Everbearing Strawberries.
GEO. J. KELLOGG, JANESVILLE, WIS.
A few words about this new breed. Progressive, Superb and Americus are the best three I have found in the last ten years—don't confound American with Americus. Pan-American was the mother of the whole tribe. This variety was found in a field of Bismark, by S. Cooper, New York, and exhibited all through the Buffalo World's Fair. There is where my first acquaintance with it was formed. From this one plant and its seedlings all the ten thousand everbearers have been grown. But Pan-American don't make many plants. There are a great many good kinds in the ten thousand, and a great many of them worthless. So look out when and where you buy. I have great hopes of your No. 1017, but kinds do not adapt themselves to all soils or climates.
I have not found any success with the everbearers south of the Ohio. I have tried them three years in Texas. I sent plants to Bro. Loring, in California, and they failed to produce satisfactorily. Missouri grows almost all Aroma; California but two kinds commercially; Texas only Excelsior and Klondike for shipment. I hope our No. 3 Minnesota June-bearing and our No. 1017 Everbearing, will have as great a range as Dunlap.
Friend Gardener, of Iowa, has a lot of "thousand dollar kinds." I hope some of them will do wonders. He sold 5,000 quarts of fruit after August 15. A firm at Three Rivers, Mich., this season advertised 30,000 cases in September, but perhaps it was only 3,000; I have known printers to make mistakes. My boy's beds of Superb, Progressive and Americus were loaded with ripe and green fruit and blossoms October 1st this year. Most, if not all, know the fruit must be kept off the everbearers the season of planting till the plants get established, usually two or three months, then let them bear. If you want all fruit, keep off the runners; if all plants, keep off the fruit. Beds kept over that have exhausted themselves will need rest till July to give big crops. Beds kept over will fruit a week earlier than the June varieties, rest a few weeks, then give a fall crop, but don't expect too much unless you feed them.
There are ten thousand kinds of new everbearers, so don't buy any that have not been tried and proven worthy. There are thousands that are worthless. Friend Haralson only got No. 1017 out of 1,500 sorts. He has now 3,000 new kinds, set out four feet apart each way, he is testing. From what many growers are doing this breed will pay commercially, but it will be by experts. I have not time to advocate cultivation in hills or hedge rows; if you want big berries this is the way to get them. Be sure your straw mulch and manure mulch are free from noxious weed or clover and grass seeds. Everbearers need the same winter care as June varieties and a good deal more manure. Don't cover with asparagus tops unless free of seed. Put manure either fresh or rotted on the old bed with a manure spreader or evenly by hand. There is a possibility of manuring too heavily.
A typical everbearing strawberry plant as it appears in September.
Mr. Durand: What is the best spray for leaf-spot and rust in strawberries?
Mr. Kellogg: Cut it out and burn it, but then there are some sprays with bordeaux mixture that will help you, but you have got to put it on before the rust shows itself.
Mr. Miller: I would like to ask Mr. Kellogg if he advises covering the strawberries in the winter after snow has fallen and with what success?
Mr. Kellogg: If the snow isn't too heavy you can do it just as well after the snow comes as before, but if your snow comes early and is a foot deep you have got to wait until the January thaw before you can successfully mulch them. That snow will protect them until it thaws off, until the ground commences to freeze. If the snow comes early and stays late it is all the mulch you need.
Mr. Franklin: Are oak leaves as they blow off from the trees on the strawberry beds, are they just as good to protect them as straw would be—when there are lots of oak leaves?
Mr. Kellogg: If you don't put them on too thick. You don't want more than two inches of leaves. If you do they will mat down and smother your plants.
Mr. Ludlow: Have you had any experience with using cornstalks that have been fed off, just the stalk without the leaves. Is that sufficient for a winter protection without the straw or leaves? I put on mine just to cover them. They are four inches apart one way and then across it the other way so as to hold it up and not get them smothered.
Mr. Kellogg: That is all right. I have covered with cornstalks.
Mr. Ludlow: Would it be policy to leave that on and let the strawberries come up through, to keep them clean?
Mr. Kellogg: If you get the stalks on one way and haven't them covered too thick the other way, leave them on; the strawberries will come through.
Mr. Gowdy: I would like to ask Mr. Kellogg what he thinks of planting different varieties together.
Mr. Kellogg: It is a good plan. I spoke of Dunlap and Warfield. The Warfield is a pistillate. If you plant all Warfields you get no fruit. If you plant all Dunlap it will bear well but it will do better alongside of a pistillate, or it will do better alongside of some other perfect. It will do better to plant two or four kinds. They used to ask me what kinds of strawberries I wanted, and what was the best one kind. I told them I wanted six or eight in order to get the best kind. I want an early, and a medium, and a late, two of a kind.
