128 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Now, having ploughed, harrowed, smoothed and com- 

 pacted the ground, we will make ready for the planting of 

 the queen of fruits, — the strawberry. I mark my ground 

 with a corn marker with rows four feet apart, and, with a 

 fertilizer sower sowing two rows at a time, I distribute the 

 fertilizer in beds two feet wide, leaving two feet between 

 unfertilized, I now harrow and plank it again. If the 

 work is well done, the ground will be as smooth as a board 

 floor, and the dust mulch which it now has on the surface 

 will prevent evaporation of moisture. In this compacted 

 soil you may set your plants with an almost certainty of 

 their living. I have found no way of setting strawberry 

 plants as satisfactory as with a line and garden trowel. 



I assume that the question of varieties to plant has been 

 settled, and the plants are at hand. In deciding this ques- 

 tion, location and nearness to market play an important 

 part. Those who can deliver their fruit to the dealer or 

 consumer can meet their tastes and demands by proper 

 selection of varieties. The markets are calling for large, 

 showy berries, and quality is being sacrificed to size and 

 beauty. Then grow the big berries if your land is adapted 

 to them ; but, if you must ship your berries by railroad or 

 boat, then firmness is the dominant quality, for they are 

 sometimes subjected to rough usage and positive abuse at 

 the hands of transportation companies and truckmen. 



There is no strawberry with which I am acquainted that 

 when grown as it grows with me presents so many desirable 

 qualities of form, size, color, flavor and keeping and shipping 

 qualities as Gaudy's Prize. I sent a crate of them to the 

 World's Fair at Chicago, and every berry went on the plates 

 and remained on exhibition for nine days. And yet it is 

 fickle and peculiar in its likes and dislikes. Many of the 

 best frait growers in the Hudson valley cannot make it 

 profitable, being unproductive on their soil. The same may 

 be said of the famous Marshall from this State. It succeeds 

 splendidly in some places, but is worthless in other places. 

 I saw Mr. J. H. Hale's trial beds of forty-three varieties on 

 June 15 last, and the sixteen hills of the Marshall did not 

 have as much fruit on them as one hill should have, while 

 beside it were varieties heavily loaded, and in the field it 



