ricHt] STRAWBERRIES AND THEIR KIN 
nection with this mixture, at the rate of about one 
hundred pounds per acre. Another Experiment 
Station recommends precipitated phosphate five 
hundred pounds; kainit, one thousand pounds; 
nitrate of soda, two hundred pounds — the nitrate 
of soda being applied in the spring, and the rest 
in the fall. But if you have fairly good garden 
soil, not heedlessly exhausted by previous crop- 
ping, you make your own manures. I have said 
in another chapter that I would in all cases com- 
post manures. The compost which I apply to my 
strawberry beds comes from the house drainage 
and waste, after it has been thoroughly intermixed 
with decomposed barn manure and coal ashes. I 
cover my strawberries in the fall quite freely with 
this compost, applying liquid manure in the spring. 
If your bed is near the barn, be sure that you have 
every ounce of liquid manure caught in a stone 
reservoir, or at least a sunken barrel, so that you 
may save it for your berry plots, including the 
strawberry. 
The position of a strawberry bed must depend 
also upon your ability to irrigate. Unfortunately, 
there is not one of our crops so easily spoiled as this 
delicious berry. We are very liable to dry spells 
[ 163] 
