26 The Strawberry Book. 
Mr. Augustus Parker, of Roxbury, Mass., a very suc- 
cessful cultivator of strawberries for market, gives his 
method in Tilton’s Journal of Horticulture, vol. vi., p. 
281, as follows : — 
“I set my plants about the first of May, about a foot 
apart, in a single row, and the rows four and a half feet 
apart, on good, well-manured ground. I keep the culti- 
vator going between the rows till about the Sth of July, 
when the runners begin to run, and then go over the 
ground with a rake and make it level; after this I go over 
the beds and place the runners so that the plants will 
be as near four inches apart as possible. With me the 
runners cover all the ground between the rows. Keep- 
ing the ground light till you set the runners gives the 
young plant a chance to make good roots, which stand 
the dry weather the next summer when they are in bear- 
ing. If you let the ground get hard for the new plants, 
the roots will be short, and the plants will not be able to 
carry their fruit to the size and quantity they otherwise 
would. I cover my beds, when they are frozen in the 
fall so that I can drive my team over them without leav- 
ing a mark, with fine, light horse manure ; cover as ight- 
ly as posstble, and yet have them covered. In the spring 
T let the plants come up through the manure, which serves 
as a mulching to keep the berries clean. As soon as the 
plants are started enough in the spring to see the old 
plants that were set the spring before, I put a line on the 
beds, and take out the old row, and make the path about 
fourteen inches wide; so as to keep the pickers in their 
proper places. I do not set every year, as some growers 
do; but, as soon as I get through picking, I dig or plough 
up the sides of my beds to a strip eight or ten inches 
wide; from this strip new runners will start, which I set 
over the ground as at the first season. I cart off all the 
plants I plough up, and make the ground as light as pos- 
sible ; then, the next spring (of course, manuring in the 
