quarter of a mile of the 

 strawberry-plantation. You may say this is 

 too much fuss and bother; but I tell you there 

 has got to be fuss and bother somewhere; and 

 prevention in this case is ever so much better 

 than cure. Then, again, this matter of mulcta- 

 ing comes in. In one of the strawberry-books we 

 have a ])icture of a machine made of stoneware 

 that goes all around the plant, and keeps it out 

 of the dirt; and somewhere I have read of a 

 kind of brick or tile with a hole through it, to 

 let the strawberry-plant come up through, but 

 covering the ground perfectly everywhere else, 

 so no weeds can grow. I wonder whether any- 

 body has tried that plan. Will strawberries 

 gro.v and bear pi-ofitably where the ground is 

 covered in that way? After all this discussion 

 we finally come around to the fact that Terry's 

 plan is less labor, and perhaps the nearest to 

 perfection, of any thing that has yet been de- 

 vised. But he gets his fertility by turning un- 

 der clover. A good many of us get it by buying 

 stable manure; and. oh dear me! what weeds 

 we do get through stable manure! Sometimes 

 I have declared that I would give it up and 

 turn under clover. But we get along with the 

 stable manure pretty well with almost every 

 crop except strawberries. Some of you will say, 

 '"Why, brother Root, enrich your ground with 

 chemical manures, or our modern fertilizers." 

 Well, there I am just where the trouble is. On 

 our gi'ound I have never been able to discover 

 any good result whatever fi'om handling any of 

 the fei-tilizers offered — that is, with strawber- 

 ries. Ashes and bonedust do pretty well. 

 Guano is also all right, but it costs too much. 

 Oui' good fi'iend "Joseph " (Tuscio Greinei') has 

 just put out a vei'y neat little book that makes 

 the whole matter of chemical fertilizers plain 

 and simple. The book is sound on chemistry, 

 especially that which pertains to agriculture, 

 and it teaches in a plainer and simpler way 

 than any other text-book I have ever yet come 



