Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

Records of varying experiences, and the discussion of commercial fertilizers, might be continued indefinitely, but enough has been said, I think, to suggest to each cultivator unacquainted with the subject in what directions he should seek success. If I were asked what is the one special manure in which the strawberry especially delights, I should answer unhesitatingly, the well decayed and composted production of the cow-stable, and if the reader had seen Mr. Durand's beds of the Great American variety in bearing, after being enriched with this material, he would be well satisfied to use it when it could be obtained. The vines of even this fastidious berry, that falters and fails in most soils, averaged one foot in height, and were loaded with enormous fruit. The subject may be summed up by an extract from a letter of Mr. Alexander Hyde to the "New York Times":

"Nitrates, phosphates, and ammonia are good fertilizers, and just the chemicals which most lands need, but plants require a good bed as well as good food. The physical condition of the soil, as well as the chemical, must receive attention; and we know of nothing superior to a well-made compost for furnishing both the chemical and physical conditions necessary for the development of our crops."

CHAPTER XI

OBTAINING PLANTS AND IMPROVING OUR STOCK

Having prepared and enriched our ground, we are ready for the plants. They can often be obtained from a good neighbor whose beds we have watched across the fence, and whose varieties we have sampled to our satisfaction. But the most liberal neighbors may not be able to furnish all we need, or the kinds we wish. Moreover, in private gardens, names and varieties are usually in a sad tangle. We must go to the nurseryman. At this point, perhaps, a brief appeal to the reader's common-sense may save much subsequent loss and disappointment.

In most of our purchases, we see the article before we take it, and can estimate its value. Just the reverse is usually true of plants. We know—or believe—that certain varieties are valuable, and we order them from a distance, paying in advance. When received, the most experienced cannot be sure that the plants are true to the names they bear. We must plant them in our carefully prepared land, expend upon them money, labor, and, above all, months and years of our brief lives, only to learn, perhaps, that the varieties are not what we ordered, and that we have wasted everything on a worthless kind. The importance of starting right, therefore, can scarcely be overestimated. It is always best to buy of men who, in the main, grow their own stock, and therefore know about it, and who have established a reputation for integrity and accuracy. The itinerant agent flits from Maine to California, and too often the marvellous portraits of fruits that he exhibits do not even resemble the varieties whose names they bear. It is best to buy of those who have a "local habitation and a name," and then, if anything is wrong, one knows where to look for redress.

Even if one wishes to be accurate, it is difficult to know that one's stock is absolutely pure and true to name. The evil of mixed plants is more often perpetuated in the following innocent manner than by any intentional deception: For instance, one buys from a trustworthy source, as he supposes, a thousand "Monarch" strawberry plants, and sets them out in the spring. All blossoms should be picked off the first year, and, therefore, there can be no fruit as a test of purity that season. But by fall there are many thousands of young plants. The grower naturally says: "I bought these for the Monarch, therefore they are Monarchs," and he sells many plants as such. When coming into fruit the second summer, he finds, however, that not one in twenty is a Monarch plant. As an honest man, he now digs them under in disgust; but the mischief has already been done, and scattered throughout the country are thousands of mixed plants which multiply with the vigor of evil. Nurserymen should never take varieties for granted, no matter where obtained. I endeavor so to train my eye that I can detect the distinguishing marks even in the foliage and blossoms, and if anything looks suspicious I root it out. The foliage of the Monarch of the West is so distinct that if one learns to know it he can tell whether his plants are mixed at a glance.

If possible, the nurseryman should start with plants that he knows to be genuine, and propagate from them. Then, by constant and personal vigilance, he can maintain a stock that will not be productive chiefly of profanity when coming into fruit. This scrutiny of propagating beds is a department that I shall never delegate to any one else.

It is not thrift to save in the first cost of plants, if thereby the risk of obtaining poor, mixed varieties is increased. I do not care to save five dollars to-day and lose fifty by the operation within a year. A gentleman wrote to me, "I have been outrageously cheated in buying plants." On the same page he asked me to furnish stock at rates as absurdly low as those of the man who cheated him. If one insists on having an article at far less than the cost of production, it is not strange that he finds some who will "cheat him outrageously." I find it by far the cheapest in the long run to go to the most trustworthy sources, and pay the grower a price which enables him to give me just what I want.

When plants are both fine and genuine they can still be spoiled, or, at least, injured in transit from the ground where they grew. Dig so as to save all the roots, shake these clean of earth, straighten them out, and tie the plants into bundles of fifty. Pack in boxes, with the roots down in moss and the tops exposed to the air. Do not press them in too tightly or make them too wet, or else the plants become heated —a process which speedily robs them of all vitality. In cool seasons, and when the distance is not too great, plants can be shipped in barrels thickly perforated with holes. The tops should be toward the sides and the roots in the centre, down through which there should be a circulation of air. In every case, envelop the roots in damp moss or leaves—damp, but not wet. Plants can be sent by mail at the rate of one cent per ounce, and those obtained in this way rarely fail in doing well.