Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1911 — Farm and Garden [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Farm and Garden

MONEY IN STRAWBERRIES. You Can Pisek Them Away Into October if Planted Right. That the strawberries are money makers Is evidenced from this story from C. E. Purseis of Illinois, published in the Farmer. He says: ••Grow them from plants set in the spring in four feet apart and two to three feet apart in the row. They should be kept cultivated and hoed all through the season until fall. when, if they do well, you should have a row fifteen to twenty inches wide. “The ground should be got in as good shape as possible before starting to mark the'rows. If the plot is in shape so you can check them so much the better. It saves quite a little hoeing. You can cross cultivate them about twice before they start to throw out many runners They need hoeing four or five times during the summer and should be cultivated every week or so to keep the ground from crusting over and to keep down the weeds. Work until the plants quit growing in the fall. Then they are

mulched with straw, about three or four loads to the acre, any time after they have finished growing until winter sets in. “We plant J>erries in the early fall eight to ten inches apart and put the rows three to five and a half feet apart because they do not throw out many runners. We begin picking them about February and March and ship in pint boxes in place of quarts, in Florida they are set out in double rows about ten inches apart, with about three feet between every two rows, which they keep cultivated. The soil is nothing but sand, and they mulch to keep them out of the sand. 1 was there in January this year and saw some of them still covered, and they were shipping ripe berries at the same time, getting 50 cents per quart at the station. They ship in thirty-two and sixty-four quart refrigerators. If needed and when empty they are returned to the shipper. r “The profit in growing berries has been very good the last three years, clearing from $1.25 to $2 to the case and making from 150 to 300 cases to the acre. The past was an exceptional year. We bad ripe berries through August, September and up to October that were as fine as you ever saw, being mostly Haverland and Clyde. I know of one man who had about twen-ty-five cases that sold as high as $6 a case. No one seems to know why they fruited this year the second time. All varieties did not I had Warfields and Dunlaps that I got no berries off the second crop. There were some others who had a few Warfields and Dunlaps, but the Clyde was as heavy on one end of the bed as the first crop, which was extra good this year ”

Don’t Neglect Table Manners. No amount of knowledge, wealth and good clothes can compensate for the lack of rhe simple table manners which you should have learned in your childhood and should, if you have children of your own, reach the youngsters while they are small. Break off and butter a bit of bread at a time as you want it Eat quietly, keeping lips closed while chewing. Don’t eat hurriedly. Don’t begin to eat until the others are served. Don’t shovel food on knife blade and scrape off with fork. When food is tender enough, use fork in cutting rather than your knife. Eat desserts, cakes and salads with fork, if possible. Don’t drink tea or coffee from saucer. In using the napkin a man of good breeding leaves bis half folded and lays it across his lap. The woman spreads hers over her lap. Shun everything which looks like a display of greediness. To heap the plate, to gobble the food, to drain your glass or your cup, to tip your soup plate that none of the precious drops may escape you. td swab the gravy from the plate with a bit of bread and to demand a second help before others at the table have fairly begun of their first supply are all manifestations of a lack of breeding. Boys Dote on Melons. No one who has a piece of ntioderately light soil well exposed to the sun can afford to be Cantaloupes. On a hot day there is nothing that will replace a liberal portion of ice chilled cantaloupe, especially with ice cream in the hollow. , Cantaloupes will thus help keep the boy on the farm.

FINE STRAWBERRY PLANT.