In about two weeks, with good management, the plants will fill the pots with roots, which so interlace as to hold the ball of earth compactly together during transportation. This ball of earth with the roots, separates readily from the pot, and the plant, thus sustained, could be shipped around the world if kept from drying out and the foliage protected from the effects of alternate heat and cold. The agricultural editor of the "New York Weekly Times" writes me that the potted plants are worth their increased cost, if for no other reason, because they are so easily planted in hot weather.

The chief advantage of summer planting lies in the fact that we obtain a good crop the following season, while plants set out in spring should not be permitted to bear at all the same year. If we discover in May or June that our supply is insufficient, or that some new varieties offer us paradisiacal flavors, we can set out the plants in the summer or autumn of the same year, and within eight or ten months gather the fruits of our labors. If the season is somewhat showery, or if one is willing to take the trouble to water and shade the young plants, ordinary layers—that is, plants that have grown naturally in the open ground—will answer almost as well as those that have been rooted in pots. The fact that they do not cost half as much is also in their favor.

The disposition to plant in summer or autumn is steadily increasing, and the following reasons are good and substantial ones for the practice. In our gardens and fields there are many crops that mature in July, August, and September. The cultivation of these crops has probably left the ground mellow, and in good condition for strawberries. Instead of leaving this land idle, or a place for weeds to grow and seed, it can be deeply forked or plowed, and enriched, as has been explained. Even in July, potted plants may be bought, and unless the ground is full of the larvae of the June beetle, or the plants are treated with utter neglect, not one in a hundred will fail. Say the plants cost us two and a half cents each by the time they are planted, instead of one half to one cent as in the spring, is there not a prospect of an equal or larger profit? A potted plant set out in summer or early autumn, and allowed to make no runners, will yield at least a pint of fruit; and usually these first berries are very large and fine, bringing the best prices. Suppose, however, we are able to obtain but ten cents a quart, you still have a margin of two and one- half cents on each plant. Adding two cents to the cost of each plant to cover the expense of cultivation, winter protection, spring mulching, picking, etc., there still remains a profit of half a cent on each plant. Supposing we have an acre containing 14,520 plants, our estimate gives a profit of $72.60 for the first year. If we clear but a quarter of a cent on each plant, we have a profit of $36.30. The prospects are, however, that if we plant early in the summer, on rich ground, and give good cultivation, our plants will yield more than a pint each, and the fruit sell for more than ten cents a quart.

This estimate applies to the common market varieties raised with only ordinary skill and success. Suppose, in contrast, one plants the large, showy, high-flavored varieties, and is able to obtain from fifteen to thirty cents per quart. The expenses in this case are no greater, while the profits are very largely increased.



Good potted plants can be bought for about $2.50 per 100, or $20 per 2,000. I do not think that they can be properly grown and sold at much lower rates and afford a living profit. Freight and express charges are a heavy item of expense, since the earth encasing the roots renders the packages very heavy, and but comparatively few plants can be shipped in one box. But, allowing for all expenses, I think it is evident that people can obtain a fair profit from potted plants within eight or ten months from the time of planting. Moreover, autumn-set plants start with double vigor in early spring, and make a fine growth before the hot, dry weather checks them; and the crop from them the second year will be the very best that they are capable of producing. Two paying crops are thus obtained within two years, and the cost of cultivation the first year is slight, for the plants are set after the great impulse of annual weed growth is past. With spring-set plants you get but one crop in two years. The first year yields nothing unless plants are sold, and yet the cultivation must be unceasing through May, June and July, when Nature seems to give no little thought to the problem of how many weeds can be grown to the square inch. If one wishes early plants, he certainly should practice autumn planting, for a plant set even in November will begin to make runners nearly a month earlier than one set in spring.

Thus far we have looked at the subject from a business standpoint.

Those who wish plants for the home supply certainly should not hesitate to furnish their gardens as early in the summer as possible. To wait two years of our short lives for strawberries because the plants are a little cheaper in the spring is a phase of economy that suggests the moon. Such self-denial in a good cause would be heroic.

If people will use a little forethought, they can practice summer and autumn planting with double success, independently of the plant grower. We have shown that there is no mystery in raising potted plants. Moreover, in the hottest summers there are showery, cloudy days when ordinary layer plants can be set with perfect safety. If the field or garden bed is near where the layer plants are growing, the latter can be taken up with earth clinging to their roots, and thus have all the advantages of potted plants. Even under the Southern sun, hundreds of acres are, in this manner, set annually in the vicinity of Charleston.

As the autumn grows cool and moist, layer plants can be obtained from a distance and set out profitably in large quantities. The chief danger in late planting results from the tendency of the plants to be thrown out of the ground by the action of the frost, and a few varieties do not seem sufficiently hardy to endure severe cold. I obviate this difficulty by simply hoeing upon the plants two inches of earth, just before the ground freezes in November or December. This winter covering of soil enables me to plant with entire success at any time in the fall—even late in November—instead of spring, when there is a rush of work.

The earth is raked off the plants in March or April, as soon as severe freezing weather is over; otherwise they would decay. Do not first put manure on the plants and then cover with earth—cover with earth only.

Thus it will be seen that each period has its advantages, which will vary with different seasons. If drought and heat come in early May, spring-set plants may suffer badly. Again, periods in summer and autumn may be so hot and dry that even potted plants can only be kept alive by repeated waterings. My practice is to divide my plantings about equally between summer, fall, and spring. I thus take no chances of failure.



CHAPTER XIII

WHAT SHALL WE PLANT?—VARIETIES, THEIR CHARACTER AND ADAPTATION TO SOILS

I have in my library an admirable little treatise written by the late R. G. Pardee, and printed twenty-five years ago. While the greater part of what he says, relating to the requirements of the plant and its culture, is substantially correct, his somewhat extended list of varieties is almost wholly obsolete. With the exception of Hovey's Seedling, scarcely one can be found in a modern catalogue. Even carefully prepared lists, made at a much later date, contain the names of but few kinds now seen in the garden or market. I have before me the catalogue of Prince & Co., published in 1865, and out of their list of 169 varieties but three are now in general cultivation, and the great majority are utterly unknown. Thus it would seem that a catalogue soon becomes historical, and that the kinds most heralded to-day may exist only in name but a few hence. The reasons can readily be given. The convex heart of every strawberry blossom will be found to consist of pistils, and usually of stamens ranged around them. When both stamens and pistils are found in the same blossom, as is the case with most varieties, it is called a perfect flower, or staminate. In rare instances, strawberry flowers are found which possess stamens without pistils, and these are called male blossoms; far more often varieties exist producing pistils only, and they are named pistillate kinds. Either of the last two if left alone would be barren; the male flowers are always so, but the pistillate or female flowers, if fertilized with pollen from perfect-flowered plants, produce fruit. This fertilizing is effected by the agency of the wind, or by insects seeking honey.

The ovule in the ovarium to which the stigma leads represents, at maturity, a seed—the actual fruit of the strawberry—and within each seed Nature, by a subtile process of her own, wraps up some of the qualities of the plant that produced the seed, and some of the qualities also of the plant from which came the pollen that impregnated the ovule. This seed, planted, produces an entirely new variety, which, as a rule, exhibits characteristics of both its parents, and traits, also, of its grandparents and remote ancestors. The law of heredity is the same as in cattle or the human race. Thus it may be seen that millions of new varieties can be very easily obtained. A single plant-grower often raises many thousands to which he never gives a name, by reason of the fact—noted elsewhere than in the fruit garden—that most of these new strawberries in no respect surpass or even equal their parents. The great majority, after fruiting—which they do when two years old—are thrown away. A new variety which is not so good as the old ones from which it came should not be imposed upon the public. But they often are, sometimes deliberately, but far more often for other reasons; as, for instance, through the enthusiasm of the possessor. It is his seedling; therefore it is wonderful. He pets it and gives it extra care, to which even very interior varieties generously respond.

In the same old catalogue to which I have referred Prince & Co. announce: "We now offer a few of our superior new seedlings, with descriptions, and there is not an acid or inferior one among them. There is not one of them that is not superior to all the seedlings recently introduced." Not one of these thirty-five "superior seedlings," to my knowledge, is now in cultivation. They have disappeared in less than fifteen years; and yet I have no doubt that on the grounds of Prince & Co. they gave remarkable promise.

