THE RUSHIRE FRUIT FARM, IONIA, MICH. 
7 
deep and far out in search of food and 
moisture to produce the same number of 
quarts per acre of big, fancy, rich flav- 
ored, HIGH COLORED, FIRM berries that 
enable the grower to select his dealer and 
dictate prices or cater to the select family 
trade that will pay any price for the best. 
Depend upon it the market demands a 
higher grade of fruit and will richly reward 
the man who can furnish it. 
PLANET jn. 
Use only plants of high fruiting power 
and every plant should produce from one 
to four quarts to the hill. The great diffi- 
culty has been, heretofore, in keeping off 
the runners. That problem is now solved 
in the invention of the Automatic Run- 
ner Cutter. A good active boy will cut 
the runners off from three acres per day. 
He likes to see its fingers gather the runners 
up, carry them under the knives and clip 
them off. He will enjoy the work better 
than a ball play. 
Directions. Use as a walking cane 
merely setting it squarely over the plant 
and press down about four inches. The 
twisted steel shaft (fig. g, letter e) passes 
through the slot forcmg the two fingers 
(a) around, gathering up the runners and 
drawing them into the opening at (b), 
■where the knives on each side (c) are 
forced down by the cross-pieces (d), and 
the runners are instantly cut all by the 
one motion. Figure 9 shows the fingers 
■which have carried the runners under 
the chisels or knives (c). On lifting the 
machine to place it over another plant 
the fingers instantly fly back, the knives 
raise and you are ready for the next hill. 
It is all made of cast and wrought steel 
and cannot be broken except by out- 
rageously gross violence and any part 
can be replaced by mail. 
It will not miss a single runner 
nor injure a leaf and can be quickly 
adjusted for large or small hills by turn- 
ing a few set screws. 
It is the only IVTaehine ever in- 
vented that will do the work perfectly 
and is manufactured by the Ionia Straw- 
berry Tool Company, Ionia, Mich. Price, 
$6. They also control the patents and 
make the Perfection Plant Setter, price, 
$4, or the two machines to one order for 
$9. They may be ordered from me at 
the same price, delivered F. O. B. at 
Ionia. 
Every time you cut a runner, as a 
rule, you make a new fruit crown and new 
roots start out on the plant and you can 
readily accumulate these crowns until the 
plant is as large as a bushel basket, and send 
the roots far down into the subsoil. 
It solves the question of drouth. You are 
thus able to use the weeder or cultivator 
and keep a dust mulch all around close up 
to the plants and save all hand weeding. 
Your mulching can be put on heavily close 
up around the plant, without danger of 
smothering them, to conserve moisture in 
spring, and you can pick the berries with 
less than half the labor, because every berry 
is a big one; they are all together and not 
scattered through the foliage as in the 
matted rows, where pickers must hunt for 
them. They will sell for enough 
more than matted row berries to pay for 
the entire cost of cultivation, to say nothing 
of a ready market and fame and name of 
the grower. It's a pleasure to handle such 
fruit, and the most important of all it 
prevents exhaustion, so the plantation will 
fruit for several years without resetting. 
The Explanation is this: It is the 
seeds that exhaust the plants. A small 
berry has as manny seeds as a large one. 
If the plant has large rootage just at the 
time when it is undergoing the great strain 
of perfecting its great j-rop of fruit it 
will find an abundance of food and moisture 
to sustain it; whereas a small plant with 
Figure 9. 
Figure 10. 
