THE STRAWBERRY FEBRUARY 1907 



tunate as to survive in the soil after three 

 plowings. 



Mistake No. 2 was in dressing the corn 

 stubble with manure that had been left in 

 a pile to rot. My practice is to apply 

 manure fresh from the stable for ordinary 

 farm crops; but in this case, I undertook 

 to rot it, in order to render the plant food 

 more available for the strawberries. No 

 doubt this manure proved a fine place for 

 the propagation of young grubs, although 

 we did not notice them at the time it was 

 applied. Possibly they may have been 

 seen and mistaken for maggots (the larvae 

 of flies) which in their early stages they 

 somewhat resemble. 



Mistake No. 3 was in not plowing the 

 corn stubble until spring; and now I will 

 come to the point which I wish to em- 

 phasize. In the summer of 1905 I had 

 a small patch, a quarter of an acre, in 

 potatoes — following clover — which I 

 wished to plant to strawberries the follow- 

 ing spring. When the potatoes were dug 

 in September, 1906, the soil was found to 

 be badly infested with grubs, from two 

 to eight in a hill, and every potato badly 

 eaten. We dug with forks and were 

 careful to crush every grub found. Hav- 

 ing learned (.') that plowing late in the 

 fall was the thing to do with grub-infested 

 land, I put off the plowing of this piece 

 until late in November, when, lo and be- 

 hold! not a grub was to be seen. Con- 

 gratulating myself that we had completely 

 exterminated them when the potatoes 

 were dug, I went on with confidence in 

 the spring and planted my strawberries. 



To make a long story short, I lost fully 

 one-third of my plants by the depreda- 

 tions of grubs on this patch. Whenever 

 a wilted plant was found the grub was 

 dug up and killed and, owing to the fact 

 that the patch was a small one, we at last 

 cleaned them out and got a good stand of 

 plants. 



Now the question is, where were the 

 grubs when I plowed the land late in the 

 fall of 1905? The answer is simple — 

 gone down deep in the soil to hibernate. 

 This is the point which 1 wish to make: 

 Plow your land in the fall, but do it eaily 

 enough to catch Mr. Grub near the sur- 

 face, before he goes down so low that the 

 plow cannot reach him. When digging 

 ditch in late autumn we have found grubs 

 three feet below the surface. 



In closing, we might add, for the en- 

 couragement of others, that from the few 

 plants left in my two-acre field we picked 

 last summer 900 quarts of fine berries, 

 which sold two for a quarter without any 

 sorting whatever, netting us enough to 

 more than pay the cost of growing, in 

 fact having a neat little balance to the good. 

 These berries were all sold without solicit- 

 ing an order, in fact, many and many a 

 would-be purchaser was turned away 

 empty handed. People would drive in 

 from neighboring villages and pay us 

 twelve and one-half cents when their own 

 grocers were retailing berries at ten cents, 



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Page 44 



