40° The Strawberry Book. 
layer the plants in small pots. This should be done early 
in July. The first runners from good plants should be 
taken and layered in thumb-pots, filled with any good soil. 
Before the first of August the thumb-pots will be filled 
with roots, and the young plants will be ready for a shift 
into three or four-inch pots. 
The compost now employed should consist of thoroughly 
decomposed sods and top-soil from a pasture, with one third 
well-rotted manure. If this mixture has lain in heaps:sev- 
eral months, all the better. 
The plants having been shifted, the soil should be firmly 
pressed around the roots, and the pots should be liberally 
watered and set in a cold-frame, which will hasten their 
growth a little, and at the same time protect them from 
too severe rains. When this set of pots is well filled with 
roots, the vines should be shifted into a larger size. 
Here growers differ. Some transfer the plants into the 
six-inch pots, in which they are to fruit, and others put 
them into five-inch pots, and give them a final shift into 
eight-inch pots. The two most successful growers I know 
use, the one six, and the other eight-inch pots for fruiting. 
It must, however, resolve itself into a question of room in 
the green-house ; and it seems reasonable to think that a 
plant whose well-grown roots fill an eight-inch pot will 
give more fruit than one whose pot is two inches less in 
diameter. 
If the plants are in a frame, it should be left open, ex- 
cept in a storm after the first of October, the vines watered 
sparingly, and allowed to ripen off very thoroughly. By 
the middle of November the cold weather will check all 
growth, and the vines, if all has gone well, will be healthy, 
stout, and plump. The frames may now be filled with 
leaves, and covered with boards, until the vines are needed 
for forcing. The best growers are strongly inclined to 
think that a month’s rest and inaction after the plants are 
ripe, and have stopped growing, lead to much better re- 