Again, a fruit grower sends out second and third-rate kinds from defective knowledge. He has not judiciously compared his petted seedlings with the superb varieties already in existence. It is soon discovered by general trial that the vaunted new-comers are not so good as the old; and so they also cease to be cultivated, leaving only a name.

The editor of the "Rural New Yorker" has adopted a course which would be very useful indeed to the public, if it could be carried out in the various fruit-growing centres of the country. He obtains a few plants of every new variety offered for sale, and tests them side by side, under precisely the same conditions, reporting the results in his paper. Such records of experience are worth any amount of theory, or the half-truths of those who are acquainted with but few vanities. I tested fifty kinds last year in one specimen-bed. The plants were treated precisely alike, and permitted to mature all their fruit, I being well content to let eight or ten bushels go to waste in order to see just what each variety could do. From such trial-beds the comparative merits of each kind can be seen at a glance. Highly praised new-comers, which are said to supersede everything, must show what they are and can do beside the old standard varieties that won their laurels years ago. I thus learn that but few can endure the test, and occasionally I find an old kind sent out with a new name. When visiting fruit farms in New Jersey last summer, I was urged to visit a small place on which was growing a wonderful new berry. The moment I saw the fruit and foliage, I recognized the Col. Cheney, forced into unusual luxuriance by very favorable conditions. Other experienced growers, whose attention I called to the distinguishing marks of this variety, agreed with me at once; but the proprietor, who probably had never seen the Cheney before and did not know where the plants came from, thought it was a remarkable new variety, and as such it might have been honestly sent out. Trial-beds at once detect the old kinds with new names, and thus may save the public from a vast deal of imposition.

Such beds would also be of very great service in suggesting the varieties that can be grown with profit in certain localities. While the behavior of different kinds differs greatly in varying soils and latitudes, there is no such arbitrary mystery in the matter as many imagine. I am satisfied that the sorts which did best in my trial-bed give the best promise of success wherever the soil and climate are similar. In contrast, let a trial-bed be made on a light soil in Delaware or Virginia, and 100 varieties be planted. Many that are justly favorites in our locality would there shrivel and burn, proving valueless; but those that did thrive and produce well, exhibiting a power to endure a Southern sun, and to flourish in sand, should be the choice for all that region. To the far South and North, and in the extremes of the East and West, trial-beds would give still varying results; but such results would apply to the soils and climate of the region if proper culture were given. A horse can be mismanaged on a Kentucky stock-farm, and there are those who would have ill luck with strawberries in the Garden of Eden—they are so skilful and persist in doing the wrong thing. It would well remunerate large planters to maintain trial-beds of all the small fruits, and their neighbors could afford to pay well for the privilege of visiting them and learning the kinds adapted to their locality.

I think it may be laid down as a general truth, that those kinds which do well on a light soil in one locality tend to do well on such soils in all localities. The same principle applies to those requiring heavy land. There will be exceptions, and but few of those containing foreign blood will thrive in the far South.

In the brief limits of this chapter I shall merely offer suggestions and the results of some experience, premising that I give but one man's opinion, and that all have a right to differ from me. At the close of this volume may be found more accurate descriptions of the varieties that I have thought worth naming.

Among the innumerable candidates for favor, here and there one will establish itself by persistent well-doing as a standard sort. We then learn that some of these strawberry princes, like the Jucunda, Triomphe de Gand, and President Wilder, flourish only in certain soils and latitudes, while others, like the Charles Downing, Monarch of the West, and Wilson, adapt themselves to almost every condition and locality. Varieties of this class are superseded very slowly; but it would seem, with the exception of Wilson's Albany, that the standards of one generation have not been the favorites of the next. The demand of our age is for large fruit The demand has created a supply, and the old standard varieties have given way to a new class, of which the Monarch and Seth Boyden are types. The latest of these new mammoth berries is the Sharpless, originated by Mr. J. K. Sharpless, of Catawissa, Pa.; which shows the progress made since horticulturists began to develop the wild F. Virginiana by crossing varieties and by cultivation.

The most accurate and extended list of varieties with which I am acquainted is to be found in Downing's "Encyclopedia of Fruits and Fruit Trees of America." It contains the names, with their synonymes, and the descriptions of over 250 kinds, and to this I refer the reader.

The important question to most minds is not how many varieties exist, but what kinds will give the best returns. If one possesses the deep, rich, moist loam that has been described, almost any good variety will yield a fair return, and the best can be made to give surprising results. For table use and general cultivation, North and South, East and West, I would recommend the Charles Downing, Monarch of the West, Seth Boyden, Kentucky Seedling, Duchess, and Golden Defiance. These varieties are all first-rate in quality, and they have shown a wonderful adaptation to varied soils and climates. They have been before the public a number of years, and have persistently proved their excellence. Therefore, they are worthy of a place in every garden. With these valuable varieties for our chief supply, we can try a score of other desirable kinds, retaining such as prove to be adapted to our taste and soil.

If our land is heavy, we can add to the above, in Northern latitudes, Triomphe de Gand, Jucunda, President Wilder, Forest Rose, President Lincoln, Sharpless, Pioneer, and Springdale.

If the soil is light, containing a large proportion of sand and gravel, the Charles Downing, Kentucky Seedling, Monarch of the West, Duchess, Cumberland Triumph, Miner's Prolific, Golden Defiance, and Sharpless will be almost certain to yield a fine supply of large and delicious berries, both North and South.

Let me here observe that varieties that do well on light soils also thrive equally well and often better on heavy land. But the converse is not true. The Jucunda, for instance, can scarcely be made to exist on light land. In the South, it should be the constant aim to find varieties whose foliage can endure the hot sun. I think that the Sharpless, which is now producing a great sensation as well as mammoth berries, will do well in most Southern localities. It maintained throughout the entire summer the greenest and most vigorous foliage I ever saw. Miner's Prolific, Golden Defiance, Early Hudson, and Cumberland Triumph also appear to me peculiarly adapted to Southern cultivation.

As we go north, the difficulties of choice are not so great. Coolness and moisture agree with the strawberry plant. There the question of hardiness is to be first considered. In regions, however, where the snow falls early and covers the ground all winter, the strawberry is not so exposed as with us, for our gardens are often bare in zero weather. Usually, it is not the temperature of the air that injures a dormant strawberry plant, but alternations of freezing and thawing. The deep and unmelting snows often enable the horticulturist to raise successfully in Canada tender fruits that would "winter-kill" much further south. If abundant protection is therefore provided, either by nature or by art, the people of the North can take their choice from among the best. In the high latitudes, early kinds will be in request, since the season of growth is brief. The best early berries are Duchess, Bidwell, Pioneer, Early Hudson, Black Defiance, Duncan, Durand's Beauty, and, earliest of all, Crystal City. The last-named ripened first on my place in the summer of 1879, and although the fruit is of medium size, and rather soft, I fear, the plant is so vigorous and easily grown that I think it is worth general trial North and South. I am informed that it promises to take the lead in Missouri.

MARKET STRAWBERRIES

Thus far I have named those kinds whose fine flavor and beauty entitle them to a place in the home garden. But with a large class, market qualities are more worthy of consideration; and this phase of the question introduces us to some exceedingly popular varieties not yet mentioned. The four great requirements of a market strawberry are productiveness, size, a good, bright color, and—that it may endure long carriage and rough handling—firmness. Because of the indifference of the consumer, as explained in an earlier chapter, that which should be the chief consideration—flavor—is scarcely taken into account. In the present unenlightened condition of the public, one of the oldest strawberries on the list—Wilson's Seedling—is more largely planted than all other kinds together. It is so enormously productive, it succeeds so well throughout the entire country, and is such an early berry, that, with the addition of its fine carrying qualities, it promises to be the great market berry for the next generation also. But this variety is not at all adapted to thin, poor land, and is very impatient of drought. In such conditions, the berries dwindle rapidly in size, and even dry up on the vines. Where abundant fertility and moisture can be maintained, the yield of a field of Wilsons is simply marvellous. On a dry hillside close by, the crop from the same variety may not pay for picking. Plantations of Wilsons should be renewed every two years, since the plant speedily exhausts itself, producing smaller berries with each successive season. The Wilson is perhaps the best berry for preserving, since it is hard and its acid is rich and not watery.

