THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
30 
management those just planted will bear next season, abundance of 
good fruit may be reckoned upon. As this is a good time for making 
new beds, the first thing to be done is to fix upon the sorts you 
intend to patronize. The varieties are very numerous, and fresh 
competitors for public favour are constantly appearing, so that there 
is room for caprice or experiment, or love of novelty. If neither of 
these impulses is very strong within you, and you feel that you can 
be satisfied with good tried sorts, take these three — Keen’s Seed- 
ling, the British Queen, and the Elton Pine. 
These are deservedly favourites, as having fine flavour and being 
plentiful bearers ; they also come in in succession, which is a great 
advantage. If you have no old beds, you must procure runners 
elsewhere, with all the delay consequent upon having young plants 
with the roots exposed and somewhat dry. But if you have old 
beds, and have neglected to plant out the runners into a nursery 
bed in the summer, you cannot do better than adopt the following 
rules, which for several years have been found effective for securing 
good crops of this delicious fruit. Let the ground be well dug, 
and incorporated with good rotten dung from an old cucumber or 
melon-pit. I prefer growing strawberries in double rows, at the 
edges of beds in the kitchen garden, aud I think the plan has many 
advantages. But, whatever mode you prefer, do not allow the plants 
to be more than two rows in depth, but interpose a path half a yard 
in width between every phalanx of two rows. The object is to have 
every plant distinct in the rows, so that air and light may be fully 
en joyed, and runners may be easily cut off as they appear ; and also 
that a space may be allowed wide enough to walk down the beds, 
to get at the fruit. Having your ground marked out with a line, 
proceed to the old bed, and take up the young plants which have 
rooted in it with a trowel. Choose those which appear to be 
most strong and established. Then dig holes with the trowel 
along your line, and carefully deposit the plants in them, about 
a foot apart every way. As the strawberry has, even in its 
young state, a vast quantity of root fibres, the process of 
taking up with a trowel preserves these, and prevents the plants 
being much checked by removal. By this process some fruit 
may be expected next year, although not so much as a more scientific 
plan would have secured. These plants, removed from an old bed, 
have been denied many advantages which a little forethought would 
have given them; they have bten crowded together and shaded by 
the old leaves, so that they are not so fully developed as they might 
have been if the runners had been planted in a nursery bed in the 
summer as soon as they were old enough to be removed. As the 
treatment needed afterwards can be dwelt upon more usefully at 
the proper season for applying it, more need not be said upon the 
subject. If not done before, your old bearing beds should now be 
looked over. Remove all runners and dead leaves, but do not inter- 
fere with those which are healthy, as they have eveu now more 
work to do in maturing the future buds. A little dung may be laid 
upon the surface, and worked in with a fork, but do not let the 
prongs go too deep to interfere with the roots. I have sometimes 
October. 
