168 MODERN STRAWBERRY GROWING 
“Alpine strawberries ordinarily ought to 
be sweet enough to eat without sugar. If 
anything is put on them, it would better be 
a little claret.” 
In selecting berries for seed planting, they 
should be allowed to get fully ripe before 
they are gathered. On picking them, they 
should be crushed, and thoroughly mixed 
with forty to fifty times their bulk of clean, 
dry sand. This sand will have a tendency to 
separate the seeds and also absorb the juice 
of the fruit. A flat of moist, sharp sand 
should be ready and the seeds with the sand 
should be planted in shallow furrows or 
sprinkled over the surface and lightly raked 
in. The flat is then thoroughly watered and 
placed below the bench in the greenhouse or 
in the propagating house, hotbed, coldframe 
or any suitable place of this kind. 
If the planting be made in the middle 
of July, young plants may be expected to 
appear during the first week in August, if 
the sashes have been kept closed and the 
soil well wetted every day. As soon as the 
young plants appear in numbers they should 
be shaded. This is best done by whitening 
the glass. The frames may then be kept 