A rival of the Wilson has appeared within the last few years—the Crescent Seedling, also an early berry, originated by Mr. Parmelee, of New Haven, Conn. At first, it received unbounded praise; now, it gets too much censure. It is a very distinct and remarkable variety, and, like the Wilson, I think, will fill an important place in strawberry culture. Its average size does not much exceed that of the Wilson; its flavor, when fully ripe, is about equal in the estimation of those who do not like acid fruit. In productiveness, on many soils, it will far exceed any variety with which I am acquainted. It is just this capacity for growing on thin, poor soils—anywhere and under any circumstances—that gives to it its chief value. In hardiness and vitality it is almost equal to the Canada thistle. The young plants are small, and the foliage is slender and delicate; but they have the power to live and multiply beyond that of any other variety I have seen. It thrives under the suns of Georgia and Florida, and cares naught for the cold of Canada; it practically extends the domain of the strawberry over the continent, and renders the laziest man in the land, who has no strawberries, without excuse. One of my beds yielded at the rate of 346 bushels to the acre, and the bright, handsome scarlet of the berries caused them to sell for as much in the open market as varieties of far better flavor. It is too soft for long carriage by rail. Those to whom flavor and large size are the chief considerations will not plant it, but those who have a near and not very fastidious market, that simply demands quantity and fine appearance, will grow it both largely and profitably. The stamens of the Crescent are so imperfectly developed that every tenth row in the field should be Wilsons, or some other early and perfect-flowered variety.

In the Champion, we have a late market berry that is steadily growing in favor. On rich, moist land it is almost as productive as the Crescent. The fruit averages much larger than the Wilson, while its rich crimson color makes it very attractive in the baskets. The berries, like the two kinds already named, turn red before they are ripe, and in this immature condition their flavor is very poor, but when fully ripe they are excellent. The transformation is almost as great as in a persimmon. Under generous culture, the Champion yields superb berries, that bring the best prices. It also does better than most kinds under neglect and drought. It is too soft for long carriage, and its blossoms are pistillate.

Within a few years, a new variety named Windsor Chief has been disseminated, and the enormous yield of 17,000 quarts per acre has been claimed for it. It is said to be a seedling of the Champion fertilized with the Charles Downing variety. If there has been no mistake in this history of its origin, it is a remarkable instance of the reproduction of the traits of one parent only, for in no respect have I been able thus far to see wherein it differs from the Champion.

The Captain Jack is another late variety, which is enormously productive of medium-sized berries. It is a great favorite in Missouri and some other regions. The berries carry well to market, but their flavor is second-rate.

The good size, firmness, and lateness of the Glendale—a variety recently introduced—will probably secure for it a future as a market berry.

In the South, Neunan's Prolific, or the "Charleston Berry," as it is usually called, is already the chief variety for shipping. It is an aromatic berry, and very attractive as it appears in our markets in March and April, but it is even harder and sourer than an unripe Wilson. When fully matured on the vine it is grateful to those who like an acid berry. Scarcely any other kind is planted around Charleston and Savannah.

These six varieties, or others like them, will supply the first great need of all large markets—quantity. With the exception of the last, which is not productive in the North, and requires good treatment even in the South, they yield largely under rough field culture. The fruit can be sold very cheaply and yet give a fair profit. Only a limited number of fancy berries can be sold at fancy prices, but thousands of bushels can be disposed of at eight and ten cents per quart.

Still, I would advise any one who is supplying the market, thoroughly to prepare and enrich an acre or more of moist but well drained land, and plant some of the large, showy berries, like the Sharpless, Monarch, and Seth Boyden. If he has heavy, rich soil, let him also try the Jucunda, President Lincoln, and, especially, the Triomphe de Gand. These varieties always have a ready sale, even when the market is glutted with common fruit, and they often command very high prices. When the soil suits them, they frequently yield crops that are not so far below the Wilson in quantity. Fifty bushels of large, handsome berries may bring as much, or more, than one hundred bushels of small fruit, while the labor and expense of shipping and picking are reduced one-half.

I suppose that Mr. E. W. Durand, of Irvington, N. J., obtains more money from one acre of his highly cultivated strawberries than do many growers from ten acres. Mr. H. Jerolaman, of Hilton, N. J., has given me some accurate statistics that well illustrate my meaning. "My yield," he writes, in 1877, "from one acre, planted chiefly with the Seth Boyden, was 327 bushels 15 1/2 quarts, which were sold for $1,386.21. A strict account was kept. Since that time I have been experimenting with Mr. Durand's large berries, and have not done so well. In 1878, I obtained $1,181 from one acre, one-half planted with the Seth Boyden and the other with the Great American. The year of 1879 was my poorest. Nearly all my plants were Great American and Beauty, and the yield was 121 bushels, selling for $728. The average cost per acre, for growing, picking, marketing, and manure, is $350. I am not satisfied but that I shall have to return to the old Seth Boyden in order to keep taking the first State premiums, as I have done for the past three years."

This record of experience shows what can be done with the choice varieties if an appreciative market is within reach, and one will give the high culture they demand. Last summer a neighbor of mine obtained eighteen cents per quart for his Monarch strawberries, when Wilsons brought but ten cents. At the same time, these superb rarities often do not pay at all under poor field culture and in matted rows. We may also note, in passing, how slowly fine old standard kinds, like the Boyden, are superseded by new varieties.

I should not be at all surprised if the Charles Downing became one of the most popular market strawberries of the future. It is already taking the lead in many localities It is moderately firm—sufficiently so, with a little extra care, to reach most markets in good condition. It is more easily raised than the Wilson, and on thin, dry land is more productive. A bed will last, if kept clean, four or five years instead of two, and yield better the fifth year than the first. Although the fruit is but of medium size, it is so fine in flavor that it has only to be known to create a steady demand. The Kentucky Seedling is another berry of the same class, and has the same general characteristics—with this exception, that it is a very late berry, In flavor, it is melting and delicious. It does well on almost any soil, even a light and sandy one, and is usually very productive.

The best white strawberry I have ever seen is Lennig's White. When exposed to the sun, it has a decided pink flush on one side. It is beautiful and delicious, and so aromatic that a single berry will perfume a large apartment. The fruit is exceedingly delicate, but the plant is a shy bearer.

In the White and Bed Alpines, especially the ever-bearing varieties, and in the Hautbois class, we have very distinct strawberries that are well worthy of a place in the garden. From a commercial point of view, they have no value. This may settle the question with some, but not a few of us like to plant many things that are never to go to market.

In conclusion, if I were asked what is the most beautiful and delicious strawberry in existence, I should name the President Wilder. Perfect in flavor, form and beauty, it seems to unite in one exquisite compound the best qualities of the two great strawberry species of the world, the F. Virginiana and the F. Chilensis. The only fault that I have ever discovered is that, in many localities, it is not productive. No more do diamonds lie around like cobblestones. It is, however, fairly productive under good culture and on most soils, and yet it is possible that not one in a hundred of the habitues of Delmonico's has ever tasted it.



CHAPTER XIV

SETTING OUT PLANTS

We may secure good plants of the best varieties, but if we do not set them out properly the chances are against our success, unless the weather is very favorable. So much depends on a right start in life, even in a strawberry bed. There are no abstruse difficulties in properly imbedding a plant. One would think that if a workman gave five minutes' thought and observation to the subject, he would know exactly how to do it. If one used his head as well as his hands, it would be perfectly obvious that a plant held (as in Figure e) with its roots spread out so that the fresh, moist earth could come in contact with each fibre, would stand a far better chance than one set out by any of the other methods illustrated. And yet, in spite of all I can do or say, I have never been able to prevent very many of my plants from being set (as in Figure a) too deeply, so that the crown and tender leaves were covered and smothered with earth; or (as in Figure b) not deeply enough, thus leaving the roots exposed. Many others bury the roots in a long, tangled bunch, as in Figure c. If one would observe how a plant starts on its new career, he would see that the roots we put in the ground are little more than a base of operations. All along their length, and at their ends, little white rootlets start, if the conditions are favorable, almost immediately. If the roots are huddled together, so that only a few outside ones are in contact with the life-giving soil, the conditions are of course most unfavorable. Again, many planters are guilty of the folly illustrated in Figure d. They hastily scoop out a shallow hole, in which the roots, which should be down in the cool depths of the soil, curve like a half-circle toward or to the very surface.

