FRANK E. BEATTY'S STRAWBERRY FIELD AT COVINGTON, IND. 



Yield per Acre, About 500 24-quari Cases Thoroughbred Planis Properly Mated, Ideal Soil and Thorough Cultural Methods Did It 



The Autobiography of a Strawberry Grower 



By Frank E. Beatty 



Chapter IV— In Which is Shown that There Are Many Things for the Amateur to Learn 



SPRING came on in all her glory 

 and radiance; soft rains and fructi- 

 fying suns mad: the landscape rich 

 and exquisitely beautiful with burst- 

 ing plant life, and greensward and flaming 

 flower vied one with the other for beauty's 

 palm. Out in the strawberry field things 

 were fairly booming; I could almost see 

 from day to day the advance of the plants, 

 and they presented such a scene of beauty 

 as only a well-managed strawberry bed 

 may do in early springtime, when the 

 plants are pushing their glossy-green foliage 

 up through the opening in the mulch to 

 meet the sun. Every morning found me 

 early in that field; scarcely waiting to 

 fasten the last button before making a 

 bee-line for the patch to get a !ook at my 

 pets and discover what wondeiful trans- 

 formations had been made over n'ght. 



The plants that had been staked the 

 night before always received my fi.'st at- 

 tention. By placing a stake at the side 

 of a plant and marking the height of the 

 plant on the stake, I was enabled to ti.^11 

 the exact growth made by the plant dur- 

 ing the night, and by repeating this in the 

 morning, the growth of the day was re- 

 corded. 



During the winter evenings I had spent 

 long hours in study and had learned man\' 

 important things regarding plant life. I 

 had learned that there was sex in plants; 

 had memorized the analyses of different 

 kinds of fertilizers; had come to know the 

 efFect of different kinds of plant food upon 

 the plants and their value in crop-produc- 



tion, and had come to know the impor- 

 tance of thorough cultivation. I also had 

 learned that though good soil, well sup- 

 plied with humus and a balanced plant 

 food, was quite essential, yet only about 5 

 per cent of the general composition of the 

 plant was made from the ingredients of 

 the soil, and that 95 per cent was con- 

 tributed by elements contained in the air. 

 While digging through my meagre horti- 

 cultural library one evening I discovered 

 that the sun was good for more things 

 than merely to start the sweat on a fel- 

 low's brow, when I read the statement 

 that more than four hundred million mil- 

 lions—to put it in figures, 400,000,000,- 

 000,000 — sun waves beat upon a plant 

 every second. That set me to thinking 

 harder than ever, and I decided right then 

 and there that if I got as busy as nature 

 was and did as much pushing as she did 

 pulling, something would surely start 

 moving in Id Indiana along the Wabash. 

 "I can't find anything in the literature 

 I have in hand that enlightens me at all 

 upon the subject of the proper mating of 

 pistillate plants," I said one day to my 

 wife, "so I am going to make experiments 

 on my own hook along that line." And 

 I took a large number of plants composed 

 of difi^erent varieties of both pistillates and 

 bisexuals that I had ordered from a plant 

 grower whose specialty was propagating 

 from selected mother plants, and set them 

 in rows side by side, mating different pis- 

 tillates with different bisexuals. I also 

 set certain bisexuals alone and, in another 



Page 29 



plot, set these same bisexuals alongside ot 

 other bisexuals to determine whether or 

 not the fruiting power of bisexuals could 

 be increased in this manner — that is, 

 whether the close proximity of one bisek 

 ual to another bisexup.l influenced each in 

 any degree as does the mating of pistil- 

 lates with a bisexual. In a future instal- 

 ment the results of those experiments will 

 be given. 



By the time these experimental plots 

 were set, and several more acres for next 

 year's fruiting, my two acres of plants set 

 the previous spring were opening their flow- 

 ers faster than a man can think. I now 

 could easily tell the difference between the 

 bisexuals and pistillates, and I was pleased 

 to find that through some kind providence 

 I had been so directed as to have selected 

 a sufiici2nt number of rows of bisexuals, 

 properly distributed through my patch, to 

 pollenize the pistillate varieties. I had 

 not repeated the disr.strous mistake of the 

 previous season, and the knowledge of 

 this fact set me fairly afire with joy and 

 enthusiasm, and the news I carried to my 

 wife was vastly different from that which 

 just one year before I had taken to her, 

 when I had been compelled to admit 

 failure as a result of neglect to set bisex- 

 uals along with my Crescents and War- 

 fields. 



I never shall forget the day I first real- 

 ized that success had crowned my work. 

 I hastened to the house and in my joy 

 grabbed my wife and swung her dancing 

 about the kitchen. "It's a wise man," I 



