52 
Some authorities tell us not to use chemicals lest 
they so weaken the bulb that it may die in storage, but 
one of the most successful growers I know of begins 
very early in the spring to accumulate sack after sack 
of various chemicals and he concocts mixtures which 
would delight the heart of a professor of chemistry. 
The results he obtains are truly wonderful and his bulbs 
and bulblets, instead of being weakened, seem ready 
to make even a stronger growth with each succeeding 
year. Hence it is evident that if properly used the 
chemical fertilizers are excellent. 
Other authorities tell us not to fertilize very heav¬ 
ily, for overfeeding a plant is like overfeeding a man 
and the man isn’t good for much of anything after we 
get him fed up. Also that a plant which is overfed is 
like a man who has imbibed too freely and has gotten 
drunk. 
In this connection I well recall how, when I was a 
boy, my father fenced off what had been an old cow 
corral and told me I could have it for a strawberry 
patch. I planted it and hoed it and in due time had 
the most remarkable strawberry patch of which I have 
ever heard; the leaves reached from one row to the 
other and were high above my knees; but the most 
remarkable thing about the whole patch was that I 
never got even so much as a gallon of strawberries 
from it. Monster leaves and vines but no strawber¬ 
ries. A few years later my father planted a straw¬ 
berry patch on some old pasture land; the soil was not 
very rich and the leaves did not grow large, but the 
berries did, and he had a great many of them. Gladioli 
will use to good advantage much more fertilizer than 
will the strawberries, but the thing should not be over- 
