891 Mode of Managing Strawberries . 
this use, is taken out; if we allow then, on the original 
twenty-six trusses, six for the short straw taken out and 
applied to other uses, twenty trusses will remain, which 
cost this year ten pence a truss, or sixteen shillings and 
eight pence, being one penny for every nine feet of straw- 
berries in rows. 
From this original expenditure the value of the ma- 
nure made by the straw when taken from the beds must 
be deducted, as the whole of it goes undiminished to the 
dunghill as soon as the crop is over. The cost of this 
practice, therefore, cannot be considered as heavy; in 
the present year not a single shower fell at Spring Grove, 
from the time the straw was laid down till the crop of 
scarlets was nearly finished at the end of June. The 
expense of strawing was therefore many times repaid by 
the saving made in the labour of watering, and the profit 
of this saving was immediately brought to account in in- 
crease of other crops, by the use of water spared from 
the strawberries; and besides, the berries themselves 
were, under this management, as fair and nearly as large 
as in ordinary years, but the general complaint of the 
gardeners this year was, that the scarlets did not reach 
half their natural size, and of course required twice as 
many to fill a pottle as would do it in a good year. 
In wet years the straw is of less importance in this 
point of view, but in years moderately wet, the use of 
strawing sometimes makes watering wholly unnecessary, 
when gardeners who do not straw are under the necessity 
of resorting to it; and we all know if watering is once be- 
gun, it cannot be left off till rain enough has fallen to 
give the ground a thorough soaking. 
Even in wet years the straw does considerable service, 
heavy rains never fail to dash up abundance of mould, 
and fix it upon the berries, this is entirely prevented, as 
well as the dirtiness of those berries that lean down upon 