In the most favorable weather of early spring a plant is almost certain to grow, no matter how greatly abused; but even then it does far better if treated properly, while at other seasons nature cannot be stupidly ignored. It is almost as easy to set out a plant correctly as otherwise.



Let the excavation be made deep enough to put the roots, spread out like a fan, down their whole length into the soil. Hold the plant with the left hand, as in Figure e. First, half fill the hole with fine rich earth with the right hand, and press it firmly against the roots; next, fill it evenly, and then, with the thumb and finger of both hands, put your whole weight on the soil on each side of the plant—as close to it as possible—and press until the crown or point from which the leaves start is just even with the surface.

If you can pull the plant up again by its leaves, it is not firm enough in the ground. If a man uses brain and eye, he can learn to work very rapidly. By one dexterous movement he scoops the excavation with a trowel. By a second movement, he makes the earth firm against the lower half of the roots. By a third movement, he fills the excavation and settles the plant into its final position. One workman will often plant twice as many as another, and not work any harder. Negro women at Norfolk, Virginia, paid at fifty cents per day, will often set two or three thousand. Many Northern laborers, who ask more than twice that sum, will not set half as many plants. I have been told of one man, however, who could set 1,000 per hour. I should examine his work carefully, however, in the fear that it was not well done.



If the ground is so flat that water lies upon it in wet seasons, then throw it up into beds with a plow, thus giving the plants a broad, level surface on which to grow; for I think the best success will generally be obtained with level culture, or as near an approach to it as possible.

Always make it a point to plant in moist, freshly stirred earth. Never let the roots come in contact with dry, lumpy soil. Never plant when the ground is wet and sticky, unless it be at the beginning of a rainstorm which bids fair to continue for some time. If sun or wind strikes land which has been recently stirred while it is too wet, the hardness of mortar results.

In spring it is best to shorten in the roots one-third. This promotes a rapid growth of new rootlets, and therefore of the plants. In the summer and fall the young plants are not so well furnished with roots, and usually it is best to leave them uncut.



It often happens that during long transportation the roots become sour, black, and even a little mouldy. In this case, wash them in clean water from which the chill has been taken. Trim carefully, taking off the blackened, shrivelled ends. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoonfuls of fine bone meal immediately about the plant after setting, and then water it. If the weather is warm, soak the ground and keep it moist until there is rain. Never let a plant falter or go back from lack of moisture.

How often should one water? Often enough to keep the ground moist all the time, night and day. There is nothing mechanical in taking care of a young plant any more than in the care of a baby. Simply give it what it needs until it is able to take care of itself. The plant may require a little watching and attention for a few days in warm weather. If an opportune storm comes, the question of growth is settled favorably at once; but if a "dry spell" ensues, be vigilant. At nine o'clock A.M., even well-watered plants may begin to wilt, showing that they require shade, which may be supplied by inverted flower-pots, old berry-baskets, shingles or boards. A handful of weeds, grass, or even of dry earth, thrown on the crown of the plant in the morning, and removed by five P.M., is preferable to nothing. Anything is better than stolidly sticking a plant in the ground and leaving it alone just long enough to die. Many, on the other hand, kill their plants with kindness. They dose the young things with guano, unfermented manure, and burn them up. Coolness, moisture, and shade are the conditions for a new start in life.

As has been explained already, pot-grown plants, with a ball of earth clinging to their roots, can be set out during the hot months with great ease, and with little danger of loss. At the same time, let me distinctly say that such plants require fair treatment. The ground should be "firmed" around them just as strongly, and they should be so well watched as to guard against the slightest wilting from heat and drought.

In ordinary field culture, let the rows be three feet apart, and let the plants stand one foot from each other in a row. At this distance, 14,520 are required for an acre. When land is scarce, the rows can be two and a half feet from each other. In garden culture, where the plow and cultivator will not be used, there should be two feet between the rows, and the plants should be one foot apart as before. With this rule in mind, any one can readily tell how many plants he will need for a given area.



CHAPTER XV

CULTIVATION

The field for experiment in cultivation with different fertilizers, soils, climates, and varieties is indeed a wide one, and yet for practical purposes the question is simple enough.

There are three well-known systems of cultivation, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. The first is termed the "matted bed system." Under this plan the ground between the rows is cultivated and kept clean during the spring and early summer. As soon, however, as the new runners begin to push out vigorously, cultivation ceases, or else, with the more thorough, the cultivator is narrowed down till it stirs scarcely more than a foot of surface, care being taken to go up one row and down another, so as always to draw the runners one way. This prevents them from being tangled up and broken off. By winter, the entire ground is covered with plants, which are protected as will be explained further on. In the spring the coarsest of the covering is raked off, and between the rows is dug a space about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which serves as a path for the pickers. This path is often cheaply and quickly made by throwing two light furrows together with a corn plow. Under this system, the first crop is usually the best, and in strong lands adapted to grasses the beds often become so foul that it does not pay to leave them to bear a second year. If so, they are plowed under as soon as the fruit has been gathered. More often two crops are taken, and then the land is put in some other crop for a year or two before being planted with strawberries again. This rude, inexpensive system is perhaps more followed than any other. It is best adapted to light soils and cheap lands. Where an abundance of cool fertilizers has been used, or the ground has been generously prepared with green crops, plowed under, the yield is often large and profitable. But as often it is quite the reverse, especially if the season proves dry and hot. Usually, plants sodded together cannot mature fine fruit, especially after they have exhausted half their vitality in running. In clayey loams, the surface in the matted rows becomes as hard as a brick. Light showers make little impression on it, and the fruit often dries upon the vines. Remembering that the strawberry's chief need is moisture, it will be seen that it can scarcely be maintained in a hard-matted sod. Under this system the fruit is small at best, and it all matures together. If adopted in the garden, the family has but a few days of berries instead of a few weeks. The marketman may find his whole crop ripening at a time of over-supply, and his small berries may scarcely pay for picking. To many of this class the cheapness of the system will so commend itself that they will continue to practice it until some enterprising neighbor teaches them better, by his larger cash returns. In the garden, however, it is the most expensive method. When the plants are sodded together, the hoe and fork cannot be used. The whole space must be weeded by hand, and there are some pests whose roots interlace horizontally above and below the ground, and which cannot be eradicated from the matted rows. Too often, therefore, even in the neatest garden, the strawberry bed is the place where vegetable evil triumphs.

There are modifications of this system that are seen to better advantage on paper than in the field or garden. The one most often described in print—I have never seen it working successfully—may be termed the "renewal system." Instead of plowing the matted beds under, after the first or second crop, the paths between the beds are enriched and spaded or plowed. The old plants are allowed to fill these former paths with new plants; which process being completed, the old matted beds are turned under, and the new plants that have taken the places of the paths bear the fruit of the coming year. But suppose the old beds have within them sorrel, white clover, wire-grass, and a dozen other perennial enemies, what practical man does not know that these pests will fill the vacant spaces faster than can the strawberry plants? There is no chance for cultivation by hoe or horse power. Only frequent and laborious weedings by hand can prevent the evil, and this but partially, for, as has been said, the roots of many weeds are out of reach unless there is room for the fork, hoe, or cultivator to go beneath them.

In direct contrast with the above is the "hill system." This, in brief, may be suggested by saying that the strawberry plants are set out three feet—more or less—apart, and treated like hills of corn, with the exception that the ground is kept level, or should be. They are often so arranged that the cultivator can pass between them each way, thus obviating nearly all necessity for hand work. When carried out to such an extent, I consider this plan more objectionable than the former, especially at the North. In the first place, when the plants are so distant from each other, much of the ground is left unoccupied and unproductive. In the second place, the fruit grower is at the mercy of the strawberry's worst enemy, the Lachnosterna, or white grub. Few fields in our region are wholly free from them and a few of the voracious pests would leave the ground bare, for they devour the roots all summer long. In the third place, where so much of the ground is unoccupied, the labor of mulching, so that the soil can be kept moist and the fruit clean, is very great.

