PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 179 



The varieties are given in the following order of value. 



1. Hooker's Seedling. 2. Hovey's Seedling. 3. Longworth's 

 Prolific. 4. Jenny Lind. 5. Wilson's Seedling. . 



Wm. S. Carpenter. — Contended that the Wilson seedling should 

 take the first rank as a market berry over all others. He then 

 read the following letter upon the cultivation of this variety. 



I send you the following statement of the mode of culture and 

 the yield of my strawberry bed : 



The space of ground occupied by the plants is 126 square 

 feet — less than one-tenth of an acre. The soil is sandy loam, 

 with subsoil composed of clay and sand in nearly equal parts. 

 In January, 1859, the ground was plowed to the depth of eight 

 or ten inches, turning under a timothy sod three years old, and 

 subsoiled ten or twelve inches deeper, so that every part of the 

 soil and sub-soil was loosened to the depth of eighteen to twenty 

 inches. In April, 1859, I plowed under a heavy dressing of 

 stable manure, harrowed and raked the ground until it was well 

 pulverized, removed all the grass, and, after giving a top dres- 

 sing of twelve bushels of unleached ashes, set out Wilson'3 

 Albany seedling strawberry plants in rows three feet apart and 

 one foot between the plants in the row. The bed had two hoe- 

 ings before the runners commenced to grow, and afterward was 

 kept free from weeds by the hand. This constitutes the great ex- 

 pense of cultivating strawberries upon an extensive scale, as it 

 is essential to the production of large crops for successive years 

 that the plants shall not be smothered nor the ground exhausted 

 by the production of weeds. No protection was furnished to the 

 bed during the winter. This spring the ground was almost 

 entirely covered with plants and permitted to remain undisturbed 

 with the exception of the necessary weeding. The bed blos- 

 somed early, and very freely. On May 27 the first quart of ber- 

 ries was picked, and the bed continued to yield until June 16. 

 Every care has been taken to keep an accurate account of the 

 quantity gathered, and the yield has been 880 quarts, making 

 9,050 quarts or 282 bushels to the acre. The number of berries 

 growing and maturing upon single plants was frequently over 

 200, and in several instances 300 were counted upon a plant. 

 The berries were large and fine-locrking, those first sent to Wil- 

 mington selling for 25 cents a quart at a time when the common 

 variety was bringing only 10 cents. Having other beds for mj 

 own consumption, all the berries from this bed were sold for 



