1907. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
621 
EXPERIENCE IN TESTING THIRTY 
VARIETIES OF STRAWBERRIES. 
The present season has been a most re¬ 
markable one, coming on so late that all 
varieties of strawberries escaped Into frosts, 
while bright days and frequent showers 
combined to produce an enormous crop of 
berries, with resulting low prices, but large 
sales. Several times we took from 1,000 to 
1,200 quarts of berries per acre at a single 
picking. I may easily divide the different 
varieties of strawberries into three classes, 
viz: standard varieties, promising and 
worthless. The latter will often do well on 
certain soils, but because of defects in foli¬ 
age or fruit were of no value to me. 
Standard Varieties. —The first variety 
to open the season was Texas. The foli¬ 
age is bright and strong and the berries 
of good size and quality, very light in color, 
the yield being good. Dunlap might bo 
called the standard early. Much of the 
fruit is large, but most berries are of good, 
medium size, firm, showy and of superb 
quality; season very long. The plant rusts 
somewhat and runners as badly as sorrel; 
needs restricting. Dunlap does best on 
good corn land, not extremely light and not 
toe heavy. Bubach ripens almost as early 
as Dunlap and makes but few plants, those 
being big, healthy rust-proof vines. Dunlap 
blooms very early; Bubach very late, thus 
escaping late frosts. The berries are of mam¬ 
moth size and very soft. Poeomoko comes 
third in ripening, is an enormous cropper and 
very rich in pollen, being a staminate that 
will fertilize almost any other variety, either 
early or late. This variety has immense roots 
and yet does not thrive on light soil, as the 
leaves curl up and turn purple just at 
fruiting time. On heavy soil this tendency 
is less noticeable. The fruit is often dull in 
color and has a speck of rot at the shoulder. 
Minute Man is the most promising new 
variety I have tested. The foliage looks 
like Dunlap, but is stronger and free from 
blight. Every berry is as smooth as a ball: 
the color is bright red, and the berries are 
held up from the ground so that they seldom 
rot. The fruit is not as firm as Sample, but 
the season of ripening is a fourth longer. 
Of all the varieties of the Jessie type. Uncle 
Jim is as good as any I have tested. (Jessie 
and New York both failed with me.) Uncle 
Jim bears a heavy crop of big, soft, light- 
colored, sweet berries, which come at mid¬ 
season and are soon gone. Sample we count, 
in this locality, as the standard of standards. 
Sample requires a medium heavy soil where 
it will produce a big crop of good-sized dark 
red berries, fairly firm and quite late if the 
plants are kept under mulch as late as pos¬ 
sible. The vines should be sprayed just be¬ 
fore they blossom. Glen Mary always closes 
the season with me. This year on rich low 
land, with lots of mulch to keep the plants 
back in Spring, my Glen Mary did not get 
Unto action very much until other varieties 
were nearly done; hence the net returns from 
this variety were at least one-fourth more 
than from midseason varieties. One-fourth 
acre planted largely to Glen Mary, the re¬ 
maining varieties being earlier and inferior 
to this, produced over Id crates, (320 
quarts), at a single picking. The vines are 
very liable to rust and the fruit is rough, but 
becomes smooth as the season advances, and 
holds up well In size. 
Promising Varieties. —Of these I will 
say but little, as few of them are the equals 
of those varieties already named. Wm. 
Belt is a fairly good berry, of superb quality, 
but the vines rust badly. Bismarck Is very 
firm, a good pollenizer, but the fruit soon 
runs small. Mark ITanna appears to de¬ 
serve a high place among standard sorts. 
The fruit is very large and of beautiful dark 
red color, apparently a heavy cropper; very 
promising. Mrs, Hanna produced the finest 
fruit I raised this year, but was not very 
prolific. I.atest seems much like Parker 
Earle but is twice as large; not equal to 
Nettie, the most promising new late variety. 
