Steps Which Lead to Profit 
1. Select good soil, well filled with organic matter for your strawberry planting. 
Give it careful preparation including nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers if needed. 
2. Choose the hest varieties and get good plants to start with. Set them as 
early as the soil can be worked. The beneficial results of early setting have been thor- 
oughly demonstrated. 
3. Start cultivation early and save the first runners. Care should be taken 
at the first hoeing to uncover any buds that are not free. Tests have shown that runner 
plants made in June have yielded as much as fifteen times as many berries as those 
made in September and October. 
4. Some attention to thinning or spacing will pay if plants are becoming 
thick and crowded on the rows. 
5. Apply fertilizer as a top dressing in late August or September except on land 
that is very rich and the beds have made a very vigorous growth. 
6. Apply a mulch if needed and do it early enough. Injury often occurs in 
cold regions before the first hard freeze. If the mulch has been applied by that time 
injury to both crowns and roots has been prevented. 
7. Where a water supply is available, irrigation will be a big help. Selection of 
springy land or soil well filled with organic matter will help off-set lack of irrigation. 
8. The things mentioned above are mostly within the growers control. If they are 
done properly a good crop of berries is fairly sure. Good crops of nice berries can almost 
always be made to yield a profit. 
Recent experiments have shown that the total yield of berries in the spring 
is governed by the number of leaves per plant the preceding fall. Where plants 
are allowed to become very thickly crowded on the row it is impossible to develop a 
large leaf area per plant and hence the yield will be decreased. Thinning or spacing 
will give room for better development of the individual plants with a much larger in- 
dividual leaf area. 
Carefully conducted experiments on our own farms as well as other places under 
the supervision of scientific men have shown definitely that spacing increases total 
yield, size, grade, and keeping quality of berries. These things were improved more 
with 11" or 12" spacing than with 6" or 7". 
Varieties like Dorsett and Blakemore which make very thick matted rows of small 
plants give more response to spacing or thinning than varieties like Fairfax which make 
large, strong plants and not so thick on the row. 
In dry seasons, spaced or thinned rows will produce far larger crops of better berries 
than those that have been allowed to remain very thickly set. 
From four to six plants per square foot of matted row are not too few. There is 
some indication that a smaller number would be better. 
Growers should not be too fussy about exact distances in spacing, 
but some attempt to restrict the number of plants should be made when 
that number becomes excessive. Much of this can be done when the 
plants are hoed without very much extra cost. If those who do the 
hoeing could be made to realize that extra plants are nothing but weeds 
the problem would be simplified. 
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