Mr. Gowdy: I planted one year three varieties with great success.
Mr. McClelland: What time do you uncover your strawberries?
Mr. Kellogg: I don't uncover them at all. If you got on four inches of mulch you want to take off enough so the plants can get through, but keep on enough mulch in the spring to keep your plants clean and protect from the drouth.
Mr. McClelland: Will they come through the mulch all right?
M. Kellogg: They will come through all right if it isn't more than two inches. If they shove up and raise the mulch open it up a little over the plants.
Mr. Willard: I would like to ask the speaker, the way I understood him, why he couldn't raise as good strawberries on new ground as on old ground?
Mr. Kellogg: The soil seems to be too loose. Now, that twenty-one acres I had, it was full of leaf-mold. It was six inches deep and had been accumulating for ages. I couldn't account for it only that it was too loose, and I had to work it down with other crops before I could grow strawberries.
Mr. Willard: So it would be better to plant on old ground or old breaking than new?
Mr. Kellogg: Yes, old ground that has been well manured, or old ground that has never been manured, will grow better strawberries than new soil, as far as I have tried it. New clover soil is a good soil.
Mr. Wedge: It might add to the value of this discussion to state that Mr. Kellogg's soil at Janesville is rather light soil anyhow. I am under the impression that if his soil at Janesville which produced so poorly on new soil had been a heavy clay soil that the result would have been different.
Mr. Kellogg: That twenty-one acres was clay after you got down to it and was in the woods; my other fields were out on the prairie. I don't think the light soil had anything to do with it, with my failure in the woods, I think it was the new soil.
Mr. Sauter: Can the everbearing and the common varieties be planted together?
Mr. Kellogg: Yes, if you are growing plants you want everything.
Mr. Sauter: How far apart must they be planted?
Mr. Kellogg: So their runners won't run together, and they won't mix. If the runners mix maybe you would get some crosses that are valuable.
Mr. Clausen: I was just thinking it might interfere, that some one might not plant strawberries at all on account of new soil. I would say I have a neighbor, and he had entirely new soil. It was black oak and hickory—I have some of that myself. I never saw a better patch of strawberries than he had. I don't think I ever saw a better strawberry patch than he had of the everbearing kind, so I don't think it is just exactly the old soil.
Mr. Willis: I have my strawberries on new ground, and they did very fine, couldn't be better. From a space of five feet square I got twenty-eight boxes, that is, of No. 3.
Mr. Wedge: Forest soil or prairie?
Mr. Willis: It was light clay. I have got about an acre and a half on new soil now, and they look very fine.
Mr. Glenzke: What would be the consequence of the berries being planted after tomatoes had been planted there the year before? What would be the consequence as to the white grub that follows the tomatoes, and other insects?
Mr. Kellogg: That white grub don't follow tomatoes, if the ground was clear of white grubs before. It is a three year old grub, and it don't come excepting where the ground is a marsh or meadow, and doesn't follow in garden soil, hardly ever. If the ground has been cultivated two years, you don't have any white grub.
Mr. Glenzke: Part of this ground had been in red raspberries, and I found them there. This year I am going to put in tomatoes and prepare it for strawberries. Will that be all right?
Mr. Kellogg: You may get some white grubs after the raspberry bushes if your raspberries have been two or three years growing. Potato ground is the best you can follow strawberries with.
Mr. Rasmussen (Wisconsin): What trouble have you experienced with overhead irrigation with the strawberries in the bright sunshine?
Mr. Kellogg: Everything is against it. You wet the foliage, and it is a damage to the plants. You can't sprinkle in the hot sun without damage.
Mr. Rasmussen: I didn't mean in putting it on in that way, but where you use the regular spray system. We watered that way about seven years in the hottest sunshine without any difficulty, and I wondered if you ever put in a system and sprayed that way, as I think that is the only way to put water on.
Mr. Kellogg: If you wait to spray after sundown it will be all right; the sun mustn't shine on the plants.
Mr. Richardson: Mr. Yankee once said in this society if one man said anything another man would contradict it. So pay your money and take your choice. I sprinkle my strawberries in the hot sun, and I never had any damage done to the plants. His experience is different. Ours is a heavy clay loam.
Mr. Kellogg: Tell the gentlemen about the peat soil, you had some experience with peat soil.
Mr. Richardson: No, I never did. It wasn't peat, it was a heavy black clay and I had the best kind of strawberries, they came right through a tremendous drouth without any water at all.
Mr. Kellogg: What did you use?
Mr. Richardson: I used a common garden hoe.