All the fruit of this variety was large and 
late, even on early light soil. Morning Star 
was unlike the catalogue descriptions—rather 
late; the berries were large, round, of dark 
color when fully ripe and of good quality. 
Hero bore a good crop of large berries, rather 
. dull in color, like Bismarck, but colored all 
over at once and attractive. Southerland 
bears a big crop of bright red, soft berries, 
not as large as Minute Man, and in every 
way inferior to the latter. Aroma is defi¬ 
cient in vines unless treated with nitrate of 
soda in the Spring. The fruit is very large 
and late, but Aroma is not a very prolific 
variety apparently. Nehring’s Gem bore a 
good crop of dark red berries, very easy to 
pick; promising. Stevens Late Champion 
;yiWds a very small crop of very handsome, 
IbrSght, scarlet fruit; season late and short. 
Not much good. I believe that Common¬ 
wealth is the best very late variety yet tested. 
The season is extremely late and hence short 
but the yield is fine while the berries last. 
Firm as an apple, the fruit needs to stay on 
the vines for several days after the upper 
half turns red. The berries are large and 
very sweet; the great late berry to ship. 
President would be a grand mate for Com¬ 
monwealth were it not that the fruit. Is soft 
and the blossoms very tender to frost. 
Worthless Varieties. —These varieties 
need no comment other than that with me 
they proved to be by far inferior to those 
above named. Excelsior, Marie, Fairfield, 
Springdale Beauty, New Home, Velvet, Splen¬ 
did, Crescent, Beaver, Mrs. Miller, North 
Shore, Fountain. The latter was too thick 
in vines for best results, and may be worthy 
of another trial. a. t. tenney. 
Massachusetts. 
TRADE UNION MEN AS FARMERS. 
W. J., Brooklyn. N. Y —Is co-operative 
farming practical? In other words, say 25 
or 50 men (from one of the large trade 
unions of our metropolis) form themselves 
into an organization, rent a farm which 
would give each man about three acres of 
land, provided he could take care of that 
amount and would work conscientiously, and 
at the end of the season for all to combine 
and ship the product of their labor to some 
commission merchant in the city. Is the 
scheme practical from a financial standpoint? 
Consider that a few will be found among 
the number who have been “bread and but¬ 
tered” on the farm in early life, while others 
have never seen a potato planted. There 
are certain labor unions in the big cities 
whose members experience a certain amount 
of hardship through idleness in Summer. 
It is in behalf of these that the above ques¬ 
tion is asked. 
Co-Operative “Union” Farming. 
I do not believe this scheme is practical. 
The profits from large enterprises, in all 
lines, depend largely on some “master mind 
that has grown up in the business, and has 
a large financial Interest and a larger pa¬ 
ternal one. Every enterprise that is above 
the average has some one who feels a pride 
in it, and a hired manager does not often 
fill the bill. A farm, to be profitable, must 
have a certain amount of stock and ma¬ 
chinery which must he fed and cared for all 
the year, so that some one would have to 
stay there all the time. The product of 
two or three acres per man would not sell 
for enough, net, to pay his carfare and 
board, because there are but few crops. If 
any, that can be grown in a few Summer 
months. Farmers average, as a rule, to care 
for 50 acres each. There is a good deal of 
work that must be done to prepare for the 
crop in Winter and Spring. A competent 
manager would have to be provided who 
would stay there all the time, and be would 
have to plan for all, buy the seed, fertilizers, 
and board the men. There would be no suc¬ 
cess. for each man to determine for himself 
what he would put on his ground, and when. 
