The Strawberry Book. * 57 
erous scale, pick and eat ad libitum; not harassed by 
being limited to a given number of “ boxes,” but revelling 
in fresh, sound, unpacked, and uninjured berries. This 
luxury, which habit soon makes a necessity, and which is 
not a mere gratification of the taste, but is really condu- 
sive to sound health, costs but a trifle. I believe that ten 
dollars will establish, and less than that amount expended 
annually will maintain, a strawberry bed large enough to 
meet through the season the demands of any ordinary 
family. But ten dollars will not go far in buying choice 
strawberries by the box. Knowing by experience how 
pleasant it is to have good strawberries in abundance 
through the season, I advise every owner of a garden to 
set apart space enough for a good bed, to manure it well, 
plant it with some good, productive kind, and never there- 
after to be without a supply of luscious berries in their 
season. 
It is worth noticing, that in most cases the neatest and 
best beds of strawberries, except those of the market gar- 
deners, are in gardens owned, or perhaps hired, by me- 
chanics and laborers, who somehow find time to weed 
and tend them before and after their hours of labor, and 
whose success very often puts to shame their wealthier 
neighbors, and affords a parallel to the Lancashire work- 
men’s gooseberry bushes. 
It cannot, thenfbe bad advice to urge those who have 
the land and the means to plant strawberry beds. For 
three weeks in the year, at least, their families will call 
them blessed. 
