THE STRAWBERRY SEPTEMBER 1906 



THE STRAWBERRY 



A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO 

 THE INTERESTS OF STRAWBERRY 

 PRODUCTION IN ALL ITS BRANCHES 



Published the First of Each Month by 



The Kellogg Publishing Company 

 Three Rivers, Michigan 



W. H. BURKE Editor 



F. E. BEATTY - Instructor in Cultural Methods 

 ARTHUR D. AVERY .... Manager 



ROBERT S. FOUNTAIN Western Representative 



315 Dearborn St., Chicago, 111. 

 S, E. LEITH Eastern Representative 



1 50 Nassau St., New Yorli City 



Address Communications and make all Remittances to 



The Kellogg Publishing Co., Three Rivers, Mich. 



SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: 

 United Slates and Canada - - $1.00 



Foreign 1.2S 



Entered as second-class matter at the Postoffice at 

 Three Rivers, Michigan. 



SEPTEMBER, 1906 



THIS month's cover is a photo-repro- 

 duction of the strawberry field of 

 E. E. Keever, Little Rock, Kan. 

 In 1905 Mr. Keever set out 100 plants, 

 composed of Senator Dunlaps, Crescents 

 and Marshalls. He says that he followed 

 The Strawberry "way," both as to the 

 selection of only the best plants and the 

 manner of cultivating them. He kept 

 them perfectly free from weeds, which 

 also means that he held the moisture in 

 the soil, as both of these important per- 

 formances are accomplished in a single 

 operation. From the 100 plants and their 

 progeny he picked in June 1906 berries 

 to the number of 7,3."^ quarts and sold 

 them for $81.50, or an average of 11 

 cents plus per quart. As he paid his 

 pickers $8.46, and $2 for boxes, or $10.46 

 in all, his net receipts were $71.04, or a 

 little under 10 cents a quart. From this 

 one-fourth acre Mr. Keever gathered 

 enough berries to pay ofF the last dollar 

 of the mortgage on his home, and he is 

 going to double the size of his field in 

 1907. "I think more and more of The 

 Strawberry — it is up to date," writes Mr. 

 Keever. The picture shows Mr. and 

 Mrs. Keever, their three sons and three 

 pickers; also Mr. Keever's statement of 

 faith in the superior excellence of the 

 strawberry, modified somewhat from the 

 motto on the title page of this magazine. 



TN the August issue of The Strawberry 

 * appeared an illustration and an account 

 of the Fendall strawberry. Mr. Fendall, 

 writing The Strawberry under date of 

 August 7, says that he "picked a few ber- 

 ries from his row of Fendalls May 25 

 and gathered a few on the 4th of July. 

 In all I picked from a row thirty-two feet 



long thirty-eight quarts of berries. I had 

 an engineer measure the ground allovxing 

 a foot on one side for the pickers to walk, 

 and he figured out that one acre, at the 

 same rate of production as this row, 

 would yield sixteen thousand eight hun- 

 dred quarts." He adds that on either 

 side of the Fendall were rows of two 

 popular varieties, and all were cultivated 

 alike, but that the Fendall yielded quite 

 three times as heavily as either of the 

 others. 



THE consumption of fruit in the United 

 States grows rapidly with the years 

 and quite out of proportion to the increas- 

 ing population. No other fruit shows 

 greater progress in this direction, so far as 

 statistics in hand go, than the strawberry. 

 More than $15,000,000 worth of them 

 were consumed during the fiscal year 

 ended June 30, 1905, while the quantities 

 produced that never got into the statisti- 

 cal reports at all is ."something beyond 

 computation. Orchard fruits sold for 

 $84,000,000, roundly speaking, the berry 

 crops brought $20,000,000, and we paid 

 $10,000,000 to the American sub-tropic 

 fruit growers and $25,000,000 to the 

 tropical fruit folk of the Spanish-American 

 countries in the same year. The manu- 

 facture of fruit baskets and boxes in 

 which to handle the annual crops of this 

 country represents an industrial product 

 valued at $7,000,000. 



