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Did you know 



Fragaria Virginiana — the wild strawberry 

 of the United States of America east of 

 the Rocky Mountains is parent of many 

 of our cultivated plants. 



* ♦ * 



Wild strawberries were found in 

 abundance by the early settlers. One man 

 declared that in walking through the 

 woods at Jamestown "it was impossible 

 to direct the foot without dyeing it in the 

 blood of this fruit". For a century or 

 more after the settlement of Virginia, wild 

 strawberries were so plentiful that "very 

 few persons take care to transplant them, 

 but can find enough to fill their baskets". 

 Colonists of New York, Maryland, the 

 Carolinas and other parts of the Atlantic 

 Seaboard found wild strawberries no less 

 abundant than in Virginia and New Eng- 

 land. In 1683, William Penn mentioned 

 the abundance of wild strawberries in 

 Pennsylvania. 



Wild strawberries were a most welcome 

 addition to frontier fare. They refreshed 

 the forty-niners of California and those 

 who followed the Lewis and Clark trail. 

 The abundant supply of native wild ber- 

 ries was -appreciated all the more because 

 of the limited supply of most other fruit. 



* * * 



The beginning of strawberry culture 

 came about when the land surrounding 

 the small towns became subdued in tilled 

 crops. The housewife had to go farther 

 and farther away from home to find the 

 wild ones and this led to wild plants 

 being transplanted to the garden near 

 home. . 



Long before the Revolution, wild 

 strawberries were an article of barter and 

 sale in the larger cities. During those pio- 

 neer days, the strawberry season was 

 limited to the period of ripening of the 

 wild berries — not over four weeks. 



The first North American book con- 

 taining much information on horticulture 

 was Samuel Dean's "New England Farm- 

 er" published in 1790. Growers of today 

 can still profit from one of his bits of 

 advice — "but little dung should be applied 

 to the soil, as a large quantity will cause 

 them (strawberry plants) to run much 

 and to be less fruitful". 



* * * 



The English practice of growing berries 

 in raised "beds" seems to have fastened 

 that name permanently upon the plant- 

 ing of small areas. Not until 1850 was 

 there a strawberry "field". 



* * * 



A trade catalog issued in 1810 by Wil- 

 liam Booth, of Baltimore, offered Large 

 Early Scarlet and Hudson's Bay. These 

 two varieties were dominant until the in- 

 troduction of the Wilson. 



* * * 



The Wilson variety transformed the 

 commercial culture of strawberries from 

 insignificant to tremendously important 

 and popular. The Wilson was developed 

 near Albany, New York, in 1851, by 

 James Wilson. Unlike C. M. Hovey, de- 

 veloper of the Hovey, James Wilson 

 realized little or no profit from his more 

 important variety. 



♦ ♦ :■: 



Commercial strawberry culture for the 

 New York market, where demand was 

 heavier than supply, began about 1820 in 

 New Jersey. There were no crates, berries 

 were packed in baskets and placed in 

 large hampers. There were no commis- 

 sion agents and farmers picked, trans- 

 ported and sold their own fruit. There 

 were no railroads and berries were carted 

 to New York in wagons, crossing the 

 Hudson at Hoboken — or went by boat. 

 In those days, the average net return 

 from an acre was thirty to forty dollars, 

 which was considered a good profit. 



