Success with Small Fruits

r and early spring. The latter part of May and the month of June is the only time at which I have not planted with satisfactory results. In Northern latitudes, early spring is preferable, for

e earlier they are set out, if they can be kept growing during the remainder of the hot season, the larger will be the yield the following spring. As a rule, plants, unless grown in pots, can not be shipped from th

rotted compost, leaf mould, decayed sods, etc., but never with fresh, unfermented manure. I have found the admixture of a little fine bone meal with the soil to be strong aid to vigorous growth. The young runners are then so guided and held down by a small stone or lump of earth that they will take root in the pots, indeed, quite large plants, if still attached to thrifty runners, may be taken up, their roots shortened to one-quarter of an inch, and these inserted in the little pots, which will

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 c

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

tle, 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 p

in contrast, one plants the large, showy, high-flavored varieties, and is able to obtain from fifteen to th

ion: A Pot

ts 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.

d at the subject from

summer as possible. To wait two years of our short lives for strawberries because the plants are a little cheap

oreover, 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

n 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 bef

freezing weather is over; otherwise they would decay. Do not first pu

ing-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