Showell, Maryland 



STRAWBERRIES WITH LITTLE WORK 



I have been growing strawberries for 

 nearly sixty years. Notlike the man who 

 said, "I have belonged to the Methodist 

 Church, off and on, for forty years." I 

 have grown them continuously and during 

 that whole time I have had but two failures, 

 once from May frosts and once from the 

 work of white grubs. 



Most of this time the berries have been 

 for family use only, but for the last seven- 

 teen years, since living in town, I have 

 grown them for market. 



To grow berries with the least work, 

 I plow and fit the ground just as early in 

 spring as it will work well, and lay out the 

 rows four or five feet apart. Start the 

 cultivator within a few days after planting 

 and follow it right up through the whole 

 growing season, once a week. This contin- 

 uous cultivation does away almost entirely 

 with hand hoeing, for which farmers have 

 little time anyhow. 



I never cut any runners — just narrow up 

 the cultivator as the runners set and the 

 rows widen. When the rows of plants get 

 two or three feet wide I let the cultivator 

 bury up what set thereafter, and thus I 

 have clean bare paths on which to walk 

 while picking the fruit next season. 



This may be thought a rough shiftless 

 way to grow strawberries, but it has been 

 a most successful way with me, and does 

 away with a lot of hand work. The culti- 

 vation is so frequent that weeds hardly 

 have a chance to show their ugly heads, and 

 I long ago learned that by far the easiest 

 and most effectual way to kill weeds is to 

 never let them show up. — E. P. Snyder. 

 —Clipping from "Farm Life" April, 1926, 

 19 