In small garden-plots, when the plants can be set only two feet apart each way, the results of this system are often most admirable. The entire spaces between them can be kept mellow and loose, and therefore moist. There is room to dig out and eradicate the roots of the worst weeds. By frequently raking the ground over, the annual weeds do not get a chance to start. In the rich soil the plants make great, bushy crowns that nearly touch each other, and as they begin to blossom, the whole space between them can be mulched with straw, grass, etc. The runners can easily be cut away when the plants are thus isolated. Where there are not many white grubs in the soil, the hill system is well adapted to meet garden culture, and the result, in a prolonged season of large, beautiful fruit, will be most satisfactory. Moreover, the berries, being exposed on all sides to the sun, will be of the best flavor.

In the South, the hill system is the only one that can be adopted to advantage. There the plants are set in the summer and autumn, and the crop is taken from them the following spring. Therefore each plant must be kept from running, and be stimulated to do its best within a given space of time. In the South, however, the plants are set but one foot apart in the rows, and thus little space is lost.

I am satisfied that the method best adapted to our Eastern and Western conditions is what is termed the "narrow row system," believing that it will give the greatest amount of fine fruit with the least degree of trouble and expense. The plants are set one foot from each other in line, and not allowed to make runners. In good soil, they will touch each other after one year's growth, and make a continuous bushy row. The spaces between the rows may be two and a half to three feet. Through these spaces the cultivator can be run as often as you please, and the ground can be thus kept clean, mellow, and moist. The soil can be worked—not deeply, of course—within an inch or two of the plants, and thus but little space is left for hand- weeding. I have found this latter task best accomplished by a simple tool made of a fork-tine, with a section of the top left attached thus: T. Old broken forks can thus be utilized. This tool can be thrust deeply between the plants without disturbing many roots, and the most stubborn weed can be pried out. Under this system, the ground is occupied to the fullest extent that is profitable. The berries are exposed to light and air on either side, and mulch can be applied with the least degree of trouble. The feeding-ground for the roots can be kept mellow by horse-power; if irrigation is adopted, the spaces between the rows form the natural channels for the water. Chief of all, it is the most successful way of fighting the white grub. These enemies are not found scattered evenly through the soil, but abound in patches. Here they can be dug out if not too numerous, and the plants allowed to run and fill up the gaps. To all intents and purposes, the narrow row system is hill culture with the evils of the latter subtracted. Even where it is not carried out accurately, and many plants take root in the rows, most of them will become large, strong, and productive under the hasty culture which destroys the greater number of the side-runners.



Where this system is fairly tried, the improvement in the quality, size, and, therefore, measuring bulk of the crop, is astonishing. This is especially true of some varieties, like the Duchess, which, even in a matted bed, tends to stool out into great bushy plants. Doctor Thurber, editor of the "American Agriculturist," unhesitatingly pronounced it the most productive and best early variety in my specimen-bed, containing fifty different kinds. If given a chance to develop its stooling-out qualities, it is able to compete even with the Crescent and Wilson in productiveness. At the same time its fruit becomes large, and as regular in shape as if turned with a lathe. Many who have never tried this system would be surprised to find what a change for the better it makes in the old popular kinds, like the Charles Downing, Kentucky, and Wilson. The Golden Defiance also, which is so vigorous in the matted beds that weeds stand but little chance before it, almost doubles in size and productiveness if restricted to a narrow row.

The following remarks will have reference to this system, as I consider it the best. We will start with plants that have just been set out. If fruit is our aim, we should remember that the first and strongest impulse of each plant will be to propagate itself; but to the degree that it does so it lessens its own vitality and power to produce berries the following season. Therefore every runner that a plant makes means so much less and so much smaller fruit from that plant. Remove the runners as they appear, and the life of the plant goes to make vigorous foliage and a correspondingly large fruit bud. The sap is stored up as a miller collects and keeps for future use, the water of a stream. Moreover, a plant thus curbed abounds in vitality and does not throw down its burden of prematurely ripe fruit after a few hot days. It works evenly and continuously, as strength only can, and leisurely perfects the last berry on the vines. You will often find blossoms and ripe fruit on the same plant—something rarely seen where the plants are crowded and the soil dry. I have had rows of Tromphe de Gand in bearing for seven weeks.

With these facts before us, the culture of strawberries is simple enough. A few days after planting, as soon as it is evident that they will live, stir the surface just about them not more than half an inch deep. Insist on this; for most workmen will half hoe them out of the ground. A fine-tooth rake is one of the best tools for stirring the surface merely. After the plants become well rooted, keep the ground mellow and clean as you would between any other hoed crop, using horse-power as far as possible, since it is the cheapest and most effective. If the plants have been set out in spring, take oft the fruit buds as soon as they appear. Unless the plants are very strong and are set out very early, fruiting the same year means feebleness and often death. If berries are wanted within a year, the plants must be set in summer or autumn. Then they can be permitted to bear all they will the following season. A child with a pair of shears or a knife, not too dull, can easily keep a large garden-plot free from runners, unless there are long periods of neglect. Half an hour's work once a week, in the cool of the evening, will be sufficient. A boy paid at the rate of twenty-five cents a day can keep acres clipped if he tries.

If the ground were poor, or one were desirous of large fruit, it would be well to give a liberal autumn top-dressing of fine compost or any well-rotted fertilizer not containing crude lime. Bone-dust and wood- ashes are excellent. Scatter this along the rows, and hoe it in the last time they are cultivated in the fall. With the exception of guano and other quick-acting stimulants, I believe in fall top-dressing. The melting snows and March rains carry the fertilizing properties down to the roots, which begin growing and feeding very early in the spring. If compost or barnyard manure is used, it aids in protecting the plants during the winter, warms and mellows the soil, and starts them into a prompt, vigorous growth, thus enabling them to store up sufficient vitality in the cool growing season to produce large fruit in abundance. If top-dressings are applied in the spring, and a dry period follows, they scarcely reach the roots in time to aid in forming the fruit buds. The crop of the following year, however, will be increased. Of course, it is far better to top-dress the rows in spring than not at all. I only wish to suggest that usually the best results are obtained by doing this work in the fall; and this would be true especially of heavy soils.

When the ground begins to freeze, protect the plants for the winter by covering the rows lightly with straw, leaves, or—better than all— with light, strawy horse-manure, that has been piled up to heat and turned over once or twice, so that in its violent fermentation all grass seeds have been killed. Do not cover so heavily as to smother the plants, nor so lightly that the wind and rains will dissipate the mulch. Your aim is not to keep the plants from freezing, but from freezing and thawing with every alternation of our variable winters and springs. On ordinarily dry land two or three inches of light material is sufficient. Moreover, the thawing out of the fruit beds or crown, under the direct rays of the sun, injures them, I think. Most of the damage is done in February and March. The good gardener watches his plants, adds to the covering where it has been washed away or is insufficient, and drains off puddles, which are soon fatal to all the plants beneath them. Wet ground, moreover, heaves ten times as badly as that which is dry. If one neglects to do these things, he may find half of the plants thrown out of the ground, after a day or two of alternate freezing and thawing. Good drainage alone, with three or four inches of covering of light material, can prevent this, although some varieties, like the Golden Defiance, seem to resist the heaving action of frost remarkably. Never cover with hot, heavy manure, nor too deeply with leaves, as the rains beat these down too flatly. Let the winter mulch not only coyer the row, but reach a foot on either side.

Just before very cold weather begins—from the middle of November to December 1st, in our latitude—we may, if we choose, cover our beds so deeply with leaves, or litter of some kind, as to keep out the frost completely. We thus may be able to dig plants on mild winter days and early spring, in case we have orders from the far South. This heavy covering should be lightened sufficiently early in the spring to prevent smothering. Plants well protected have a fine green appearance early in spring, and, even if no better, will give much better satisfaction than those whose leaves are sere and black from frost.

As the weather begins to grow warm in March, push aside the covering a little from the crown of the plants, so as to let in air. If early fruit is desired, the mulch can be raked aside and the ground worked between the rows, as soon as danger of severe frost is over. If late fruit is wanted, let in air to the crown of the plants, but leave the mulch on the ground, which is thus shielded from the sun, warm showers, and the south wind, for two or three weeks.