Mr. Willis: I heard some one talking about the grub worm. I read of somebody using fifty pounds of lime to the acre, slaked lime, and 100 pounds of sulphur to the acre in a strawberry bed, and he killed the insects.
Mr. Kellogg: I think that wouldn't kill the grub; he has a stomach that will stand most anything. The only thing I know is to cut his head off. (Laughter.)
Mr. Willis: Would it improve the plants, fertilize the plants, this lime?
Mr. Kellogg: Lime and sulphur is all right, and the more lime you put on the better—if you don't get too much. (Laughter.)
Mr. Sauter: I am growing the Minnesota No. 3, and also the No. 1017 as an everbearer. Is there any kind better than those two?
Mr. Kellogg: I don't believe there is anything yet that has been offered or brought out that I have examined thoroughly that is any better than June variety No. 3, as grown by Haralson, and the No. 1017 of the everbearers. He had a number of everbearers that bore too much. There was No. 107 and No. 108, I think, that I tried at Lake Mills, which bore themselves to death in spite of everything I could do.
Mr. Simmons: The question has come up two or three times in regard to peat soil for growing strawberries. Peat soil will grow strawberry plants first class, but the fruit is generally lacking. That is my experience. I grew some on peat soil for two or three seasons, and the plants grew prolific, but I didn't get any fruit.
Mr. Ebler: I would like to ask Mr. Kellogg what treatment he would advise for a strawberry bed that through neglect has matted completely over, in which the rows have disappeared.
Mr. Kellogg: Plow out paths and rake out the plants and throw them away and work the bed over to rows about two feet wide.
President Cashman: I see you all appreciate expert advice. We have Mr. Kellogg well nigh tired.
Mr. Kellogg: Oh, no; I can stand it all day.
Mr. Cashman: I am sure you all agree that it is a great privilege to listen to Mr. Kellogg on this subject. If you will follow his advice very closely it will save you a great many dollars, even to those who don't grow more than an ordinary family strawberry bed. He has had forty or fifty years of experience, and he has paid large sums of money for that experience and now turns it over to you free of charge, and I hope you will all profit by it.
Mr. Kellogg: I have grown probably 300 different varieties of strawberries, and the more kinds I grow the less money I make. (Laughter.)
Mr. Wedge: I would like to ask Mr. Kellogg and I think we would all be interested in knowing when he began growing strawberries?
Mr. Kellogg: Well, I don't hardly know. I didn't go into the business until 1852, but I commenced picking strawberries in 1835, and that was where the Indians had planted them. My father commenced growing strawberries when I was a boy, but when I got to be a man I went at it myself in 1852. (Applause.)
IN MEMORIAM—Mrs. Melissa J. Harris
Passed January 29, 1916.
Mrs. Melissa J. Harris, widow of the late John S. Harris, one of the charter members of our society and rightly called the godfather of the society, passed to her reward on January 29 last, at the age of eighty-five years. Since the death of her husband, which occurred in March, 1901, Mrs. Harris has made her home with some one of her four surviving children, all of whom live in the southeastern part of the state, not far from La Crescent, where Mr. and Mrs. Harris resided from 1856 up to the time of Mr. Harris' death, some forty-five years.
Mrs. Melissa J. Harris.
Many of the older members of this society have enjoyed the hospitality of this kindly home, among them the writer, who passed a very pleasant day there, looking over the experimental orchards of Mr. Harris, some twenty years ago. No member of our society surpassed Mr. Harris in his zeal for its welfare, and he was ready to sacrifice anything apparently to advance its interests. If the card index of the reports of this society was examined it would be found that no member has begun to do the service for the society in the way of contributions to its program, reports on seedling fruits, experimental work, etc., that was done by him. His passing left a real void in the life of the association which has never really been filled. A splendid life size photo of Mr. Harris adorns the walls of this office; a reproduction from this in reduced size is opposite page 161, Vol. 1901 of our annual reports.
The funeral services of Mrs. Harris were conducted in the Presbyterian church at La Crescent, the same building in which services were held for her husband, at which there were present from our society as representatives Mr. J. M. Underwood, the late Wyman Elliot, and the writer. Her body was laid to rest beside that of her husband in Prospect Hill Cemetery at La Crescent.
Mrs. Harris is survived by four children, ten grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren. Frank I. Harris, one of the two sons, is well known to our membership who attend the annual meetings or the state fair; another son, Eugene E., who is also a life member (Mr. Harris saw to it that both of his sons were made life members during his life time) has occasionally been with us. Mr. D. C. Webster, of La Crescent, at present in charge of one of the society trial stations, is a grandson of Mrs. Harris. Exhibitors at our meetings and at the state fair are all well acquainted with this valuable member of our organization.—Secy.