690 
several years, so as to avoid white grubs. The cul¬ 
tivating destroys these nasty insects. We would 
rather plow or spade in pea or bean vines, or cow 
peas, than to put in manure, but the soil must he 
rich and full of some sort of organic matter if you 
want prize berries. An old sod is worst of all. both 
on account of the white grubs and the trouble in 
keeping the grass and weeds down. Plow or spade 
the ground deep and rake or harrow the surface 
down level. Get your plants as fresh from the field 
as possible, and do not let the roots be exposed to 
the sun and air for a moment. Keep them covered 
with damp moss or soil. Nip off about two inches 
of the roots, and if the stems are well grown nip 
them off and leave new foliage to grow from the 
crown. We do not plant the fruit tree exactly as 
it comes out of the nurseryman’s box—why should 
we the strawberry plant? 
THE RIGHT KIND.—If you are after big. fancy 
berries you must take certain varieties which are 
naturally poor plant-makers and shy bearers. If 
you want milk testing 5% or more of fat you get a 
Jersey or a Guernsey cow, because it is the nature 
of these breeds to make that kind of milk. It might 
not pay to keep them if you were shipping three- 
cent milk to the city, but if you are after “quality” 
milk you know where to go after it. Much the same 
with strawberries. It is the nature of some varie¬ 
ties like Marshall, Chesapeake. Mary and the old 
Parker Earle to grow in hills if you help them a 
little, and produce a comparatively few great ber¬ 
ries rather than many small berries and runners. 
HOW TO PLANT.—Planting 2%x2 feet is good 
practice when you bed out the hills. In order to 
get the best fruit the berries should not be shaded 
too much, as they are in matted rows. There will 
be a fringe of fruit around the outer rim of the hill, 
and this should meet the sun. In planting we would 
not dig a hole, but push a flat trowel or spade into 
the soil and work it until there is room to put in 
the plant. With a quick flirt of the hand shake out 
the roots fan shape and put them in behind the 
spade. Pull this out quickly and the soil falls in 
around the plant. Get it down so that the crown is 
just above ground and firm the soil around it level. 
Do not under any circumstances pinch the soil 
around the plant and leave the hard pinched mass 
there. 
FERTILIZERS.—The time to fertilize the straw¬ 
berry is when it is planted. It is a close feeding 
plant—that is, its roots do not extend out into the 
row like those of corn and potatoes. Its food must 
be soluble and put up close to it. In properly fitted 
soil chemical fertilizers are best. You can use one 
of the ready-mixed fruit or truck fertilizers, or mix 
the following: One part, by weight, nitrate of soda, 
one part dried blood, three parts fine bone, one part 
sulphate of potash. From choice we should scatter 
this in a strip about a foot wide where the row 
is to be and rake or cultivate it in before planting. 
NOW FOR WORK.—Thus far it has been pretty 
much all play—now the real work begins. These 
plants must be hoed or worked twice a week until 
August, and watched with a critical eye to know 
just what to do with them. The so-called lazy 
man’s way is to put a thick mulch of clean straw all 
over the ground. This keeps most of the weeds from 
growing. A few come up through the straw and can 
be pulled by hand. You will have better plants 
and better berries if you keep the mulch off and 
depend on a sharp scuffle hoe to keep down the 
weeds. This sort of a hoe does not dig, but slices 
and cuts the upper soil crust without disturbing the 
roots. In a rich garden soil it is a good plan to 
sow lettuce or radishes or even dwarf peas between 
the strawberry rows—anything that will not shade 
the plants. Keeping these crops clean will help 
in hoeing the berries. They must he kept clean, and 
the soil must be kept stirred up until August at 
least. There will be some bloom on these plants. 
In commercial culture we let this bloom alone to 
make berries, but when you are growing fancy gar¬ 
den berries it will pay to nip this bloom off and pre¬ 
vent fruiting. Late in June runners will begin to 
form. Now comes the instinct or judgment which 
only the true crank may know. What you ought to 
do is to lay down or root three strong runners 
around each plant you set out. This is called the 
parent plant, and the “hill” you are after will com¬ 
prise this plant and three of its strong runners 
rooted evenly around it. It will require judgment 
to select the three best ones and put them in the 
right places. When they are thus placed every 
other runner which this hill makes should be nipped 
off as soon as you can find it. It is in pruning off 
these runners that the ordinary strawberry crank 
falls by the wayside, for it is dull, monotonous and 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
back-breaking work. It can be done in a garden, 
but would not pay in commercial culture. 
JUDGMENT REQUIRED.—In August there will 
come a time when more instinct is required. We 
all know the modern theory of handling a peach or¬ 
chard. The plan is to feed well in Spring and give 
the most thorough culture up to July or August. 
This produces a fine growth of wood on the trees. 
By the middle of July these trees usually have all 
the new wood they ought to carry. If they keep on 
growing wood they will not make strong fruit buds, 
and the wood they have already made will not be 
ripened or hardened for Winter. So the object is 
THE TAILLESS RUSSIAN SHEEP. Fig. 282. 
