246 TRUCK-FARMING AT THE SOUTH. 



an annual crop cannot be too strongly condemned. It 

 is often the case that this practice is adopted by some, 

 from ignorance, or want of industry, and by others, from 

 want of time or from negligence, during the season of 

 shipping other produce. If, however, during the picking 

 season, a warm, wet spell should prevail, the task of sub- 

 duing the weeds is not easy of accomplishment. Hon. 0. 

 0. Langdon, of Alabama, a good authority on strawberry 

 culture at the South, reported a serious case of the kind 

 in 1868, when it required the work of nine men during 

 six days to clean five-eighths of an acre. The plants, 

 " Wilson's Albany," had been set out in March, 1864, in 

 rows of single hills, four feet apart, the plants being 

 eighteen inches from each other. 



During the whole life of a plantation on the single 

 hill system, the cultivator, running shallow, may keep 

 the surface clean and mellow, when not mulched, to 

 within an inch or two of the plants, and the hoe, with 

 hand-weeding, must be relied upon between the plants. 

 A variety, otherwise suitable, like the "Wilson's Al- 

 bany," that makes few runners, is best adapted to this 

 method, and the runners must be scrupulously removed 

 by a hoe or knife. The plants, instead of exhausting 

 their nutriment in the production of runners, will store 

 up a greater amount for the next crop of fruit, and the 

 stools will enlarge until the leaves of adjacent plants 

 nearly touch each other in the rows. When the continu- 

 ous row is contemplated, the cultivation is the same dur- 

 ing the first season as above described, but after the run- 

 ners begin to grow, all those projecting out from the 

 line of rows are to be cut away, allowing only such to 

 take root as extend along the line of plants. By this 

 method a continuous narrow bed, ten inches or a foot 

 wide, becomes established. During the third and fourth 

 seasons all new runners must be removed. The cultiva- 

 tion of the matted-bed crop is exclusively by the hoe, 



