58 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



recommend high manuring, because it requires a peculiar mode of cultiva- 

 tion, which but few will practice. It requires a renewal of beds every 

 year. After the crop is gathered, the highly manured ones will grow very 

 luxuriantly, and make a heavy crop of foliage to plow under in September, 

 when new plants are to be set for the next crop. Thus a lai-ge crop may 

 be grown at less labor and cost, and as much got from one acre as is 

 usually got from four. In New Jersey strawberries are generally grown 

 without manure, at the rate of about twenty-five bushels an acre. If land is 

 highly manured, and the strawberry vines allowed to run year after year, 

 it will become a nest of weeds and grass, and produce but little fruit. 



Eev. Mr. Weaver. — If you have hard pan you must go below that. 



Mr. John G. Bergen. — It is one thing to talk about high manuring near 

 cities, but quite another thing to tell how to do it in the country. Every- 

 thing must be adapted to the locality. I use $50 an acre worth of manui'e, 

 and it pays; and I know market gardeners who use $100 worth per acre, 

 and it pays, but it won't pay everywhere and upon all crops. 



Prof. Nash. — No, it won't pay to use $30 worth of manure upon an acre 

 of wheat that would not sell for that amount, as many acres do not; but it 

 will pay to manure any crop so as to grow it up to a certain point, at 

 which it is more profitable than above or below. It usually costs as much 

 labor to gi"ow twenty bushels of corn upon an acre without manure, as it 

 would sixty bushels with manure. I have not so much experience in the 

 advantage of manuring strawberries as I have corn. With that 1 have 

 proved that $10 worth of manure brought $30 less value of corn than the 

 same land and labor with $40 worth, and although the manure was but barely 

 paid for by the corn crop, it was doubly paid for in succeeding crops. 



Mr. Carpenter. — A neighbor of mine has been experimenting with man- 

 ures; he begim at a cost of $5 per acre, and has now got up to $50 per 

 acre, and he says this pays him a good per centage. I think I can get as 

 much corn off three acres as many of my neighbors get ofi" ten acres. 



Mr. Fuller. — Our farmers do not manure half enough; the great error is 

 in cultivating too much land. Put the manure and labor you intend for 

 one hundred acres on twenty-five acres, and you will find it pays better 

 than by cultivating the whole. 



John G. Bergen. — I have grown the Scotch runner or Crimson Cone 

 strawberry, by measure, at the rate of 500 bushels per acre, by high culti- 

 vation, but I doubt the profit of trying to make such big crops. I doubt 

 whether it has been demonstrated that very high culture will pay upon 

 strawberries. 



Mr. Fuller said that he had grown at the rate of 600 bushels per acre on 

 a small plot of the Bartlett strawberry, and by the same mode of treatment 

 400 bushels of Triomphe de Gand. The best treatment I have ever given 

 strawberries, when grown in hills, was to stir the surface a little every 

 day. Some varieties grow best in stools; the Wilson, for instance, and 

 others, do best when they all run together. I have great faith in lightly 

 stirring the soil among strawberry plants. The best Delaware grape vines 

 I ever grew I produced by stirring the soil regularly every Saturday even- 

 ing with a rake, and I believe it would pay to rake the ground among the 

 strawberry plants every day, and cut oft' all the runners. I can grow 