(See page 705.) 
to stop growth. This is usually done by seeding a 
cover crop or letting the weeds and grass grow 
naturally. These living crops take the moisture 
and available plant food in the soil, and the tree 
stops growing and ripens its fruit and starts fruit 
buds for next year. Now in something the same 
way these hill-grown, rank strawberry plants should 
be started in August into making their buds for next 
year. We cannot handle them as we do the peach 
trees, and keen judgment is required. We may in 
some cases use a mixture of acid phosphate and 
potash. This contains no nitrogen, and will not 
stimulate growth, but help the formation of fruit 
buds. We may cover the ground with a thick mulch 
of chopped straw or coarse hay. This prevents 
weed growth and with the potash and phosphate 
will help the bud formation. In some cases where 
the leaf and stem growth is extravagant it will pay 
FRUITING HABIT OF JABOTICABA. Fig. 28.3. 
to make a thick seeding of oats and barley right 
among the berries. This will act much the same as 
a cover crop in a peach orchard. This crop should 
not lie permitted to grow too high, and the runners 
should still be cut from the berries. 
THE OVERCOAT.—Just before the ground 
freezes the entire patch should be covered with a 
thick mulch of coarse straw, hay or stalks. A straw¬ 
berry overcoat should not fit down close to the 
plants. They must breathe. You do not need to pre- 
May y, 
vent their freezing, but you want to prevent freeze 
and thaw during the early Spring, or on sunny Win¬ 
ter days. The next year you loosen the mulch to 
let the plants go through, and you have them much 
like those shown in the picture. The strawberry 
crank is completing his job by applying a little more 
of that fertilizer at blooming time. Then he will 
put back the mulch and wait for the harvest. 
FITTING SOIL FOR GRASS. 
I have a field of about eight acres which I would 
like to get seeded to grass for hay. It is rather light 
sandy soil: have had it in rotation of crops for the 
last 18 years; hay two years, pastured two years, then 
plowed and planted to corn one year. The next year 
would reseed to clover and Timothy with a cover crop 
of oats along with the grass seed; the grass seed would 
make a good start after seeding, but when the hot sun 
came on in July and August the grass would all burn 
out. I have been doing this for the last five years. I 
have had corn on this land now two years, and wish 
to reseed again this Spring or Summer to grass seed. 
I have thought of trying another way to get a stand 
of grass seeding. This land, no doubt, is run out badly 
as I have never put on any manure, as we have none 
to put back. Would you consider it wise to sow 
Velvet beans on this land and plow under, or Giant 
spurrev? Which of these two would you advise to be 
sown and plowed under the latter part of July or the 
first of August, then put in the grass seed? I intend 
to sow one ton of commercial fertilizer when I sow 
the grass seed about the first of August, or 
what would you advise to do better? This Giant 
spurrey and Velvet beans are both something new to 
me. as I have never had any experience with either of 
them. They are highly recommended in the seed 
catalogue to grow great crops on very poor soil. I also 
want to put on lime. When would be the best time to 
do this? Will it be all right to put on lime just be¬ 
fore I sow grass seed and work it in first? T. M. 
Michigan. 
If that field were on our own farm, we should say 
that it needed both lime and humus, in order to 
make it fit for growing a large crop of grass. 
Natural grass land is porous enough to hold moist¬ 
ure well. This light soil evidently has little organic 
matter in it. and therefore dries out rapidly during 
a drought. Once get it well seeded to grass and 
clover, and the decaying roots of the sod will help 
keep up the humus supply. We should spend the 
earlier part of this year in filling that soil with 
organic matter, and then seed to grass alone next 
Fall. There is no use experimenting with untried 
cover crops just because you see them mentioned 
in the seed catalogue. When any seedsman hooms 
an untried plant of this kind, and claims great 
things for it, you may safely conclude that he is 
trying to fill his pocket with money, rather than to 
fill your soil with humus. 
The Velvet bean will do well in the South. We 
have seen the vines in Florida so long that they 
literally chased a man out of the cornfield and 
climbed trees along a field 15 or 20 feet high. Be¬ 
cause they did that in Florida, there is no reason 
that they would do the same with you, and in your 
position you would far better stick to the old relia¬ 
ble crops which have been proved serviceable again 
and again. Instead of trying spurrey and Velvet 
beans, we should work that land up as early in the 
Spring as possible, and put in a heavy seeding of 
Canada peas and oats. Use a fair amount of a 
soluble fertilizer to push these crops on. In late 
June plow the whole mass right under, and put one 
ton per acre of air-slaked lime on the furrows and 
harrow in. rolling the land down hard so as to 
pack down the cover crop after plowing. Then two 
plans are open to you. One is to keep that ground 
thoroughly stirred up again and again through the 
later Summer until September,’which is the time for 
seeding. The other is to sow a heavy seeding of 
buckwheat and rape, immediately after putting on 
the lime when the peas and oats are plowed under. 
Let the buckwheat and rape grow until the latter 
part of August, and then plow them under, working 
cross-wise from the first plowing. Then fit the soil 
as well as possible, and put. in a heavy seeding about 
the middle of .September. Put the grass seed in 
alone after fitting (lie soil perfectly, and grading it 
so as to prevent hollows or uneven places. You will 
find that this stuffs the soil with organic matter, 
and using lime freely, will make this field hold 
moisture better, and enable the grass to make a 
far better start, and give a better crop. 
Here is something of a new argument for sheep, 
coming from the Canadian Northwest: 
Of the three hundred known Saskatchewan farm 
weeds, the sheep will eat and make splendid mutton of 
no fewer than 200. while stock and horses will merely 
take 00 or 70 of them. Where Summer fallows are 
fenced, a flock of sheep will keep down the weeds 
which absorb so much of the precious moisture, con¬ 
verting them to a fat profit in mutton. 
There is no question about the weed-killing power 
of sheep. Many nurserymen and gardeners keep a 
few sheep to tidy up the lanes and fence corners 
by cleaning out the weeds. There should be more 
of them kept, and there would be—but for the cur 
dogs. 
