32 



if faithfully carried out will give the most satisfaction and profit, 

 especially in the garden. 



As the cultivator grows in experience he will try methods 

 of his own and modify others to suit himself One method how- 

 ever will always be exceedingly popular. People will buy good 

 plants but let them stand around in the wind and sun or mould- 

 ing in the cellar until much injured. Then they will set them 

 out on poor, half-prepared ground and leave them to an unequal 

 fight with grass and weeds till picking time when the wretched 

 crop will lead them to berate both the plant-dealer and straw- 

 berry culture as arrant humbugs. They will then plow the 

 half-choked plants under and return to their congenial crops of 

 cabbage, corn, etc. 



Raising ne^A/^ Varieties. 



If one wishes to raise new varieties he can do so in a hap- 

 hazard way very easily. Select very fine berries of the different 

 kinds which contain the qualities which are sought to be united 

 in a new variety and mash them into dry sand so that all moist- 

 ure is absorbed. Prepare a seed-bed of rich fine soil in a half- 

 shady place^, sow the mingled sand and seed at once and sift 

 through a coal sieve fine rich earth upon them till they are covered 

 one-quarter of an inch. Keep the seed-bed moist and in four 

 weeks the little plants will begin to appear. On the approach of 

 winter cover the young plants with one or two inches of straw. 

 In the spring put them out eighteen inches apart each way and 

 number them. Keep off all runners. A few may bear the first 

 year, but you cannot tell much about them till the second. 

 Then you can thin out your seedlings very fast, for most of tliem 

 will prove far inferior to those now in cultivation. A few may be 

 pretty good. Two or three may be excellent. One or two mav 

 possibly be first class, even better than anything known. But the 

 probabilities are that out of 1000 seedlings you will not get one 

 as good as many varieties we now have. Raising new seedlings 

 is an innocent and useful form of gambling in which blanks are 