I have now reached a point at which I differ from most horticultural writers. As a rule, it is advised that there be no spring cultivation of bearing plants. It has been said that merely pushing the winter mulch aside sufficiently to let the new growth come through is all that is needed. I admit that the results are often satisfactory under this method, especially if there has been deep, thorough culture in the fall, and if the mulch between and around the plants is very abundant. At the same time, I have so often seen unsatisfactory results that I take a decided stand in favor of spring cultivation if done properly and sufficiently early. I think my reasons will commend themselves to practical men. Even where the soil has been left mellow by fall cultivation, the beating rains and the weight of melting snows pack the earth. All loamy land settles and tends to grow hard after the frost leaves it. While the mulch checks this tendency, it cannot wholly prevent it. As a matter of fact, the spaces between the rows are seldom thoroughly loosened late in the fall. The mulch too often is scattered over a comparatively hard surface, which, by the following June has become so solid as to suffer disastrously from drought in the blossoming and bearing season. I have seen well-mulched fields with their plants faltering and wilting, unable to mature the crop because the ground had become so hard that an ordinary shower could make but little impression. Moreover, even if kept moist by the mulch, land long shielded from sun and air tends to become sour, heavy, and devoid of that life which gives vitality and vigor to the plant. The winter mulch need not be laboriously raked from the garden- bed or field, and then carted back again. Begin on one side of a plantation and rake toward the other, until three or four rows and the spaces between them are bare; then fork the spaces, or run the cultivator—often the subsoil plow—deeply through them, and then immediately, before the moist, newly made surface dries, rake the winter mulch back into its place as a summer mulch. Then take another strip and treat it in like manner, until the generous impulse of spring air and sunshine has been given to the soil of the entire plantation.

This spring cultivation should be done early—as soon as possible after the ground is dry enough to work. The roots of a plant or tree should never be seriously disturbed in the blossoming or bearing period; and yet I would rather stir the surface, even when my beds were in full bloom, than leave it hard, baked, and dry; for, heed this truth well—unless a plant, from the time it blossoms until the fruit matures, has an abundance of moisture, it will fail in almost the exact proportion that moisture fails. A liberal summer mulch under and around the plants not only keeps the fruit clean, but renders a watering much more lasting, by shielding the soil from the sun. Never sprinkle the plants a little in dry weather. If you water at all, soak the ground and keep it moist all the time till the crop matures. Insufficient watering will injure and perhaps destroy the best of beds. But this subject and that of irrigation will be treated in a later chapter.

When prize berries are sought, enormous fruit can be obtained by the use of liquid manure, but it should be applied with skill and judgment, or else its very strength may dwarf the plants. In this case, also, all the little green berries, save the three or four lowest ones, may be picked from the fruit truss, and the force of the plant will be expended in maturing a few mammoth specimens. Never seek to stimulate with plaster or lime, directly. Other plants' meat is the strawberry's poison in respect to the immediate action of these two agents. Horse manure composted with muck, vegetable mould, wood-ashes, bone meal, and, best of all, the product of the cow-stable, if thoroughly decayed and incorporated with the soil, will probably give the largest strawberries that can be grown, if steady moisture, but not wetness, is maintained.

Many advise the mowing off of the old foliage after the fruit has been gathered. I doubt the wisdom of this practice. The crowns of the plants and the surface of the bed are laid open to the midsummer sun. The foliage is needed to sustain or develop the roots. In the case of a few petted and valuable plants, it might be well to take off some of the old dying leaves, but it seems reasonable to think that the wholesale destruction of healthful foliage must be a severe blow to the vitality of the plants. Still, the beds should not be left to weeds and drought. Neglect would be ungracious, indeed, just after receiving such delicious gifts. I would advise that the coarsest of the mulch be raked off and stored for winter covering, and then the remainder forked very lightly or cultivated into the soil, as a fertilizer immediately after a soaking rain, but not when the ground is dry. Do not disturb the roots of a plant during a dry period. Many advise a liberal manuring after the fruit is gathered. This is the English method, and is all right in their humid climate, but dangerous in our land of hot suns and long droughts. Dark-colored fertilizers absorb and intensify the heat. A sprinkling of bone dust can be used to advantage as a summer stimulant, and stronger manures, containing a larger per cent of nitrogen, can be applied just before the late fall rains. A plant just after bearing needs rest.

After fruiting, the foliage of some of our best kinds turns red and seemingly burns and shrivels away. This is not necessarily a disease, but merely the decay of old leaves which have fulfilled their mission. From the crown a new and vigorous growth will eventually take their place. When one is engaged in the nursery business, the young plants form a crop far more valuable than the fruit. Therefore, every effort is made to increase the number of runners rather than to destroy them. Stimulating manures, which promote a growth of vines rather than of fruit, are the most useful. The process of rooting is often greatly hastened by layering; that is, by pressing the incipient plant forming on the runner into the soil, and by laying on it a pebble or lump of earth to keep it in its place. When a bed is closely covered with young plants that have not taken root, a top-dressing of fine compost will greatly hasten their development. Moisture is even more essential to the nurseryman than to the fruit grower, and he needs it especially during the hot months of July, August, and September, for it is then that the new crop of plants is growing. Therefore, his need of damp but well-drained ground; and if the means of irrigation are within his reach, he may accomplish wonders, and can take two or three crops of plants from the same area in one season.

While the growing of strawberry plants may be very profitable, it must be expensive, since large areas must be laboriously weeded by hand several times in the season. Instead of keeping the spaces between the rows clear, for the use of horse-power, it is our aim to have them covered as soon as possible with runners and young plants. The Golden Defiance, Crescent Seedling and a few others will keep pace with most weeds, and even master them; but nearly all varieties require much help in the unequal fight, or our beds become melancholy examples of the survival of the unfittest.



CHAPTER XVI

A SOUTHERN STRAWBERRY FARM, AND METHODS OF CULTURE IN THE SOUTH

Having treated of the planting of strawberries, their cultivation, and kindred topics, in that great northern belt, of which a line drawn through New York city may be regarded as the centre, I shall now suggest characteristics in the culture of this fruit in southern latitudes. We need not refer to the oldest inhabitant, since the middle-aged remember when even the large cities of the North were supplied from the fields in the suburbs, and the strawberry season in town was identical with that of the surrounding country. But a marvellous change has taken place, and berries from southern climes appear in our markets soon after midwinter. This early supply is becoming one of the chief industries of the South Atlantic coast, and every year increases its magnitude. At one time, southern New Jersey furnished the first berries, but Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia soon began to compete. Norfolk early took the lead in this trade, and even before the war was building up a fine business. That event cut off our Southern supply, and for a few years June and strawberries again came together. But after the welcome peace, many Southern fields grew red once more, but not with blood, and thronged, but chiefly by women and children. Soil, climate, and superb water communications speedily restored to Norfolk the vantage which she will probably maintain; but fleet steamers are giving more southern ports a chance. Charleston, South Carolina, is second only in importance. In the spring of '79, every week four steamers were loaded for New York, and strawberries formed no insignificant proportion of the freight. Indeed, the supply from Charleston was so large that the price in April scarcely repaid the cost of some shipments. The proprietor of a commission house, largely engaged in the Southern fruit trade, told me he thought that about one third as many strawberries came from Charleston as from Norfolk. From careful inquiries made on the ground, I am led to believe—if it has not already attained this position—that Norfolk is rapidly becoming the largest strawberry centre in the world, though Charleston is unquestionably destined to become its chief rival in the South. The latter city, however, has not been able to monopolize the far Southern trade, and never have I seen a finer field of strawberries than was shown me in the suburbs of Savannah. It consisted of a square of four acres, set with Neunan's Prolific, the celebrated Charleston berry.

And now Florida, with its unrivalled oranges, is beginning to furnish tons of strawberries, that begin ripening in our midwinter; and, with its quick, sandy soil and sunny skies, threatens to render the growing of this fruit under glass unprofitable. I saw last winter, at Mandarin, quite an extensive strawberry farm, under the care of Messrs. Bowen Brothers, and was shown their skilful appliances for shipping the fruit. At Jacksonville, also, Captain William James is succeeding finely in the culture of some of our Northern varieties, the Seth Boyden taking the lead.

I think I can better present the characteristics of strawberry culture in the South by aiming to give a graphic picture of the scenes and life on a single farm than is possible by general statements of what I have witnessed here and there. I have therefore selected for description a plantation at Norfolk, since this city is the centre of the largest trade, and nearly midway in the Atlantic strawberry belt, I am also led to make this choice because here is to be found, I believe, the largest strawberry farm in the world, and its varied labors illustrate most of the Southern aspects of the question.

