Strawberry- Culture, n 8 1 



STRAWBERRY-CULTURE. 



By Augustus Parker, Roxbury, Mass. 



Having had some experience in the raising of strawberries, I offer you 

 this as my method of cultivation. I set my plants about the first of May, 

 about a foot apart in a single row, and the rows four and a half feet apart, 

 on good, well-manured ground. I keep the cultivator going between the 

 rows till about the 8th of July, when the runners begin to run ; and then 

 go over the ground with a rake, and make it level : after this, I go over the 

 beds, and place the runners so that the plants will be as near four inches 

 apart as I conveniently can. With me the runners cover all the ground 

 between the rows. Keeping the ground light till you set the runners gives 

 the young plant a chance to make good roots, which stand the dry weather 

 the next summer when they are in bearing. If you let the ground get 

 hard for the new plants, the roots will be short, and the plants will not be 

 able to carry their fruit to the size and quantity it otherwise would. I cover 

 my beds, when they are frozen in the fall, so that I can drive my team over 

 them without leaving a mark, with fine, light horse-manure ; cover -diS, lightly 

 diS possible, and yet have them covered. In the spring I let the plants come up 

 through the manure, which serves as a mulching, to keep the berries clean. 

 As soon as the plants are started enough in the spring to see the <?/</ plants 

 that were set the spring before, I put a line on the beds, and take out, the 

 old row, and make the path about fourteen inches wide, so as to keep the 

 pickers in their proper places. I do not set every year as some growers 

 do ; but, as soon as I get through picking, I dig or plough up the sides of 

 my beds to a strip eight or ten inches wide : from this strip new runners 

 will start, which I set over the ground as at the first season. I cart off all 

 the plants I plough up, and make the ground as light as possible ; then, the 

 next spring (of course, manuring in the fall as above), I take out the old 

 strip with some of the new for my path ; and thus I keep my plants one- 

 year old, which is the best for bearing. I never ^Wow weeds to grow at any 

 season of the year. I have had the greatest success with the Brighton Pine. 



RoxBURV, Mass., January, i86q. 

 VOL. VI. j5 



