STRAWBERRIES AND THEIR KIN 



and poetry of existence is associated with these 

 berries; and if, then, you widen out your vision to 

 take in the whole family — including several vari- 

 eties of trees that do not give edible fruit — you 

 will see that it is of royal blood. 



You will be tempted, at the very outset of your 

 home-making in the country, to plant a large straw- 

 berry bed. There are certainly few sights more 

 beautiful than a row of strawberry plants loaded 

 with blossoms and ripening and ripe berries. The 

 fruit simply covers the ground. For most people 

 it is a very wholesome fruit, although I have found 

 a few to whom it was a poison. Yet I advise you 

 to go slow in planting strawberries, for the reason 

 that there is no fruit that needs more specific atten- 

 tion and continuous care, and for that matter more 

 horticultural skill, than this little vine. I would 

 surely begin with a very small plot, and I would 

 experiment with only two or three varieties to 

 begin with. In the first place, the bed must be pre- 

 pared very carefully, to exclude not only roots of 

 weeds, but weed seeds. If you enrich it with barn- 

 yard manure in which there is clover seed and 

 grass seed, you will have only continuous labor and 

 small crops. The soil should be light and friable, 



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