APPENDIX. 181 



short time, therefore, unless these runners are kept in 

 check, the ground becomes entirely occupied with 

 plants, the parent plants become exhausted, and the 

 ground can no longer be stirred or kept in such a con- 

 dition as is necessary to sustain their vigor. The re- 

 sult is, the ground is covered with a mass of starved 

 and weakly plants, choking up each other in a hard, 

 uncultivated soil, and producing a spare crop of small, 

 insipid berries, that dry up on their stalks before they 

 are ripe, unless rain happens to fall every day. 



The constant stirring of the soil around the plants 

 is one thing which in our climate is absolutely neces- 

 sary ; and any system of culture which precludes this, 

 or throws any obstacle in its way, is defective. If any 

 one will examine his strawberry beds, he will find the 

 plants along the outer edges of the beds, where the soil 

 has been kept clean and fresh by the frequent use of 

 the hoe, vigorous and healthy, with luxuriant dark- 

 green foliage, and large, fine fruit ; while in the interior 

 of the beds, where the plants have grown into masses, 

 and covered all the ground, so as to prevent its culti- 

 vation, they are yellow and sickly-looking, and the fruit 

 poor and wortless. This we see in our own grounds, 

 and everywhere that we find plants growing under 

 similar circumstances. Does this not show the neces- 

 sity of cultivation close around the plants? No mat- 

 ter how deep we may trench the soil, or how unsparing 



