R. M. KELIOGO S GREAT CROPS OF 
the same as water, so that a low piece of ground 
with high land all around it should not be selected. 
Level land with no high hills near it will do. A 
south incline matures fruit early and a north incline 
makes the same variety later. 
MANURING THIS GROUND. 
Stable manure is the best. I should prefer to 
have it well rotted, but that cannot always be had. 
Get the best you can find, even if you have to draw 
it as fast as made. Spread it evenly over the 
ground during the winter and early spring. Do 
not put in piles. The deep snow is no objection to 
spreading. The winter and spring rains will wash 
the juices into tlie ground so it will be incorporated 
with the soil where the plants can use it. Before 
plowing rake off all coarse straw so that capillary 
attraction which draws water from the lower sub- 
soil shall not be cut off. Water will not pass up 
through a mass of straw if plowed under. Be 
very careful about this. If you can't get stable 
manure apply broadcast from 400 to 800 pounds of 
pure, fine ground raw bone meal and not over fifty 
bushels per acre of unleached hardwood ashes and 
cultivate in before plowing. If commercial fer- 
tilizers are used select those rich in potash and 
phosphoric acid which are always conducive to 
fruit formation. 
The Roller. — You cannot properly fit land 
without a roller or floater. The plow and harrow 
leave the ground too loose and do not sufficiently 
exclude free air and capillary action will not bring 
the water up from below. The particles of earth 
must be brought near together. If you do not have 
a roller, take three two-inch planks about seven 
feet long and one foot wide; bolt or spike the edges 
together like the siding on a house, and hitch a 
chain to each end and load it with as much stone 
as the team can draw, and go over the surface. On 
many soils it will do better work than a roller. 
Do not attempt to set plants in loose earth. 
The Floater. 
HOW PLANTS FEFD, 
About ninety-five per cent of the substance of 
plants by weight comes from the atmosphere and 
only five per cent from the soil. There are about 
sixty ingredients in the soil which plants use but 
they get along very well if only sixteen of them 
are present. These ingredients are found in abund- 
ance in all friable soils, except potash, phosphoric 
acid and nitrogen, which must be replenished by 
manure. 
These foods must be dissolved in the soil 
water and are sucked up by the little hair roots 
and passed from cell to cell through the center of 
the nlant to the leaves by a peculiar force known 
as osmosis. The leaves are the stomach and lungs 
of the plant and they digest the food by breathing 
the water away through little mouths on the under 
side of the leaves called stomatas and at the same 
time they tiike in carbonic acid gas from the air 
and combine it with the soil foods and this digested 
mass then passes out of the leaves under the bark. 
Carrie. 
building up the little cells in the plant and fruit, 
which constitutes the growth. 
This process in digestion can only take place in 
sunlight, so plants cannot grow and produce fruit 
unless they have plenty of light and air. They 
soon turn pale and die in the dark. 
For this reason we must set all plants far 
enough apart for the sunshine to reach every leaf 
and fruit bud. The leaves of a strawberry plant 
naturally droop over so that the sun shines on the 
crown and therefore they must not be allowed to 
mat so thickly as to shut out the light. 
WHY WE PLOW. 
We have shown that plants take their soil foods 
dissolved in water. If all the plant foods in the 
ground were soluble and available at one time, the 
rains would wash them all out and the land would 
soon become barren. It would do very little good 
to apply manure because it would be lost before 
the plants could use it. 
Nature has provided for this by making 
a chemical change in the foods and they become 
insoluble in water, at the same time a resolvent was 
provided to make them available as fast as the 
plants could use them, and this " resolvent " is the 
oxygen of the air. When we plow, harrow and 
roll to crush lumps, it not only opens the ground 
so it will hold more water, but the oxygen comes 
in contact with the soil grains just before the 
plants are set and they can then get plenty of food 
and will grow very fast. 
No matter how vigorous your plants may 
be they will not produce large crops of fruit unless 
they can have food and moisture, and this can only 
be secured by thoroughly manuring and preparing 
the soil. 
Subsoiling is to follow the common plow with 
one which only breaks up and pulverizes the lower 
strata and leaves it at the bottom of the furrow 
This subsoil must not be brought to the surface, as 
it contains but little plant food. By breaking it 
up we actually create a reservoir of water under 
the plants which draws up by capillary action to 
12 