THERE comes to our desk this montn 

 a new and handsome monthly per- 

 iodical from the Hood River district of 

 Oregon. It bears the suggestive title 

 "Better Fruit," and starts out with intelli- 

 gence and vigor upon the mission its 

 name suggests. We do want better fruit 

 and more of it, and it is weW that an organ 

 of the fruit interests in the vast and splen- 

 did fruit region "where rolls the Oregon," 

 thus early in its history is established on 

 these broad and helpful lines. We wel- 

 come all such aids to better horticulture, 

 and shall be glad to co-operate with this 

 new candidate for public favor in the task 

 it has set for itself. Beautiful half-tone 

 illustrations and clear letter-press dignify 

 this fine publication and give it a distinc- 

 tion all its own. E. H. Shepard and E. 

 A. Franz are its publishers, and it is 

 printed at Hood River, Oregon. 



ONE of the unfailing signs of the ap- 

 proach of autumn, notwithstanding 

 the fact that mercury still climbs to lofty 

 and discouraging heights in the thermom- 

 eter bulb, is the presence of the advertiser 

 in our pages. And we welcome him as the 

 harbinger of a new season of business ac- 

 tivity and as an expression of his satisfac- 

 tion with the way in which The Straw- 

 berry has brought its two friends — the 



Page 188 



reader and the advertiser — together in the 

 past. For both Stark Bros., who occupy 

 a full page in this issue, and the Kalama- 

 zoo Stove Co., who had a half-page in 

 the winter and spring issues, and Mr. 

 Cooper who, though not so extensive an 

 advertiser, still is taken just as good care 

 of — these are with us again, and we have 

 the assurance that we are to have all our 

 old friends and many new ones with us 

 as the season advances. And what is 

 most gratifying is the fact that all who 

 have patronized these advertising friends 

 have themselves become friends of theirs, 

 because good goods and square dealing 

 are the governing principles under which 

 our advertisers operate. We also wel- 

 come the new advertisers and are sure 

 they also will find a cordial greeting in 

 the thousands of homes into which The 

 Strawberry goes as a welcome visitor each 

 month. 



WRITING from Honolulu, Hawaii, 

 under date of August 3, Jared O. 

 Smith of the Experiment Station there 

 thus advises The Strawberry concerning 

 the situation in that country as it pertains 

 to strawberry production: "The Chinese 

 gardeners cultivate a very small fruited, 

 soft variety which I believe to be a de- 

 scendant from one of the French ever- 

 bearing sorts, as there is a record of straw- 

 berries having been imported from France 

 some twenty or more years ago. What- 

 ever the variety, the plants have the ever- 

 bearing habit, so that we get three or four 

 crops a year. The berries are of very 

 good flavor but are rather tiny and too soft 

 to ship. Strawberries grow very well in 

 all districts on the islands at elevations 

 above 1200 feet and many planters and 

 farmers have procured plants of the best 

 named strains. All varieties show a ten- 

 dency to run out in this climate. The 

 yields are smaller than in cooler countries." 



AND from Saltillo, Mexico, comes to 

 •*»■ us a most interesting letter from J. 

 R. Silliman, evidently a Yankee farmer, 

 who has gone down there and established 

 a Jersey milk farm, and guarantees in 

 Spanish that his product is "absolutamente 

 pura," or absolutely pure. Mr. Silliman 

 also is interested in strawberry growing 

 and has a gardener from Irapanto, which 

 is known as the "Strawberry station" in 

 Mexico, and this gardener follows 'his 

 own ideas about plants," says Mr. Silli- 

 man, 'and they are probably pretty much 

 the same as his grandfather's father ob- 

 served." Yet, notwithstanding the fact 

 that no rain fell there from March until 

 July 4, our correspondent says that fresh 

 berries are offered for sale every day in 

 the year, winter and summer, Sunday and 

 Monday." Which suggests the adapt- 

 ability of the strawberry to any conditions 

 of soil and climate, and its persistency 

 under the most discouraging environment. 



