30 Discrepancies of Strawberry-Ciilhire. 



to reconcile. Although men of the highest horticultural attainments have 

 in different locations, and without concert, applied their utmost skill to 

 the production of fruit as a market-crop, the common result has been far 

 from uniform. One has had the highest success ; but another has signally 

 failed. In some cases, the vicissitudes of the season have been sufficient 

 to account for the latter ; but, in others, none were experienced. Nay, two 

 parties adopting an identical method of culture, having like soil, a like 

 season, and like varieties, have had very different success. Sometimes the 

 man whose beds were matted with weeds of a previous season's growth 

 has gathered an abundant crop, when his careful neighbor, who eschewed 

 weeds, came out with only half the quantity. On the other hand, the 

 random cultivator, as he may be styled, has ploughed under a stiff sod, 

 planted strawberries, run over the ground occasionally with the cultivator, 

 using no manure, and yet has gathered successive crops so large as to sur- 

 prise his neighbors and himself. 



These discrepancies are of record in all the agricultural journals during 

 the past twenty years. Every year produces more of them, because there 

 appears to be no royal road to successful strawberry-culture. One cultiva- 

 tor, Mr. Barry of Rochester, from five-eighths of an acre, picked, last sum- 

 mer, five thousand eight hundred and forty-two quarts. The previous year's 

 crop. was the first, and yielded five hundred quarts. A timothy sod was 

 turned under, and the (Wilson) plants set out without manuring eighteen 

 inches each way, and the runners kept off. The ground was kept clean, 

 and a thin covering of straw applied during the winter. No cultivation 

 could be simpler than this, nor could the result have been reasonably ex- 

 pected to be better. Yet even greater returns have been realized by oth- 

 ers. The strawberry-growers around Boston have sometimes exceeded 

 that of Mr. Barry. Mr. Pardee asserts that strawberries can be grown at 

 a cost of half a dollar the bushel, and Mr. Brown of Connecticut has sold 

 over thirteen hundred dollars' worth from an acre ; yet the great growers 

 of this fruit near Baltimore, who cultivate from fifty to a hundred acres of 

 it, realize only about a hundred dollars per acre. Mr. Pardee does not 

 consider any crop a good one unless it amounts to a hundred bushels per 

 acre, and believes only thirty is considered a good crop round New York. 

 He says that rich land will produce vines ; but it will not profitably pro- 



