The Strawberry Book. 21 
If everything goes well, by the first of October, and some- 
times much earlier, the ground should be completely cov-- 
ered with a green carpet of vines. A walk a foot wide is 
then sometimes cleared out in the middle of the rows, 
leaving beds three feet wide and solid with plants. But 
where there is a demand for strawberry vines early:in the 
season, this operation is deferred until spring. - 
On the approach of winter the beds are covered with 
some protecting substance, generally three or four inches 
of old hay. This hay, except enough to fill the foot-wide 
alleys for the pickers to walk in, is raked off in the spring, 
and stacked, to be used again the ensuing autumn for the 
same purpose. 
The berries being picked for market as fast as they 
ripen, the whole crop is off in this latitude by the roth 
of July, and the entire plantation is then cmmedéately 
ploughed under, — vines, weeds, and all, — another. bed 
having been made in the spring to take the place of, the’. 
one that is destroyed. 
The advantages of this method are obvious. 
First. The first full crop from a strawberry bed is the 
largest and best; and here, the vines, being in perfect 
health and vigor, and the soil very rich, the plants are 
made to do their very utmost, no regard being had to in- 
juring. them, for they are to be ploughed up as soon as the 
” fruit is gone. 
Second. In this method a few weeds, more or less, are 
not the very serious annoyance that they prove in a bed 
that is to be kept up year after year, for before they can 
go to seed they are turned into the soil. 
Of course the best’ grower will have the fewest weeds, 
other things being equal ; but I have sometimes seen quite 
a little crop of grass and weeds in the beds of one of the 
best growers I know — grass and. weeds. derived from the 
seed in the hay used for covering. But they never were 
numerous enough to do any harm, and were all destroyed 
f 
