176 
STRAWBERRIES. 
removal will necessarily deter the plants from any great develop¬ 
ment of foliage before the winter, and the utmost they can do, 
and indeed it is all that we should in wisdom desire, is to form a 
good number of roots, and to this end both theory and experience 
show that a paucity of aliment has a greater tendency than a 
superabundance of food. In the spring, as soon as the ground 
can be worked, a good coating of manure should be given, and 
then the plants having established themselves will be in a condition 
to receive with benefit all the assistance thus offered them. 
The advantage of planting as early as possible lies in the 
increased chance it gives the plants to become firmly rooted 
before the winter, and so to prepare them for a vigorous start in 
the next active season, when each will throw up at least one truss 
of bloom, and being but six inches apart in the rows, will pro¬ 
duce an average crop the first year, an advantage completely lost 
when the planting is deferred till the spring. Should circum¬ 
stances, however, entirely preclude the possibility of finally 
stationing the runners in autumn, something may be gained by 
taking them off the parent stools, and bedding them rather 
closely together to stand till the ground intended for them can 
be made ready ; they will then take up with a mass of fibres, and 
with attention will not feel the shift to any great extent, being 
decidedly stronger than such as may remain on the old plants 
all the winter. 
As soon as the fruit is gathered in the first season, two adjoin¬ 
ing plants should be cut out and only the third left, they will 
then stand eighteen inches apart in the rows, a distance that will 
be found far more advantageous, both for the production of fine 
fruit, and the opportunity it affords of running out a light crop 
of some other kind between the rows, than can be the old method 
of crowding strawberries into beds with the stools almost touching 
each other. In the succeeding autumn, on the removal of the 
runners, manure should be spread between them, and by all 
means dug in at once, as it must be at least unnatural if not 
positively injurious to mulch anything while in a dormant state, 
as is actually the case when dung is laid about them and allowed 
to wash in by the rains of autumn and winter; the absurdity of 
this practice can only be equalled by that of cutting off the leaves 
at the autumn dressing, and yet both are very generally followed; 
