10 
GEORGE RENNIE, ANDOVER, MASS. 
dry off after heavy rain, and you get very few rotten 
berries. Not quite as heavy a cropper as the Howard. 
Th.ey ripen a week after the Howard. They are at 
their best when the Howard are starting to run down 
a little in size. Therefore they bring a better price 
in the market. If I was growing berries for the 
market I would grow one-half Howard and one-half 
Catskill. The Howard on the light to medium land 
and the Catskill on the heavy land. Don’t plant 
Catskill on light land, plant Howard 17. 
I '• SPACING OF PLANTS 
■ ■■ Most growers allow far too many plants to set 
in the row. We believe that the largest crops of the 
finest berries can be grown in rows two and a half 
to three feet wide with plants spaced seven or eight 
or even nine inches apart. Any plants that set closer 
than this should be treated as weeds and should be 
cut out with the hoe when hoeing the plants. Have 
one end of the hoe very sharp for this purpose. In 
the’ matted row you will find the most and largest 
berries are at the side of the rows. That is because 
they have more moisture than plants in the middle 
of Hie rows. In the spaced rows they have all the 
moisture they need to make large fruit. In the 
spaced rows you have very little rot as they dry off 
better after rain. You also get larger berries in a 
dry season. We have a customer on the North Shore 
that set out 500 Howard 17 plants. He allowed each 
plant to make only eight runners spaced nine inches 
apart and he picked from the 500 plants 1300 quarts 
of berries. All the growers in that town are follow¬ 
ing this system now. Some growers may think this 
is too much work. Suppose you try spacing the 
plants in two or three rows and compare with the 
rest of your bed. 
