Good Plants for Good Ciops 
Plant Situation . . . 19^9 
Good strawberry plants, the kind that will produce a big crop of luscious ber- 
ries in your garden or commercial planting, are offered to you in this, 1949 berry 
book. The growing season in the summer of 1948 when these plants were grown 
was not too good — too much rain. Fall weather was fine, enabling the plants that 
were made to develop good strong crowns and very fine root systems. The total 
supply of plants is not quite up to normal. Of the leading varieties there seem to 
be ample stocks of Premier, Fairfax, Fairpeake, Temple and Blakemore. Others of 
the eight or ten best kinds, like Midland, Catskill, Chesapeake, Redstar and Sparkle, 
are more abundant than last year but still way under the 1947 supply. Everbearing 
varieties, except Gem, are still very short. Let us urge you, therefore, to place your 
orders early to be sure of getting the varieties you want. 
The demand for good strawberries still exceeds the supply. In the war years, 
when we had price ceilings, the prices of all the good berries and most all the fair 
and even poor berries crowded up toward the ceiling. For the last year or two 
good berries have sold on all markets at a profitable level of prices even with the 
increased costs of production. (See table page 4.) Common berries, however, are 
beginning to bring prices in line with their quality, which prices may not always be 
profitable unless yields are quite high and cost of production low. This emphasizes 
the need for good well-prepared soil, good plants of the best varieties and practical 
common sense methods of growing and marketing. This 1949 berry book is written 
for the purpose of helping you grow good strawberry gardens and produce profit- 
able commercial crops of berries, knowing that if we can do this you will continue 
to buy our good strawberry plants. 
Among the things in this book to which we call your special attention are: 
Collections, pages 28-29. Common Sense Methods, pages 24-27, and Accurate 
Variety Descriptions, pages 8-23 inc. 
Many thousands of our old customers and friends know something about who 
makes up the W. F. ALLEN CO., from information printed in our annual berry book 
from time to time. For many other thousands who have been added to our list in 
recent years we want to say that our firm consists of W. F. Allen* "Pop", wise in the 
ways of growing strawberries and strawberry plants from his 64 years of experience; 
Mrs. W. F. Allen, "Mom", a help-mate for over fifty years, although not active in 
the business for the last few years; Fulton W. Allen, W. Lee Allen and Albert G. 
Allen, who were trained by "Pop" from their boyhood in this business, and who 
themselves have an adult experience of over 30 years each. We appreciate your 
past business and look forward with pleasure to serving you again this year. 
