Discrepancies of Strawberry-Culture. 3^ 



duce fruit. Yet all over New Jersey, where the strawberry-crop is a staple, 

 barnyard-manure is used upon it in immense quantities. He says that the 

 idea of the strawberry requiring rich land has cost the country millions of 

 dollars. The Oneida Community one year obtained a hundred and fifty- 

 six bushels per acre, and only forty-six the next. In 1867, the average in 

 this vicinity was only forty-nine bushels per acre. 



One might fill a volume with discrepancies even more irreconcilable than 

 the foregoing. It would seem clear that there is no common standard of 

 practice which all can work up to with assurance of success. This fact is 

 somewhat extraordinary, when we consider, that, for two hundred years, our 

 people have been familiar with the strawberry, and, for the last twenty or 

 thirty of them, have been resolutely bent on finding out the best method 

 for producing a sure and large crop. The conflict of opinion shows itself 

 at every turn, and embraces every detail of variety, soil, manure, or no ma- 

 nure, mode of planting, whether in hills or beds, &c. ; but it is certainly 

 not to be deprecated. It may be confusing to some of us ; but it doubt- 

 less does all more good than harm. Some sparks of truth have been 

 struck out in the heats of controversy, which have been useful to the 

 observant mind. 



But in this horticultural chaos two facts stand out so prominently, that 

 the dullest seeker after truth will hardly fail to notice them. One is, that, 

 in all cases, the smallest strawberry-bed yields the greatest relative quantity 

 of fruit. To this rule there seems to be no exception. Every little garden- 

 patch is reported as producing a great crop ; one square rod affording suffi- 

 cient for family use. One amateur thus obtained ninety quarts from that 

 extent of ground, or at the rate of four hundred and fifty bushels per acre. 

 Others, in innumerable instances, came close up to these figures ; but, in 

 every case, the yield far exceeded the very highest average obtained in 

 field-culture. The gains from a small area were so uniformly large, as to 

 clearly prove that we thoroughly understand strawberry-culture ; yet, when 

 our knowledge is extended to field-culture, this uniformity of success dis- 

 appears. It is, therefore, not from lack of knowledge that we fail, but by 

 reason of an excessive greediness. We grasp after too much. We plant 

 too much land to strawberries ; and in the slipshod care we give to it lies 

 the cause of a thousand discrepancies. The only common and safe stand- 



