In the garden, light soils can be given a much more stable and productive character by covering them with clay to the depth of one or two inches every fall, and then plowing it in. The winter's frost and rains mix the two diverse soils, to their mutual benefit. Carting sand on clay is rarely remunerative; the reverse is decidedly so, and top-dressings of clay on light land are often more beneficial than equal amounts of manure.
As practically employed, I regard quick, stimulating manures, like aguno, very injurious to light soils. I believe them to be the curse of the South. They are used "to make a crop," as it is termed; and they do make it for a few years, but to the utter impoverishment of the land. The soil becomes as exhausted as a man would be should he seek to labor under the support of stimulants only. In both instances, an abundance of food is needed. A quinine pill is not a dinner, and a dusting of guano or phosphate cannot enrich the land.
And yet, by the aid of these stimulating commercial fertilizers, the poorest and thinnest soil can be made to produce fine strawberries, if sufficient moisture can be maintained. Just as a physician can rally an exhausted man to a condition in which he can take and be strengthened by food, so land, too poor and light to sprout a pea, can be stimulated into producing a meagre green crop of some kind, which, plowed under, will enable the land to produce a second and heavier burden. This, in turn, placed in the soil, will begin to give a suggestion of fertility. Thus, poor or exhausted soils can be made, by several years of skilful management, to convalesce slowly into strength.
Whether such patient outlay of time and labor will pay on a continent abounding in land naturally productive is a very dubious question.
Coarse, gravelly soils are usually even worse. If we must grow our strawberries on them, give the same general treatment that I have just suggested.
On some peat soils the strawberry thrives abundantly; on others it burns and dwindles. Under such conditions I should experiment with bone-dust, ashes, etc., until I found just what was lacking.
No written directions can take the place of common-sense, judgment, and, above all, experience. Soils vary like individual character. I have yet to learn of a system of rules that will teach us how to deal with every man we meet. It is ever wise, however, to deal justly and liberally. He that expects much from his land must give it much.
I have dwelt at length on the preparation and enrichment of the land, since it is the cornerstone of all subsequent success. Let me close by emphasizing again the principle which was made prominent at first. Though we give our strawberry plants everything else they need, our crop of fruit will yet be good or bad in the proportion that we are able to maintain abundant moisture during the blossoming and fruiting season. If provision can be made for irrigation, it may increase the yield tenfold.