Locations, Sites and Soils 15 



or other tilled crops for two or three years before setting 

 strawberries. On muck soils, strawberries make a rank 

 growth and may be unproductive unless the food supply 

 is balanced with applications of the mineral fertilizers. 

 If near small water courses, muck land may be frosty ; 

 if near large bodies of water, it may be quite free from 

 frost. Muck should be used only for late varieties. Peat 

 soils are unsuitable ; they dry out quickly, are difficult to 

 work and are deficient in mineral plant-food. 



Fertility. 



Until about 1850, it was contended that the strawberry 

 requires poor soil, otherwise it runs to vines and produces 

 little fruit. This assumption was based on the fact 

 that varieties of the Scarlet, then most commonly grown, 

 did run to vines when planted on heavily manured and 

 deeply trenched land, as was the custom at that time. 

 The modern strawberry responds to heavy fertilizing 

 and is unprofitable upon poor soils. The most notable 

 exception to this general rule is found in the South, where 

 rich soils, especially those abundantly supplied with 

 nitrogen, should be avoided, since they produce a rank 

 growth of vines and the berries ripen unevenly and do 

 not carry weU. The stock advice, "Land that will make 

 thirty to forty bushels of corn to the acre is good straw- 

 berry land," is sound. In Missouri, it is considered that 

 land that will produce 200 bushels of potatoes an acre 

 should average 200 crates of strawberries without fertiliz- 

 ing. The strawberry plant feeds near the surface; it 

 does not forage deeply into the subsoil. Moreover, it 

 matures its crop in a short period, especially in the North ; 

 hence the need for an abundant supply of plant-food in 

 the surface soil. 



