There should be one or two rows of strawberries across the garden; the
rows four feet apart. It will be found a great deal easier to keep them
free from weeds and to gather the fruit when grown in this way. The
varieties, one early and one late, or both rows of a continuous bearing
kind, should be of the perfect flowering character, as there are plenty
of varieties of this character which are as good and prolific as any
pistillate sort grown, and they are not so much trouble to grow, or
as uncertain a crop. The plants should be set early in the spring, in
well-manured ground, twelve inches apart in the row, and should be hoed
and cultivated as frequently as possible. As the runners start lay them
lengthways of the row and let them root in, keeping the soil loose and
fine, so that they can easily take hold.
The blossoms should be kept picked off the season of planting, or they
will take the strength of the young plant so that it will make but a
feeble growth and no runners. In growing the plants in this way the
runners should not be allowed to form a row more than one and a half
feet wide, as this will be fully two feet in the second season, and as
much as a picker can manage. The grass particularly should be kept out
of the rows of young plants, or it will take a start in the spring and
entirely crowd out the strawberries.
These rows should be set out every spring, taking the plants from
the outside of the rows planted the preceding year, as it is almost
impossible to keep them free from weeds after the first season, besides
which they do not bear more than half so many, nor nearly such large
berries, the second season. Unless the ground is very rich where
the young plants are set, it is a good plan to sow a heavy coat of
phosphate, bone, or, best of all, wood ashes, just before they are
worked with the cultivator for the first time in the spring. The young
plants should not be planted in land that has just been in sod, as it
is full of white grubs, which will eat the plants off underground, and
care should also be taken that the manure for the strawberry plot is
not infested with them. These rows should be lightly covered with long
manure, old hay or other litter, in the fall, after the ground has
become frozen hard, so that they may be protected from rapid freezing
and thawing; and if the covering is not too heavy, it can be left on
in the spring and the plants will shoot up through it, leaving it as
a mulch and serving to keep the berries clean, by saving them from
contact with the ground, as does the straw mulching, from which the
berry is generally supposed to take its name.
In selecting varieties choose those which are recommended as suitable
for your soil, heavy or light, or such as have proved good in your
immediate neighborhood, as some of the finest kinds are worthless in
a different soil from that to which they are adapted. If especially
fine, large berries are desired, the plants should be set in rows three
feet apart, the plants twelve inches, as before, and all the runners
kept cut off as fast as they appear. In this case heavy mulching is
imperative, or the stools will be thrown out of the ground in the
spring freezing and thawing. When the spring opens, the mulching should
be cleared away from the crown of the plant, but should be allowed to
remain on the ground surrounding the plant, as the weeds can easily be
kept from such a patch, and fresh fertilizer applied. The patch may be
continued in bearing for two or three seasons, but it will be found a
great deal easier if a fresh patch is planted in new ground each year.