Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — How to Grow Strawberries. [ARTICLE]

How to Grow Strawberries.

In an address delivered before the Horticultural Society at Worcester, Mass-, by James Draper, there are some good suggestions respecting the best methods of growing and trimming strawberries: “ A deep soil —if not naturally deep, made' so by trenching or subsoiling—is of the first 'importance. Next to that is heavy manuring. We have used fortjr and sometimes as many as fifty cords per acre and the crops have doubly paid for this extra outlay in manvfre.

-t ... • ■ - c-: “The distance apart for setting plants depends largely upon the amount ot land that ctin be given to their cultivation and whether it is intended to use some horse labor. For field culture we prefer planting in rows four feet apart and the plants one foot apart in the how. Then allow them to rup evenly over the ground, using the cultivator between the rows, gradually narrowing it as the plants increase, and by fall we have a fine bed of plants, with room enough between to cultivate and gather the fruit. “ The hill system has many advantages over the other, as a plantation will last several years longer.- It is easier to cultivate and keep clear of weeds and the plants pan be mulched in summer to greater advantage. This summer mulching is very important, and espe< tally in a dry season. It not only keeps the fruit clean, but keeps the ground, moist; and the plants are more productive, and the fruit is uniformly larger, and, consequently, commands for it better prices in the market. This system involves the extra labor of clipping the runners as they appear during the season; but this extra labor is amply repaid in the increase in size and quantity of the fruit. To grow fruit in bills we plant in rows two or three feet apart and about a foot distant in the rows; or, where land is to be economized, plant in beds ot three rows, each eighteen inches apart each way and the beds two and a half to three feet distant from each other. “Aa to the season for setting plants 1 invariably take the spring months, as I then get the advantage of the late spring rains, which help the plants to .get fairly established, and thereby secure a heavy growth of young plants that will produce a large crop the next season. Some writers, but few growers, advocate planting in August. At that season the weather is hot and dry, and, the roots of the young plants at that time being very weak, the .shock incident to transplanting is many times greater than in the spring; and if the plants live the crop of fruit obtained the next year will be very small. “ I need not tell you that in the afterculture of the strawberry, like other fruits, the better care they receive the more satisfactory will be the result. I will simply say that unless a person can and will give this fruit the attention it requires he had better not begin, for disappointment and failure are the inevitable result of a half-cared-for strawberry bed.”