BURNING OVER STRAWBERRY PATCHES. 



HOW IT IS DONE EXPERIENCES PRO AND CON. 



H E destruction of weeds, insects 

 and fungi among strawberries 

 by burning over the beds has 

 come to be a common practice 

 in many places. The following 

 notes, adapted from recent cor- 

 respondence i n the F?int Growers' Journal, will 

 answer many questions for our readers. 



A. Robinson, in eastern central Illinois, gives the fol- 

 lowing advice : The burning over of strawberry fields 

 after fruiting is very generally practiced here, and with 

 unvarying success, We are not troubled here with crab 

 grass to any great extent, at least not nearly as much as 

 growers farther south, and our fields go into winter 

 quarters clean. We therefore have no occasion to burn 

 the ground previous to fruiting. The warm spring rains, 

 however, bring along an abundance of wild vegetable 

 growths, which, at the end of the fruiting season, have 

 to be killed out by cultivation or destroyed by fire. The 

 latter is much the better, if the conditions are right, as 

 (■he fields are purged of noxious insects and fungi by the 

 ordeal. I speak in a qualifying sense, because the sea- 

 son may not be propitious. If the ground is dry and the 

 weather hot, we simply mow off the growths as close to 

 the ground as possible and wait for the ground to be wet, 

 and then wait for the dead stuff to dry out. If a stiff 

 wind is blowing lengthwise of the rows, so much the bet. 

 ter. The ground will look like burnt prairie. Not a 

 green thing will be in sight, and you will wonder if you 

 have killed the whole patch. Wait ; in a few days you 

 will see here and there a green leaf, and soon the rows 

 will be green with fresh foliage — enough for all purposes. 

 The weak plants will be killed and there will be a sur- 

 vival of the fittest. Then we cultivate and renew. The 

 second bearing is always the best if the cultivation is 

 thorough and not too many plants left to choke each 

 other. 



Late winter burning on new beds I have seen prac- 

 ticea, and practiced myself, while engaged in fruit grow- 

 ing in Union county during nearly twenty years. In 

 some conditions it is safe and advisable ; in others it is 

 disastrous, as I found to my cost. If cultivation is sus- 

 pended early and the crab grass left to mulch the ground, 

 and no straw used, the dry stuff can be burned with no 

 detriment to the plants, under the following conditions : 

 Either let the ground be slightly frozen or wet and cold. 

 Take a time when there is a stiff wind ; fire on the wind- 

 ward side and in a few moments the blaze will be racing 

 across the field, and the job is done. There are no ac- 

 cumulations to stop and hold the fire long enough to in- 

 jure the roots, nor damage the fruit crowns that are then 



in embryo or yet hugging the ground very closely. Un- 

 less these conditions can be met, it were better to let 

 the field alone. 



The first time that I knew of this being practiced was 

 by an old man named Jesse Fly, living near Makanda, 

 and whose grandson, Riley, now occupies the place. 

 The old man had no experience in the matter, but he 

 had not used straw for mulching. The patch was cov- 

 ered knee high with a thick carpet of dry grass. He 

 burned off the grass when the ground was slightly frozen 

 over, and the neighbors thought the field dead. But the 

 biggest and best crop of Wilsons that I ever saw grew 

 on that ground, and I lived during the best days of that 

 remarkable variety. After that the same thing was tried 

 in the neighborhood, sometimes with success, but often 

 with failure. It would be too late, or the ground too 

 dry and warm, or there was not enough wind to blow 

 the fire across quickly enough. But with the ground 

 frozen or cold and wet, and a good breeze, it never failed. 

 We mulch with straw, and the ground remains covered 

 till after fruiting. So we cannot burn early, unless we 

 desire to kill nine-tenths of the plants. With one ex- 

 ception I never saw a field injured by summer burning, 

 and then an extremely dry, hot spell followed the burn- 

 ing. To guard against this possibility many use the 

 spring tooth rake and scratch the ground unmercifully, 

 then haul off the debris and burn it. 



R. H. C. Mitchell, of Tennessee, has had this experi- 

 ence : I do not think it advisable to burn off the grass 

 in this state, from the fact that it causes a later ripening 

 of the strawberries That is my experience. I had a 

 portion of my patch burned over one season and the 

 plants did not do so well as before being subjected to 

 the fiery scythe. The same season the grass was very 

 thick on the ground. I started to rake it off with a hand 

 rake, and could make but little headway. Finding that 

 I had undertaken a bigger job than I had calculated on, 

 the horse was hitched to a spring-tooth hay-rake and it 

 worked like a charm. The patch was raked both ways, 

 up and down the rows and across the rows, and after the 

 raking it looked like a garden which had been well raked 

 by hand. It was about the ist of March, and how those 

 berries did grow ! I made a mistake, however, in throw- 

 ing the raked up grass too near a row of thirty LeConte 

 pear trees. When the grass was fired the wind arose 

 with the fire and burned the whole row, but they started 

 from the roots, and some of the shoots grew to the 

 height of seven and nine feet that year. 



Here is another plan that will rake straw, leaves, chips, 

 or any other trash. Take an oak scantling, three by 

 four and four feet long, fill it with | harrow teeth, three 

 inches apart, then two other pieces of the same length 



