l66 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



kets, four thousand, I have allowed three dollars a thousand for 

 the baskets. Picking, one and one-half cents per quart, and 

 our last crop didn't cost quite that. Five dollars for crates. 

 For marketing I have allowed twenty-five dollars, and for mis- 

 cellaneous items I have allowed $15.00. 



Now, as to the receipts, I have allowed four thou- 

 sand quarts at ten cents a quart, which gives a total of 

 four hundred dollars, and with an outlay of nearly two 

 hundred dollars we have got a net profit of about two 

 hundred dollars. I want to tell you what I have done 

 with that acre of land. I presume many of you have 

 different ways of growing. This was an entirely new sys- 

 tem for us, but we had heard of people raising them on the hill 

 system and so we tried it. We went to work and took a trifle 

 over an acre of land and planted it. We used more plants 

 than I gave you in my estimate. We put those plants eighteen 

 inches apart each way. We cultivated them all that season 

 with a twelve-tooth cultivator, with the two rear teeth on each 

 side taken out. We kept all runners cut off of them, and in 

 the fall we gave it a good mulch of hay and manure, and last 

 year from that acre we picked, I think, to exceed four thous- 

 and quarts, and I think the price I gave of ten cents a quart 

 was too low, because we sold those when the market was high, 

 which was early last year, but I think the figures I have given 

 you are fairly conservative. If a man will go to work, and 

 take a patch of strawberries, and take good honest care of it, 

 as some of our friends do their tobacco — in fact, if they give it 

 half as much attention and work — I think their profits will be 

 duplicated. And in the instance of this field, we have held it 

 over for another year, and we think we are going to get as 

 many, if not more berries off of it next year. Whether we 

 will or not, I don't know. We cultvated it this fall, and gave 

 it another mulching this last winter. That was my first ex- 

 perience in growing straw^berries for profit, and that is the 

 way we did it. Those figures I give you are not far from 

 the result, and we have got that same patch to pick from next 

 year. What they will do next year I don't know, but I think 

 we are going to get a nice crop of berries. They look fine 

 this winter. 



