1 1 o Success with Small Fruits. 



is put in some other crop for a year or two before being planted 

 with strawberries again. This rude, inexpensive system is perhaps 

 more followed than any other. It is best adapted to light soils and 

 cheap lands. Where an abundance of cool fertilizers has been 

 ^>*-^- used, or the ground 



has been generously 

 prepared with green 

 crops, plowed under, 

 the yield is often 

 large and profitable. 

 But as often it is 

 " _ quite the reverse, es- 

 pecially if the season 

 ''< '* proves dry and hot. 



Mattel Bed System. Usually, plants SOd- 



ded together cannot 



mature fine fruit, especially after they have exhausted half their vitality 

 in running. In clayey loams, the surface in the matted rows becomes 

 as hard as a brick. Light showers make little impression on it, and 

 the fruit often dries upon the vines. Remembering that the straw- 

 berry's chief need is moisture, it will be seen that it can scarcely be 

 maintained in a hard-matted sod. Under this system, the fruit is 

 small at best, and it all matures together. If adopted in the garden, 

 the family has but a few days of berries instead of a few weeks. 

 The marketman may find his whole crop ripening at a time of over- 

 supply, and his small berries may scarcely pay for picking. To 

 many of this class the cheapness of the system will so commend itself 

 that they will continue to practice it until some enterprising neighbor 

 teaches them better, by his larger cash returns. In the garden, however, 

 it is the most expensive method. When the plants are sodded together, 

 the hoe and fork cannot be used. The whole space must be weeded by 

 hand, and there are some pests whose roots interlace horizontally above 

 and below the ground, and which cannot be eradicated from the matted 

 rows. Too often, therefore, even in the neatest garden, the strawberry 

 bed is the place where vegetable evil triumphs. 



There are modifications of this system that are seen to better advan- 

 tage on paper than in the field or garden. The one most often described 

 in print I have never seen it working successfully may be termed the 

 " renewal system." Instead of plowing the matted beds under, after the 

 first or second crop, the paths between the beds are enriched and spaded 