The reader may imagine himself joining our little party on a lovely afternoon about the middle of May. We took one of the fine, stanch steamers of the Old Dominion line at three P.M., and soon were enjoying, with a pleasure that never palls, the sail from the city to the sea. Our artistic leader, whose eye and taste were to illumine and cast a glamour over my otherwise matter-of-fact text, was all aglow with the varied beauties of the scene, and he faced the prospect beyond the "Hook" with no more misgivings than if it were a "painted ocean." But there are occasions when the most heroic courage is of no avail.

Only in the peace and beauty that crowned the closing hours of the day as we steamed past Fortress Monroe and up the Elizabeth river, did the prosaic fade out of the hours just past, and now before us was the "sunny South" and strawberries and cream.

In the night there was a steady downfall of rain, but sunshine came with the morning, and we found that the spring we had left at the North was summer here, and saw that the season was moving forward with quickened and elastic tread. Before the day grew warm we started from our hotel at Norfolk for the strawberry plantation, rattling and bouncing past comfortable and substantial homes, over a pavement that surpassed even the ups and downs of fortune. Here and there, surrounded by a high brick wall, would be seen a fine old mansion, embowered in a wealth of shrubbery and foliage that gave, even in the midst of the city, a suburban seclusion. The honeysuckle and roses are at home in Norfolk, and their exquisite perfume floated to us across the high garden fences. Thank Heaven! some of the best things in the world cannot be walled in. St. Paul's Church and quaint old burying- ground, shadowed by trees, festooned with vines, and gemmed with flowers, seemed so beautiful, as we passed, that we thought its influence on the secular material life of the people must be almost as good through the busy week as on the Sabbath.

The houses soon grew scattering, and the wide, level, open country stretched away before us, its monotony broken here and there by groves of pine. The shell road ceased and our wheels now passed through many deep puddles, which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are preserved year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied class of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be seen on any other road in the country. There were stylish city carriages and buggies, grocer and express wagons, great lumbering market trucks laden with barrels of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, piled up with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, primitive carts drawn by cows—all converging toward some Northern steamer, whose capacious maw was ready to receive the produce of the country. We had not proceeded very far before we saw in the distance a pretty cottage, sheltered by a group of tall, primeval pines, and on the right of it a large barn-like building, with a dwelling, office, smithy, sheds, etc., grouped about it. A previous visit enabled me to point out the cottage as the home of the proprietor, and to explain that the seeming barn was a strawberry crate manufactory. As was the case on large plantations in the olden time, almost everything required in the business is made on the place, and nearly every mechanical trade has a representative in Mr. Young's employ.

As we drove up under the pines, the proprietor of the farm welcomed us with a cordial hospitality, which he may have acquired in part from his residence in the South. On the porch stood a slender lady, whose girlish grace and delicate beauty at once captivated the artists of our party.

There was the farm we had come to see, stretching away before us in hundreds of green, level acres. As we drove to a distant field in which the pickers were then engaged, we could see the ripening berries with one side blushing toward the sun. Passing a screen of pines, we came out into a field containing thirteen acres of Wilson strawberries, and then more fully began to realize the magnitude of the business. Scattered over the wide area, in what seemed inextricable confusion to our uninitiated eyes, were hundreds of men, women, and children of all ages and shades of color, and from the field at large came a softened din of voices, above the monotony of which arose here and there snatches of song, laughter mellowed by distance, and occasionally the loud, sharp orders of the overseers, who stalked hither and thither, wherever their "little brief authority" was most in requisition.

We soon noted that the confusion was more apparent than real, and that each picker was given a row over which he—or, more often, she—bent with busy fingers until it was finished. At central points crates were piled up, and men known as "buyers" received the round quart baskets from the trays of the pickers, while wide platform carts, drawn by mules, were bringing empty crates and carrying away those that had been filled.

Along the road that skirted the field, and against a pretty background of half-grown pines, motley forms and groups were moving to and fro, some seeking the "buyers" with full trays, others returning to their stations in the field with a new supply of empty baskets. Some of the pickers were drifting away to other fields, a few seeking work late in the day; more, bargaining with the itinerant venders of pies, made to last all summer if not sold, gingerbread, "pones," and other nondescript edibles, at which an ostrich would hesitate in well- grounded fear of indigestion, but for which sable and semi-sable pickers exchange their berry tickets and pennies as eagerly as we buy Vienna rolls. Two or three barouches and buggies that had brought visitors were mingled with the mule-carts; and grouped together for a moment might be seen elegantly attired ladies from New York, slender mulatto girls, clad in a single tattered, gown which scantily covered their bare ankles and feet, and stout, shiny negro women, their waists tied with a string to prevent their flowing drapery from impeding their work. Flitting to and fro were numberless colored children, bare-headed, bare-legged, and often, with not a little of their sleek bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white man. As a rule, these were better dressed, the white girls wearing sun-bonnets of portentous size, whose cavernous depths would make a search for beauty on the part of our artist a rather close and embarrassing scrutiny. The colored women as often wore a man's hat as any other, and occasionally enlivened the field with a red bandana. Over all the stooping, moving, oddly apparelled forms, a June-like sun was shining with summer warmth. Beyond the field a branch of Tanner's Creek shimmered in the light, tall pines sighed in the breeze on the right, and from the copse-wood at their feet quails were calling, their mellow whistle blending with the notes of a wild Methodist air. In the distance rose the spires of Norfolk, completing a picture whose interest and charm I have but faintly suggested.

Several of the overseers are negroes, and we were hardly on the ground before one of these men, in the performance of his duty, shouted in a stentorian voice:

"Heah, you! Git up dar, you long man, off'n yer knees. What yo' mashin' down a half-acre o' berries fer?"

Mr. Sheppard was quick to see a good subject, and almost in a flash he had the man posed and motionless in his attitude of authority, and under his rapid strokes Jackson won fame and eminence, going to his work a little later the hero of the field. The overseer's task is a difficult one, for the pickers least given to prayer are oftenest on their knees, crushing the strawberries, and whether they are "long" or short, much fruit is destroyed. North and South, the effort to keep those we employ off the berries must be constant, especially as a long, hot day is waning. Indeed, one can scarcely blame them for "lopping down," for it would be inquisitorial torture to most of us to stoop upon our feet through a summer day. Picking strawberries, as a steady business, is wofully prosaic.

While the sun had been shining so brightly there had been an occasional heavy jar and rumble of thunder, and now the western sky was black. Gradually the pickers had disappeared from the Wilson field, and we at last followed them, warned by an occasional drop of rain to seek the vicinity of the house. Having reached the grassy slope beneath the pines in the rear of the dwelling, we turned to note the pretty scene. A branch of Tanner's Creek came up almost to our feet, and on either side of it stretched away long rows of strawberries as far as the eye could reach. Toward these the throng of pickers now drifted, "seeking fresh fields and pastures new." The motley crowd was streaming down on either side of the creek, while across a little causeway came a counter current, the majority of them having trays full of berries. The buyers, like the traders with the nomad Indians, open traffic anywhere, and at the shortest notice. A mule-cart was stopped, a few empty crates taken off and placed under the pines at our feet, and soon the grass was covered with full quart baskets, for which the pickers received tickets and then passed on, or, as was often the case, threw themselves down in the shade. The itinerant venders came flocking in like so many buzzards. There was at once chaffering and chaffing, eating and drinking. All were merry. Looking on the groups before us, one would imagine that the sky was serene. And yet, frowning upon this scene of careless security, this improvident disregard of a swiftly coming emergency, was one of the blackest of clouds. Every moment the thunder was jarring and rolling nearer, and yet this jolly people, who "take no thought," heeded not the warning. Even the buyers and packers seemed infected with a like spirit, and were leisurely packing in crates the baskets of berries scattered on the grass, when suddenly Mr. Young, with his fleet, black horse, came flying down upon us. Standing up in his buggy, he gave a dozen rapid orders, like an officer on the field in a critical moment. The women, who had been lounging with their hands on their hips, shuffled off with their trays; half-burned pipes are hastily emptied; gingerbread and like delicacies are stuffed into capacious mouths, since hands must be employed at once. Packers, mules, everybody, everything, are put upon the double-quick to prepare for the shower. It is too late, however, for down come the huge drops as they can fall only in the South. The landscape grows obscure, the forms of the pickers in the distance become dim and misty, and when at last it lightens up a little, they have disappeared from the fields. There they go, streaming and dripping toward the barns and sheds, looking as bedraggled as a flock of black Spanish fowls. Such of the mule-drivers as have been caught, now that they are in for it, drive leisurely by with the heavy crates that they should have gathered up more promptly.

