No. 4.] 



SMALL FEUITS. 



227 



position, but if not tlie plant will be drawn out of the soil. 

 No fruit should be allowed to ripen on the newly set plants 

 the first season. 



Fig. 1. 



Fig. 3. 



Distance for Planting. 



There is a great diversity among practical growers in the 

 distance at which the plants are set, and also under difterent 

 conditions. On a very rich soil the plants may be set further 

 apart than on thin soil, and it may vary under these condi- 

 tions from one by three feet to four by five feet, using from 

 twenty-five hundred to seven thousand plants per acre. In 

 the garden where the soil is not very rich and where the 

 plants are grown more or less in the hill or wide-distance 

 matted row, even less than the smaller number may be set. 



Method of Training. 



Two general methods of training are practised, the hill 

 and matted row, both of which are varied by different com- 

 mercial growers, and admit of greater variation in the garden 

 than in the field. The close matted row is where the runners 

 are allow^ed to grow over all the space except where the cuU 

 tivator runs between the rows. The modified or wide-space 

 matted row is where only a limited number of the runners 

 are allowed to grow, each plant having from four to six 

 inches space for development. By the hill system the plants, 

 put out in the spring, are not allowed to set any runners. 

 The advantage of the first method is that the plants serve to 

 protect each other during the winter, and a very large crop 

 is often produced ; but the plants do not have a chance to 



