ON THE CULTIVATION OF STRAWBERRIES. 285 



The wide intervals recommended by Mr. Keens certainly permit the 

 fruit to be gathered with much convenience ; but spaces to receive the 

 feet of the gatherers of the fruit may be easily made ; and it is much 

 better that a small number of strawberries should be destroyed, than 

 that a large quantity should fail to be produced, owing to more than 

 necessarily wide, void spaces. 



Taking off the runners is not expedient in the mode of culture I 

 recommend, and, under all circumstances, this must be done with 

 judgment and caution; for every runner is, in its incipient state of 

 formation, capable of becoming a fruit stalk, and if too great a number 

 of the runners be taken off in the summer, others will be emitted by 

 the plants, which would, under other circumstances, have been trans- 

 muted into fruit stalks. The blossoms, consequently, will not be formed 

 till a later period of the season, and the fruit of the following year will 

 thence be defective alike in quantity and quality : and, under the mode 

 of culture recommended, a large part of the runners, when these are 

 taken off in the spring, will be required to form the new beds. 



I have found the alpine strawberries to succeed best, when seedling 

 plants, raised very early in the spring, or those obtained from runners 

 of the preceding year, have been planted in the beginning of April, at 

 one foot apart, in beds of about four or five feet wide, with intervals 

 between the beds. It is expedient, in the culture of these varieties, 

 that the superficial soil should be extremely rich ; because much the 

 most valuable part of their produce is obtained from runners of the 

 same season, and these require to be well nourished. If a good alpine 

 variety be planted, the blossoms of all the runners will rise with the third 

 leaf. The best which I have seen affords a white fruit, similar in form 

 to the red variety ; and the old plants of this, as well as the runners, 

 continue to bear till the blossoms are destroyed by frost : and both the 

 white wood and the white alpine strawberries, appear to me to retain 

 their flavour more perfectly in autumn than the red. The habits of the 

 white alpine variety above-mentioned, of which I have sent plants to the 

 garden of the Society, are permanent in the seedling plants ; provided 

 the seed be grown at some distance from plants of the coloured varieties 

 of the same species. 



Mr. Keens supposes the alpine strawberry-plants to be incapable of 

 producing blossoms till they are a year old; but I have shown that they 

 afford fruit in a very few months after they have sprung from seeds. 

 He also supposes that the seedling plants of other species of strawberries 



