October. That is four crops of berries from the 
same planting in about eighteen months. 
CULTURE OF EVERBEARERS 
To maintain this continuous heavy production, 
Everbearers need plenty of fertilizer and irriga¬ 
tion. 
It will pay to apply five tons per acre of poultry 
or fifteen tons or more of barn-yard manure and 
disc or cultivate well into the soil before planting. 
If this is not available, one pound of fish meal 
or blood meal per plant applied after the plants 
are set will give excellent results. 
The first blossoms put out soon after planting 
should be picked off all strawberry plants. With 
Everbearers, if you want berries and not plants, 
allow the next blossoms that are set to produce 
and pick the runners off. With this method all 
everbearers, even Gem, will put all their energy 
into fruit and produce very few runners after the 
first few are removed. 
One very reliable Eastern grower reports the 
following comparative yields from various plant¬ 
ing systems for the fall of 1935. This is for 
Mastodon, Gem, and Empire All Red: 
Matted row . 
Spaced row with plants 7 in. apart 
Double hill row with plants 11 in. 
apart. Plants set in April, 22 in. 
apart with 3 new runners from 
each original plant . 
Double hill row with plants 12 in. 
apart. All plants set in April 
and all runners removed . 103 pts. 
This shows the double hill row with plants 12 
inches apart easily the most productive and 
profitable the first season. 
The spaced row with plants 6 to 8 inches apart 
will, however, produce more berries the following 
season, and requires less plants. 
GEM 
This very promising new everbearer was intro¬ 
duced in Michigan in 1934 and with us has made 
good on the glowing description of the introducers 
as the finest everbearer ever produced. It is a 
true everbearer. Every mother plant and many 
of the runner plants produce a full crop of berries 
the first season. The berries are uniformly large 
and round, firm enough to ship, a bright, red 
color clear through, and ripen evenly all over. 
There are no small berries, which put Gem in a 
class by itself as an everbearer. Gem produces, 
in addition to a full crop of large berries, a great 
37 pts. 
51 pts. 
68 pts. 
