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SCIENTIFIC SETTING OF PLANTS. 
Here we have a photograph of our plant seltinji brigade. In the spriiig of 1S93 seventy acres were set 
with scarcely a plant lost. Every man is drilled so each makes exactly the same motions — no time lost in 
false motions. 
and long enough to mark four rows at a time. 
Make four short sled runners and nail them 
under the board the distance the rows are to 
be apart, and nail shafts or handles on the top 
to draw it with. A man can draw it all day 
without fatigue. The object of using a thin 
board is to make it bend and accommodate it- 
self to the uneven surface of the ground. Get 
the first row perfectly straight and let one 
runner go in the last mark as a guide. This 
will make all the rows exactly so far apart, 
so that late in the season when your plants get 
larger, you can adjust your cultivator so as to 
do thorough work by going once in a row. 
The best marker is made with wheels as seen 
in the ijliotograph of plant selling. Notice the 
end of the marker is raised with a stick to show 
how the wheel frame is hinged so it drops 
down in low places and continues the mark 
unbroken. 
I have tall stakes made and painted red and 
white to guide the men in marking. The rows 
of all blocks are joined exactly and also at 
road crossings on the farm so the rows show 
entirely straight across the farm, in many 
places over a hundred rods. It looks beauti- 
ful to people passing along the highway to see 
these long rows straight as an arrow and no 
plant an inch out of line, besides the long 
straight rows enables us to do rapid and accu- 
rate work in spraying and cultivating. 
SUNSHINE. 
I have already explained that sunshine is 
the mechanical force that enables plants to as- 
similate their food and separate the carbon 
from the oxygen of the air; that to do their 
work the air must have free circulation among 
the leaves and particularly at the crown of the 
plant where the seed germ is located or it 
cannot develop; for this reason the plants 
should always be kept far enough apart so the 
leaves can fall over Hat, so the entire upper 
surface shall be fully exposed to the sun's rays. 
Where plants are allowed to make runners 
and mat so thickly tliat the sun can only shine 
on the outer edge, you must not e.x])ect much 
. fruit. 
Did you ever wonder why God made the 
sun to arise far to the northeast and set in 
the northwest? This was to cause sunshine to 
reach the north side of trees and plants. Notice 
how the house plants turn the ui)per surface of 
their leaves toward the light. 
Fungus plants, like toad stools, mushrooms, 
etc., grow in the dark, but they have no di- 
gestive organs of their own and merely appro- 
priate dead matter in mould. 
ARRANGEMENT OF PLANTS. 
There arc four ways of growing strawber- 
ries, viz,: Hill cidture, hedge row, narrow 
matted row and full matted row. 
Hill or stool culture docs not mean growing 
them on a little mound of earth as many of 
my correspondents seem to think, but on level 
ground. It means that the runners are all 
I)icked off as fast as they appear so it will be 
confined to one single plant. It might be 
called a consolidated plant. If the fruit or- 
gans and disposition of the plant to make fruit 
buds is strong, as in the case of a thoroughbred 
plant, when a runner is cut, it will not throw 
out any more runners until it builds up on the 
side of the plant a new crown and fruit bud. 
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