_An improved method of cultivating the Alpine Strawberry._----The
strawberry is a fruit which is agreeable to the palate of so many
persons, and which disagrees with the constitution of so few, that
any means of improving the culture of it, and of prolonging the
season of its maturity and perfection, will be acceptable to the
Horticultural Society: I am therefore induced to send an account of
an improved method of cultivating the _Alpine Strawberry_, that is,
I believe, little if at all known, and that I have practised with
the best possible success.
Though the flavour of the Alpine varieties is generally approved,
they are not much thought of while the larger varieties continue in
perfection, and are valued only as an autumnal crop. I was therefore
led to try several different methods of culture, with a view to
obtain plants that would just begin to blossom when the other
varieties cease; conceiving that such plants, not having expended
either themselves, or the virtue of the soil, in a previous crop
of fruit, would afford the best and most abundant autumnal produce.
Under this impression, I sowed the seeds of the best Alpine variety
that I had ever been able to obtain, in pots of mould, in the
beginning of August, the seeds of the preceding year having been
preserved to that period; and the plants these afforded were placed,
in the end of March, in beds to produce fruit. This experiment
succeeded tolerably well; but I was not quite satisfied with it;
for though my plants produced an abundant autumnal crop of fruit,
they began to blossom somewhat earlier than I wished, and before
they were perfectly well rooted in the soil. I therefore tried the
experiment of sowing some seeds of the same variety early in the
spring, in pots which I placed in a hotbed of moderate strength in
the beginning of April, and the plants thus raised were removed to
the beds in which they were to remain in the open ground as soon
as they had acquired a sufficient size. They began to blossom soon
after midsummer, and to ripen their fruit towards the end of July,
affording a most abundant crop of very fine fruit. The powers of
life in plants thus raised, being young and energetic, operate
much more powerfully than in the runners of older plants, or even
in plants raised from seeds in the preceding year; and therefore I
think the Alpine strawberry ought always to be treated as an annual
plant.