The cloud did not prove a passing one, and the rain fell so long and copiously that further picking for the day was abandoned. Some jogged off to the city, at a pace that nothing but a fiery storm could have quickened. A hundred or two remained under the sheds, singing and laughing. Men and women, and many bright young negro girls, too, lighted their pipes and waited till they could gather at the "paying booth," near the entrance of the farm, after the rain was over. This booth was a small shop, extemporized of rough boards by an enterprising grocer of the city. One side was open, like the counter of a restaurant, and within, upon the grass, as yet untrodden, were barrels and boxes containing the edible enormities which seem indigenous to the semi-grocery and eating-house. In most respects the place resembled the sutler's stand of our army days. There was a small window on one end of the booth, and at this sat the grocer, metamorphosed into a paymaster, with a huge bag of coin, which he rapidly exchanged for the strawberry tickets. Our last glimpse of the pickers, who had streamed out of the city in the gray dawn, left them in a long line, close as herrings in a box, pressing toward the window, from which came faintly the chink of silver.

As night at last closed about us, we realized the difference between a strawberry farm and a strawberry bed, or "patch," as country people say. Here was a large and well-developed business, which proved the presence of no small degree of brain power and energy; and our thoughts naturally turned to the proprietor and the methods by which he achieved success.

J. E. Young, Jr., is a veteran in strawberry culture, although but twenty-nine years of age. Mr. Young, Sr., was a Presbyterian clergyman who always had a leaning toward man's primal calling. When his son was a little boy, he was preaching at Plattsburgh, New York, and to his labors in the spiritual vineyard joined the care of a garden that was the pride of the town. Mr. Young, Jr., admits that he hated weeding and working among strawberries as much as any other boy, until he was given a share in the crop, and permitted to send a few crates to Montreal. He had seen but nine years when he shipped his first berries to market, and every summer since, from several widely separated localities and with many and varied experiences, he has sent to Northern cities increasing quantities of his favorite fruit. When but fifteen years of age he had the entire charge, during the long season, of three hundred "hands," and the large majority of them were Irish women and children. After considerable experience in strawberry farming in northern and southern New York and in New Jersey, his father induced him to settle at Norfolk, Virginia, and hither he came about ten years ago. Now he has under his control a farm of 440 acres, 150 of which are to-day covered with bearing strawberry plants. In addition, he has set out this spring over two million more plants, which will occupy another hundred acres, so that in 1880 he will have 250 acres that must be picked over almost daily.

Mr. Young prefers spring planting in operations upon a large scale. Such a choice is very natural in this latitude, for they can begin setting the first of February and continue until the middle of April. Therefore, nine-tenths of the plants grown in this region are set out in spring. But at Charleston and further south, they reverse this practice, and, with few exceptions, plant in the summer and fall, beginning as early as July on some places, and continuing well into December.

I must also state that the finest new plantation that I saw on Mr. Young's place was a field of Seth Boydens set out in September.

This fact proves that he could follow the system of autumn planting successfully, and I am inclined to think that he will regard this method with constantly increasing favor. As an instance proving the adaptation to this latitude of the fall system of planting, I may state that 96,000 plants were sent to a gentleman at Richmond, in October, 1877, and when I visited his place, the following spring, there was scarcely a break in the long rows, and nearly fruit enough, I think, to pay for the plants. From his Seth Boydens, set out last September, Mr. Young will certainly pick enough berries to pay expenses thus far; and at the same time, the plants are already four times the size of any set out this spring. As the country about Norfolk is level, with spots where the water would stand in very wet weather, Mr. Young has it thrown up into slightly raised beds two and a half feet wide. This is done by plows, after the ground has been thoroughly prepared and levelled by a heavy, fine-toothed harrow. These ridges are but four or five inches high, and are smoothed off by an implement made for the purpose. Upon these beds, quite near the edges, the plants are set in rows twenty inches apart, while the depressed space between the beds is twenty-seven inches wide. This space is also designed for the paths. The rows and the proper distances for the plants are designated by a "marker," an implement consisting of several wheels fastened to a frame and drawn by hand. On the rim of these wheels are two knobs shaped like an acorn. Each wheel marks a continuous line on the soft earth, and with each revolution the knobs make two slight but distinct depressions twelve inches apart; or, if the variety to be planted is a vigorous grower, he uses another set of wheels that indent the ground every fifteen inches. A plant is dropped at each indentation, and a gang of colored women follow with trowels, and by two or three quick, dexterous movements, imbed the roots firmly in the soil. Some become so quick and skilful as to be able to set out six or seven thousand a day, while four or five thousand is the average. With his trained band of twenty women, Mr. Young calls the setting of a hundred thousand plants a good day's work.

In April commences the long campaign against the weeds, which advance like successive armies. No sooner is one growth slain than a different and perhaps more pestiferous class rises in its place—the worst of the Philistines being nut-grass, quack-grass, and—direst foe of all— wire-grass.

This labor is reduced to its minimum by mule cultivation, and Mr. Young has on his farm a style of cultivator that is peculiarly adapted to the work. As this is his own invention, I will not describe it, but merely state that it enables him to work very close to the rows, and to stir the soil deeply without moving it or covering the plants. These cultivators are followed by women, with light, sharp hoes, who cut away the few weeds left between the plants. They handle these tools so deftly that scarcely any weeding is left to be done by hand; for, by a rapid encircling stroke, they cut within a half-inch of the plant. For several years past, I have urged upon Mr. Young the advantage of the narrow row system, and his own experience has led him to adopt it. He is now able to keep his immense farm free of weeds chiefly by mule labor, whereas, in his old system of matted row culture it was impossible to keep down the grass, or prevent the ground from becoming hard and dry. He now restricts his plants to hills or "stools," from twelve to fifteen inches apart. The runners are cut from time to time with shoe-knives, the left hand gathering them up by a single rapid movement, and the right hand severing them by a stroke. One woman will, by this method, clip the runners from several acres during the growing season. To keep his farm in order, Mr. Young must employ seventy-five hands through the summer. The average wages for women is fifty cents, and for men seventy-five to ninety cents. In the item of cheap labor the South has the advantage of the North.

With the advent of autumn, the onslaught of weeds gradually ceases, and there is some respite in the labors of a Virginia strawberry farm.

At Charleston and further south, this respite is brief, for the winters there are so mild that certain kinds of weeds will grow all the time, and early in February they must begin to cultivate the ground and mulch the plants for bearing.

Bordering on Mr. Young's farm, and further up the creek, there are hundreds of acres of salt meadows. From these he has cut, in the autumn and early winter, two hundred tons of hay, and with his lighter floats it down to his wharf. In December, acre after acre is covered until all the plants are quite hidden from view. In the spring, this winter mulch is left upon the ground as the summer mulch, the new growth in most instances pushing its way through it readily. When it is too thick to permit this, it is pushed aside from the crowns of the plants.

Thus far he has given the bearing fields no spring culture, adopting the common theory that the ground around the plants must not be disturbed at this season. I advocate the opposite view, and believe in early spring culture, as I have already explained; and I think his experience this year will lead him to give my method a trial in 1880. The latter part of April and early May was very dry at Norfolk, and the ground between the bearing plants became parched, hard, and in many instances full of weeds that had been developing through the long, mild spring of this region. Now I am satisfied that if he, and all others in this region who adopt the narrow row system, would loosen the ground deeply with a subsoil plow early in the season, before the plants had made any growth, and then stir and pulverize all the surface between the plants in the rows, they would increase the size and quantity of the berries at least one-third, and in many instances double the crop. It would require a very severe drought, indeed, to injure plants thus treated, and it is well known, also, that a porous, mellow soil will best endure too frequent rains. I have sometimes thought that light and air are as indispensable to the roots of plants as to the foliage.