Three aeres for 50 men would be 150 acres, 
and as they would all want to plow, there 
would be quite a demand for teams and tools 
the same week to get that amount of ground 
ready. There would be confusion, contention 
and consumption of time enough to drive a 
man crazy. Hence a manager is imperative, 
and complete control by him required. He 
would have an access of help for a few 
months, such as It Is, but in early Spring 
and in the Fall he would have none. Should 
he hire enough for those periods he would 
not need the city men during three months 
of Summer. Farming is no “Summer vaca- 
' tlon" trip to be picked up and dropped when 
there is nothing else to do, but a profession 
requiring a comprehensive plan, carefully 
outlined for several years in advance. The 
organization would be fortunate if it did not 
get a “grafter” as manager, one who only 
“stayed as long as his salary was paid,” 
not cutting them short on time, and who 
had the spirit of getting the rest to work. 
There would be no trouble about selling 
the products. Instead of selling to a com¬ 
mission man, have one man sell it to the 
members of the union, who would have no 
trouble in eating all of it. He might have 
to charge pretty well for it to get costs, 
perhaps, but it would be “their own make” 
and taste better. I presume the union could 
establish a store or distributing point with 
some merchant In their own neighborhood 
that would be self-supporting, if it received 
the patronage of all the members, that would 
provide a market for a dozen such farms 
and thousands of dollars worth of pur¬ 
chased goods beside. 
The only way I can see Is to form a stock 
company with some owner of a large farm 
near the city, who shall be one of the prin¬ 
cipal owners and manager, and let the mem¬ 
bers work for the company under him at regu¬ 
lar wage and a share in the profits of the 
growing on the farm and the selling in the 
store. The union would have to manage so 
that help could be furnished when needed, 
and could plan to have as much work as 
possible when there was the least in the city. 
I think I can offer a more feasible plan to 
aid the “out of work" members. Form an 
organization for the purpose of furnishing 
help to people needfng help. Have a regular 
office, advertise in agricultural papers, send 
out reliable men of good habits, at a fair 
price, at first, and you will soon be swamped 
with orders. As soon as your reputation is 
established you can obtain the highest prices 
going. Workmen are needed badly in the 
country in the Summer, and every member of 
the union can have all he wants to do. Pre¬ 
vious experience is not needed; nothing but a 
shirt, a pair of overalls, hat, heavy shoes 
and a willingness to work is required. The 
farmer will furnish food, room, work and 
wages. c E. CHAPMAN. 
Very Little Faith In It. 
Theoretically, yes. Practically, co-opera¬ 
tion does not usually work out the utopian 
way it should. The personal equation enters 
in. If each man would “work conscientious¬ 
ly” the thing would go, but as is always 
the case, there are so many whose “con¬ 
sciences are seared, as it were, with a red 
hot iron.” From a financial standpoint, I 
think most of the number without experi¬ 
ence, would lie found in the Fall, begging 
bread. With the demand going up all over 
the country for “laborers to go forth to the 
harvest.” there is no need for any to stand 
about the market places all the day idle. If 
men are willing to go out in the country 
at all. and are worth their salt when they 
get there, at the wages being paid at the 
present time they would be much better off 
to work for some farmer with land, cash 
and experience. Personally I have very little 
faith in such schemes, or sympathy for the 
army of the unemployed, and I have bad 
some experience with both. 
EDWARD VAN ALSTYNB. 
Would Like to See Them Try It. 
In regard to the co-operative farming 
scheme practiced by trade union men, I will 
say that I don’t believe it would be a suc¬ 
cess. These men expect too much pay for 
too little work. They would want as much 
pay as I could command as an expert dairy¬ 
man and cattle feeder, and they would be of 
about as much use as an eight-year-old 
farm-bred boy. I would really like to see 
them try the scheme, just to take some of 
the conceit out of them, but I cannot truth¬ 
fully say that T think they would make any 
money at. it. The question you sent me is 
just a rumble of an impending earthquake 
that is going to shake up this country some 
day. The United States Government has 
fostered the manufacturer and the mechan¬ 
ical worker until nearly all of the competent 
men have been drawn away from the farms. 
There is a limit even to American mechanical 
industries, and the workmen must have 
something to eat. ,t. grant morse. 
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