TENNESSEE PROLIFIC (B). 
On of the largest early berries and "enormously pro- 
ductive." Very jiopular at the South for Northern trade. 
Succeeds on any soil a berry can be grown on. Should 
be restricted to hedge row. Splendid family berry, mild 
in flavor and rich. Roots deeply and stands drought 
well. Sixteen year Pedigree. 
ures and successes. Every year great numbers 
of new seedlings with testimony of their 
wonderful performances are sent to me for 
trial but few stand the universal test. 
Since commencing strawberry growing, 
twenty-one years ago I presume 1 have tested 
more than two thousand cominended varieties 
and out of these have selected fifty-two Cos- 
mopolitan (man of the world) sorts and feel 
confident a better list could not be made and 
yet it is true that one grower gets very great 
returns and is enthusiastic over a variety while 
another person gets diflferent results and makes 
another one his leader. 
Select the variety you hear the most gen- 
erally commended and then select a few of 
several other sorts and try them side by side 
on your own soil and under your own method 
of tillage and you will soon have a favorite 
list which will guide you in the future. 
SOILS. 
Any good garden soil will do. I do not 
like the extremes of light sand and heavy clay 
but either clay or sand IcJam will do. Some- 
times I receive boxes of soils by mail or ex- 
press with the request that I analyze and tell 
definitely whether it needs this or that to give 
best results. 
The Agricultural Colleges undertook to ana- 
lyze soils and tell fanners what they needed 
to make them grow certain crops and made 
some comical blunders. They could tell the 
percentage of foods in them, but could not tell 
whether these things were available to a plant 
or not and so threw up the whole business. 
The farmer or gardener is the best chemist 
and can tell better than any one else. Just 
answer these questions. Do corn, potatoes 
and garden truck do well? If so, then straw- 
berries will flourish. If it has been run and 
lacks fertility then put on the manure. Tillage 
is manure; that is, it makes all the food in the 
WOLVERTON (B). 
EARLY. One of my pets, llerries always so big, 
so bright in color, delicious in flavor that the demand for 
it is greater every year. Il is not fastidious about soils 
and is one that holds the fort on the market. Pedigree, 
fourteen years. 
soil available and so if the land is not rich 
give extra tillage. 
Low land, that is land lower than the sur- 
rounding fields is liable to injury by spring 
frosts because the cold air runs down hill like 
water and will settle in low places and freeze 
while higher land will not be affected. Set the 
late blooming sorts on this and the extra early 
sorts on the highest land you have. I have 
had some varieties injured by frost but never 
failed to get a paying crop. 
There is much good land where water will 
collect in the winter when snow is going off. 
This does not hurt the plants. I have seen 
them freeze up solid in a foot of water and 
.stay so for a longltime without the slightest in- 
jury but a few hours under water during the 
growing season is fatal. Avoid cold spring 
soils where the ground is saturated much of 
the time in the spring. 
MANURING THE GROUND. 
I have told you that a strawbery plant is a 
machine or engine for manufacturing berries. 
Manure and tillage is like the coal under the 
boilers. No matter how good your engine 
(plants) are you must have steam (manure) 
to make it go and at the same time remember 
that no matter how much steam (manure and 
tillage) you have you cannot make things go 
if the engine (plants) are out of order. 
There are four things only that we need to 
concern ourselves about in manure and these 
are humus or decayed vegetable matter to 
make the ground soft and mellow as well as 
spongy so it will hold moisture and permit a 
circulation of air through it to keep the food 
available. The other ingredients are nitrogen, 
potash and phosphoric acid. There are many 
other things plants cat but there arc enough 
in the soil to last thousands of years and so we 
will only have to put back what we take out 
of these four things. 
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