7 8 Success with Small Fruits. 



or garden, however, is not a sheet of blank paper, but a combination at 

 which nature has been at work, and left full of obscurities. The results 

 which the agricultural chemist predicted so confidently do not always 

 follow, as they ought. Nature is often very indifferent to learned 

 authorities. 



There is yet another class a large one, too who regard these ferti- 

 lizers as they do the drugs of an apothecary. They occasionally give their 

 land a dose of them as they take medicine themselves, when indisposed or 

 imagining themselves so. In either case, there is almost entire ignorance of 

 the nature of the compound or of definite reasons for its usefulness. Both 

 the man and the field were " run down," and some one said that this, that, 

 or the other thing was good. Therefore, it was tried. Such hap-hazard 

 action is certainly not the surest method of securing health or fertility. 



In no other department of horticulture is there more room for 

 common sense, accurate knowledge, skill, and good management, than in 

 the use of all kinds of fertilizers, and, in my judgment, close and continued 

 observation is worth volumes of theory. The proper enrichment of the 

 soil is the very corner-stone of success, and more fail at this point than at 

 .any other. While I do not believe that accurate and complete directions 

 for the treatment of every soil can be written, it is undoubtedly true that 

 certain correct principles can be laid down, and information, suggestion, 

 and records of experience given which will be very useful. With such data 

 to start with, the intelligent cultivator can work out the problem of 

 .success in the peculiar conditions of his own farm or garden. 



It must be true that land designed for strawberries requires those 

 constituents which are shown to compose the plant and fruit, and that the 

 presence of each one in the soil should be in proportion to the demand 

 for it. It is also equally plain that the supply of these essential elements 

 should be kept up in continued cultivation. Therefore, the question 

 naturally arises, what are strawberry plants and fruit made of? Modern 

 wine, we know, can be made without any grape juice whatever, but as 

 Nature compounds strawberries in the open sunlight, instead of in back 

 rooms and cellars, she insists on all the proper ingredients before she will 

 form the required combination. 



The Country Gentleman gives a very interesting letter from Prof. S. W. 

 Johnson, of the Connecticut Experiment Station, containing the following 

 careful analysis made by J. Isidore Pierre, a French writer. " Pierre," says 

 the professor, " gives a statement of the composition, exclusive of water, of 

 the total yield per hectare of fruit, taken up to June 30, and of leaves, 

 stems and runners, taken up to the middle of August. These results, 



