The Fall-Bearing Strawberries.
CHARLES F. GARDNER, NURSERYMAN, OSAGE, IA.
(SO. MINN. HORT. SOCIETY.)
There are now such excellent varieties of fall bearing strawberries on the market that a person can have no good excuse for not planting some in his garden. Select the ground for the bed where you will get the whole benefit from the rays of the sun. I want no trees, bushes, or tall growing plants of any kind near the bed. The farther away, the better.
The earth should be made quite rich with well rotted compost. I like the plan of preparing the bed a long time before you get ready to set your plants. You can then work the soil over, time after time, and every time kill a crop of weeds. More plants are set in the spring than any other time, but they will grow and do well if set in midsummer or any time after that up to the middle of October. Get through setting in September if you can. If you set later, in October, cover the plants with a slight covering of straw as soon as planted. Then afterwards, when you make a business of covering put on a little more, cover them nicely—but you are liable to kill them if you put on too much. Two inches deep I find to be about the right depth to go through our ordinary winters. I mean two inches after the straw has settled. I think many persons spoil their plants, or at least injure them severely, by putting on too heavy a coat of covering. I will also tell you to beware of using horse-manure as a covering for strawberries. Clean straw or hay is the best of covering. (Fall planting of strawberries not advisable in Minnesota.—Secy.)
Most people do not trim the plants enough before they are set. All fruit stems should be cut off, if there are any, and the most of the old leaves removed, two or three of the youngest leaves on the plant is all that should be left. These will start right off into a vigorous growth, and you will soon have strong, healthy plants. I think it pays to put a small handful of tobacco dust on and around each hill. You can generally get it at your nearest greenhouse—or you can find out there where to send for it. Get enough to put it on two or three times during the early and latter part of summer.
Do not select ground for your new bed that has been in strawberries; take ground that has never had strawberries on, or at least that two or three crops of some kind have been taken from it since it was covered with strawberry vines.
After the plants are set, they should be well firmed; it is absolutely necessary that they should be very solid in the earth. They should not be too deep nor too shallow, one is as bad as the other. The crown buds should be in plain sight, after the ground is firmed and leveled, just in sight and no more. A little temporary hilling will do no harm, but the ground should be kept as level as possible. All cultivation should be shallow so as to not disturb the roots of the plants. This is also a very important item. Just remember that every plant loosened after it is set means death to the plant if it is not reset at once. Cultivate often when the ground is not too wet. Keep your bed entirely free of grass and weeds. This is easily done if all work is done when it should be. The time to kill weeds is when the seed first sprouts; don't wait until the weed plants are an inch or more high; if you do you will never keep them clean, and then you will never have success in your work.
Chas. F. Gardner at work in his everbearing strawberry experiment grounds.
Cut all fruit stems off as fast as they appear, until your plants get well rooted, and then let them bear as much as they want to. But if some plants set an unusually large number it is well to cut out part of the fruit. If rightly thinned you will increase the yield in quarts.
If fruit is the main object, after the plants are well located and begin to set fruit for your main crop, they can be mulched with clean straw or hay, carefully tucked up around each hill. This will keep the fruit clean and conserve the moisture in the soil, and you can stop cultivating. If plants are the main object, then you can not use the mulching, but must keep the cultivator going between the rows. Well informed growers of the strawberry plant generally have beds on purpose for fruit in one place, and in another place one to grow plants.
No one will make a success in growing strawberries unless he can learn to detect the rogues that appear from time to time in strawberry patches or in the fields. These rogues are generally plants that have come up from the seed that has been scattered in one way and another over the bed. Berries are stepped on and mashed, other berries are overlooked and rot on the ground, but the seed remain and germinate when the time comes for it in the spring, and some of these plants are not destroyed by cultivation or by hoeing, and soon make trouble for the grower. No seedling will be like the original plants that were first set, and many of them will be strong growing plants, good runners but worthless for fruit. When you set a new lot of plants you get some of these seedlings, and that is how the mixture comes in. I have counted one hundred and fifty seedling plants around one old plant in the spring. Of course the most of these where good tillage is practised are destroyed, but some remain in spite of all you can do unless you pay the very closest attention and learn to distinguish rogues from the true named varieties. All rogues must be kept out if you keep the variety true to name. Of course once in a while a rogue will prove to be a valuable variety, as was the case when Mr. Cooper found the Pan American eighteen years ago, from which our fall varieties owe their parentage. If you want to be successful remember to keep in mind the value of constant selection and keeping your parent stock true to name.
When you first set out your plants, go over them and examine them closely and see that everything is right. Then remember that the first sign of a good fall bearing variety is to see it throw out fruit stalks. You can cut these off, so that the stub of the fruit stem will show that it has sent up a flower stalk. You can see the stub. In this way in a small patch you can easily keep track of them. If some plants do not throw out fruit stems, mark them so you can tell them, and if they pass the season without trying to fruit, you must refrain from setting out any of the runners that appear, or there is liability of trouble. Let such plants alone for another year's trial. Then if they do no better, dig them up and destroy them. Once in a while they prove to be all right, but often they are worthless.
Learn to tell a variety by a careful examination of the plant at different times during the season. Fix the general color of the leaf in your mind, its shape and size. Notice whether the fruit stems are long or short, whether the blossoms are above the leaves, in plain sight, or are hidden below. Are there many fruit buds to the stalk, or but few? Are the blossoms pistillate or staminate? Are the petals large or small? Are the stamens long or short? Are the anthers well or poorly formed? They should be plump and well filled before they are ready to open.
Is the receptacle on which the pistils sit well formed and capable of being developed into a perfect berry, or do they look ungainly in shape? Are the petals pure white or slightly crimson? Are there many runners, or few, or none? Do the new runners bear blossoms and fruit? If so, when do they commence to bud and bloom? When do the berries begin to ripen? Notice the size and shape of the fruit, also the color. You can tell much from the taste of the berry. No two varieties taste exactly alike. Some are real sweet and some kinds real sour. Then there are all grades between.
The perfume, or fragrance, of the fruit of the common strawberry when fully ripened under proper conditions of sunlight and moisture has long been esteemed and highly appreciated by mankind in general, and in this respect the fall-bearing strawberry varies greatly. The most of the varieties excel all common kinds as to perfume and that delicate strawberry flavor which nearly everybody loves so well. Once in a while a musk-scented variety is developed, like the Milo on our grounds, which as yet has never been sent out. By paying close attention to these things you can soon learn to distinguish many varieties at any time during the growing season.
In 1898 Mr. Cooper found his seedling which he called the Pan American. From that small beginning there are now many varieties, perhaps thousands, that excel the parent plant, and perhaps a hundred varieties of great value. Some varieties have very superior merit. I will mention a few: Progressive, Peerless, Advance, Danville, Forward, Prince, Will, Milo, Nathaniel, 480, and there are others which might be mentioned. Good reports have reached me of kinds produced at your Horticultural Experiment farm by Prof. Haralson, but I have never tried them. My private opinion is that several kinds I have not mentioned will very soon take a back seat, as the saying is. The best varieties are bound to come to the front.
The best advertisement one can have is the ability to ship thousands of quarts during the whole autumn. This season we shipped 22,565 quarts, mostly sold in pint boxes. They netted us from 12-1/2 to 18 cents per pint. At home we kept them on the market during the whole season at 15 cents per quart. We lost as many as 5,000 quarts by violent storms during the season. It was a fair season for growing plants, but there was too much water to grow the best of fruit.