102 On the Cultivation of Strawberries. 



ally are, in the month of August, the plants acquire sufficient 

 strength before winter to afford a moderate crop of fruit in the 

 following year : but the plants will not have formed a suf- 

 ficient reservoir of true sap to feed even such a crop, 

 without being too much impoverished ; their spring foliage 

 will be also exhausted in feeding the fruit, and will continue, 

 through the summer, to shade the leaves subsequently pro- 

 duced. The aggregate produce in two seasons will, in con- 

 sequence, generally be found to be less in quantity, and very 

 inferior in quality, to that afforded in one season by a plan- 

 tation of equal extent, made in the spring. 



Mr. Keens suffers his beds to continue three years, though 

 he admits that the produce of the first year is the most abun- 

 dant, and of the best quality; and in order to afford his 

 plants sufficient space, when they are three years old, he 

 places them at too great distances, in my opinion, from each 

 other, to obtain the greatest produce from the smallest extent 

 of ground. He places his Hautbois and Pine Strawberry 

 plants at eighteen inches apart in the rows, with intervals of 

 two feet between the rows ; each square yard consequently 

 contains three plants only. I have placed Downton Straw- 

 berry plants, which require as much space as those of the 

 Hautbois, or Pine, in rows at sixteen inches distance from 

 each other, and with only eight inches distance between 

 the plants ; which is nearly nine to each square yard ; and I 

 have found each plant at such distances nearly, if not quite, as 

 productive, as when placed with much wider intervals. The 

 Old Scarlet Strawberry I have also found to bear admi- 

 rably when plants have been placed in rows of one foot 

 distance from each other, with spaces of half that distance 



