SPREADING THE MULCH IN A LARGE STRAWBERRY FIELD 



Autumn Work In the Strawberry Field 



WHERP2 strawberries are grown 

 either in narrow or wide mat- 

 ted rows there are always, at 

 this time of the year, a large 

 nimiber of the plants that are immature 

 and poorly rooted. If these are allowed 

 to remain in the rows 



Remove (he i -n , . , 



Weak Pian.s ^hey Will Only interfere 

 with the development of 

 good plants and prevent them from doing 

 their best at fruiting time. Before you do 

 your mulching, therefore, go over the 

 rows and remove these unprofitable occu- 

 piers of the land. In doing this work we 

 have tried several methods. One is to 

 run the hand through the row of plants, 

 allowing the fingers to act as the teeth of 

 a rake. Another is to take a common 

 iron garden-rake and draw it gently 

 through the plants. Plants that will 

 loosen with this treatment are better out 

 than in the patch, because if the plant is 

 not sufficiently rooted to resist this mild 

 treatment, it certainly is not well enough 

 developed to make a heavy fruiter. In 

 the matted row it will pay to rake good 

 and hard and thin them out, even though 

 a good plant once in a while thereby is 

 lost. This method does not apply to 

 either single or double hedge row. We 

 would caution the grower against running 

 the rake or the fingers through any part 

 of a row where the plants are very thin 

 or where a vacancy has been filled in by 

 layering runners. In places of this kind, 

 even though the plants are not extra-well 

 rooted, let the plants remain, so that they 

 may make a continuous row for the 

 second crop. 



THIS is the month when mulching 

 will be done over a large section of 

 the country, and we shall give in detail 

 here the reasons v\hy it should be done, 



Mulches and 

 Mulching 



what to use for mulching, and the way in 

 which to do the work. We have been 

 experimenting for some years for the pur- 

 pose of determining the 

 best time to apply the 

 mulching, and in mak- 

 ing these tests small blocks were mulched 

 just before the ground was frozen, while 

 others were mulched after the ground was 

 frozen to the depth of some two inches. 

 Still another plot was mulched after the 

 ground was frozen sufficiently hard to 

 sustain a load of straw, and a fourth block 

 was not covered until the latter part of 

 winter. The result of this test experi- 

 ment was that the strawberries mulched 

 in November, before the ground was 

 frozen at all, proved best of all, and this 

 was true of the plants in every particular. 

 These experiments covered a period of 

 several years, and in every instance the 

 early mulching proved far in advance of 

 all the others. Of course, in a season 

 where growing weather continues until 

 into December, as has occurred, mulching 

 is not to be done until the plants cease 

 growing. This may easily be detected, 

 as the plants will assume a ripened ap- 

 pearance when growth ceases. 



AS in all other departments of work, 

 individual growers must determine 

 for themselves as to details. For instance, 

 one's location and the climatic conditions 

 prevailing must be con- 

 "Mu'ich ' sidered, and sometimes 

 even seasons differ suf- 

 ficiently to make some changes of time, 

 perhaps of method, necessary. If you are 

 located in a state where the ground 

 freezes solidly and the winters are severe, 

 then the mulching should be applied over 

 the entire surface of the ground as well 

 as o\er the plants. The depth of the 



Page 215 



mulching should be sufficient to cover the 

 ground and all of the plants, except where 

 the plants have an excessively heavy fo- 

 liage, when it would be difficult to hide 

 all of the tops under the winter covering. 



ON the other hand, in the case of 

 those who dwell under warmer 

 skies, where freezing is very light, mulch- 

 ing may be deferred until some time in 

 December, and it need ,,. , ^,. 



, 1-1 ) -1 Mild Climate 



not be applied so heavily Mu.ching 



as in the colder sections. 

 And yet it should be sufficiently heavy to 

 shade the plants so as to keep them dor- 

 mant until the desired time for making 

 new growth. Plants will not stand so 

 much covering where the ground is not 

 frozen hard, but will bleach and smother 

 under a covering as heavy as that applied 

 in the northerly latitudes. Remember, 

 that the roots of a plant will continue to 

 grow so long as the ground is not frozen 

 to the depth to which the roots extend. 

 In the extreme South, where it ne\'er 

 freezes, some growers may think it un- 

 necessary to mulch. But this is a wrong 

 idea. While mulching in that latitude is 

 not done to protect plants from freezing 

 and thawing, it should be done to keep 

 the berries clean. In such a climate 

 mulching need only be placed along the 

 side of the rows, but not over the plants. 



GIVEN a choice of materials we 

 should take, first of all, old wheat 

 straw, and if it were partly decayed, it 

 would suit us all the better, and this be- 

 cause it would be broken 



. , , lit- Materials tor 



up finely and would lie Muichins 



closer to the ground, 

 and therefore would be less liable to the 

 influence of the winds. But we never 

 vet have been able to get a sufficient 



