Whether it grows North or South, East or West, the strawberry plant is the same, and has certain constitutional traits and requirements, which should be thoroughly fixed in our minds. Modifications of treatment made necessary by various soils and climates are then not only easily learned but also easily understood.
When asked, on one occasion, what was the chief requirement in successful strawberry culture, Hon. Marshall P. Wilder replied substantially in the following piquant manner:—
"In the first place, the strawberry's chief need is a great deal of water.
"In the second place, it needs more water.
"In the third place, I think I would give it a great deal more water."
The more extended and full my experience becomes, the less exaggeration
I find in his words. The following strong confirmation of President
Wilder's opinion may be found in Thompson's "Gardener's Assistant," a
standard English work:—
"Ground that is apt to get very dry from the effects of only ten days' or a fortnight's drought is not suitable, on account of the enormous quantity of water that will be necessary; and if once the plants begin to flag for want of moisture, the crop is all but lost. A soil that is naturally somewhat moist, but not too wet, answers well; and where the land has admitted of irrigation, we have seen heavy crops produced every year."
If this be true in England, with its humid climate, how much more emphatically should we state the importance of this requirement in our land of long droughts and scorching suns.
Moisture, then, is the strawberry's first and chief need. Without it, the best fertilizers become injurious rather than helpful. Therefore, in the preparation of the soil and its subsequent cultivation, there should be a constant effort to secure and maintain moisture, and the failure to do this is the chief cause of meagre crops. And yet, very probably, the first step absolutely necessary to accomplish this will be a thorough system of underdrainage. I have spent hundreds of dollars in such labors, and it was as truly my object to enable the ground to endure drought as to escape undue wetness. Let it be understood that it is moist and not wet land that the strawberry requires. If water stands or stagnates upon or a little below the surface, the soil becomes sour, heavy, lifeless; and if clay is present, it will bake like pottery in dry weather, and suggest the Slough of Despond in wet. Disappointment, failure, and miasma are the certain products of such unregenerate regions, but, as is often the case with repressed and troublesome people, the evil traits of such soil result from a lack of balance, and a perversion of what is good.
The underdrain restores the proper equilibrium; the brush-hook and axe cut away the rank unwholesome growth which thrives best in abnormal conditions. Sun, air, and purifying frosts mellow and sweeten the damp, heavy malarious ground, as the plowshare lifts it out of its low estate. A swamp, or any approach to one, is like a New York tenement-house district, and requires analogous treatment.