THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
a hole about as large as the palm of your hand by 
the side of each plant, once in two or three days, 
and pour in a quart of water, slowly. Then scat- 
ter over dry dirt to hold in the moisture. ‘Two 
such waterings will serve for a week. On no ac- 
count whatever sprinkle a strawberry bed or water 
the plants very slightly. Do it thoroughly, or let 
italone. The bed will get along far better without 
you if you are unwilling to be thorough. 
Strawberry beds are generally renewed every 
year — that is, new strawberry beds are set, while 
the old one is allowed to do what it will for an ad- 
ditional year. This is too much trouble for a 
small country place, and it is unnecessary. A 
strawberry bed, with proper care, can be made to 
do good service for three years, or even more. Best 
crops, of course, will appear on fresh beds, but the 
old beds, carefully handled, will give good satis- 
faction. In order to secure this perpetuity of a 
bed you must keep the rows very narrow, by cut- 
ting off the suckers; but about every second year 
you must let the runners form midway rows, while 
you fork out or plow out the old plants. My cus- 
tom is, after a bed has borne two years, to set it to 
currants or raspberries, without entirely uproot- 
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