Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

The following remarks will have reference to this system, as I consider it the best. We will start with plants that have just been set out. If fruit is our aim, we should remember that the first and strongest impulse of each plant will be to propagate itself; but to the degree that it does so it lessens its own vitality and power to produce berries the following season. Therefore every runner that a plant makes means so much less and so much smaller fruit from that plant. Remove the runners as they appear, and the life of the plant goes to make vigorous foliage and a correspondingly large fruit bud. The sap is stored up as a miller collects and keeps for future use, the water of a stream. Moreover, a plant thus curbed abounds in vitality and does not throw down its burden of prematurely ripe fruit after a few hot days. It works evenly and continuously, as strength only can, and leisurely perfects the last berry on the vines. You will often find blossoms and ripe fruit on the same plant—something rarely seen where the plants are crowded and the soil dry. I have had rows of Tromphe de Gand in bearing for seven weeks.

With these facts before us, the culture of strawberries is simple enough. A few days after planting, as soon as it is evident that they will live, stir the surface just about them not more than half an inch deep. Insist on this; for most workmen will half hoe them out of the ground. A fine-tooth rake is one of the best tools for stirring the surface merely. After the plants become well rooted, keep the ground mellow and clean as you would between any other hoed crop, using horse-power as far as possible, since it is the cheapest and most effective. If the plants have been set out in spring, take oft the fruit buds as soon as they appear. Unless the plants are very strong and are set out very early, fruiting the same year means feebleness and often death. If berries are wanted within a year, the plants must be set in summer or autumn. Then they can be permitted to bear all they will the following season. A child with a pair of shears or a knife, not too dull, can easily keep a large garden-plot free from runners, unless there are long periods of neglect. Half an hour's work once a week, in the cool of the evening, will be sufficient. A boy paid at the rate of twenty-five cents a day can keep acres clipped if he tries.

If the ground were poor, or one were desirous of large fruit, it would be well to give a liberal autumn top-dressing of fine compost or any well-rotted fertilizer not containing crude lime. Bone-dust and wood-ashes are excellent. Scatter this along the rows, and hoe it in the last time they are cultivated in the fall. With the exception of guano and other quick-acting stimulants, I believe in fall top-dressing. The melting snows and March rains carry the fertilizing properties down to the roots, which begin growing and feeding very early in the spring. If compost or barnyard manure is used, it aids in protecting the plants during the winter, warms and mellows the soil, and starts them into a prompt, vigorous growth, thus enabling them to store up sufficient vitality in the cool growing season to produce large fruit in abundance. If top-dressings are applied in the spring, and a dry period follows, they scarcely reach the roots in time to aid in forming the fruit buds. The crop of the following year, however, will be increased. Of course, it is far better to top-dress the rows in spring than not at all. I only wish to suggest that usually the best results are obtained by doing this work in the fall; and this would be true especially of heavy soils.

When the ground begins to freeze, protect the plants for the winter by covering the rows lightly with straw, leaves, or—better than all—with light, strawy horse-manure, that has been piled up to heat and turned over once or twice, so that in its violent fermentation all grass seeds have been killed. Do not cover so heavily as to smother the plants, nor so lightly that the wind and rains will dissipate the mulch. Your aim is not to keep the plants from freezing, but from freezing and thawing with every alternation of our variable winters and springs. On ordinarily dry land two or three inches of light material is sufficient. Moreover, the thawing out of the fruit beds or crown, under the direct rays of the sun, injures them, I think. Most of the damage is done in February and March. The good gardener watches his plants, adds to the covering where it has been washed away or is insufficient, and drains off puddles, which are soon fatal to all the plants beneath them. Wet ground, moreover, heaves ten times as badly as that which is dry. If one neglects to do these things, he may find half of the plants thrown out of the ground, after a day or two of alternate freezing and thawing. Good drainage alone, with three or four inches of covering of light material, can prevent this, although some varieties, like the Golden Defiance, seem to resist the heaving action of frost remarkably. Never cover with hot, heavy manure, nor too deeply with leaves, as the rains beat these down too flatly. Let the winter mulch not only coyer the row, but reach a foot on either side.

Just before very cold weather begins—from the middle of November to December 1st, in our latitude—we may, if we choose, cover our beds so deeply with leaves, or litter of some kind, as to keep out the frost completely. We thus may be able to dig plants on mild winter days and early spring, in case we have orders from the far South. This heavy covering should be lightened sufficiently early in the spring to prevent smothering. Plants well protected have a fine green appearance early in spring, and, even if no better, will give much better satisfaction than those whose leaves are sere and black from frost.

As the weather begins to grow warm in March, push aside the covering a little from the crown of the plants, so as to let in air. If early fruit is desired, the mulch can be raked aside and the ground worked between the rows, as soon as danger of severe frost is over. If late fruit is wanted, let in air to the crown of the plants, but leave the mulch on the ground, which is thus shielded from the sun, warm showers, and the south wind, for two or three weeks.

I have now reached a point at which I differ from most horticultural writers. As a rule, it is advised that there be no spring cultivation of bearing plants. It has been said that merely pushing the winter mulch aside sufficiently to let the new growth come through is all that is needed. I admit that the results are often satisfactory under this method, especially if there has been deep, thorough culture in the fall, and if the mulch between and around the plants is very abundant. At the same time, I have so often seen unsatisfactory results that I take a decided stand in favor of spring cultivation if done properly and sufficiently early. I think my reasons will commend themselves to practical men. Even where the soil has been left mellow by fall cultivation, the beating rains and the weight of melting snows pack the earth. All loamy land settles and tends to grow hard after the frost leaves it. While the mulch checks this tendency, it cannot wholly prevent it. As a matter of fact, the spaces between the rows are seldom thoroughly loosened late in the fall. The mulch too often is scattered over a comparatively hard surface, which, by the following June has become so solid as to suffer disastrously from drought in the blossoming and bearing season. I have seen well-mulched fields with their plants faltering and wilting, unable to mature the crop because the ground had become so hard that an ordinary shower could make but little impression. Moreover, even if kept moist by the mulch, land long shielded from sun and air tends to become sour, heavy, and devoid of that life which gives vitality and vigor to the plant. The winter mulch need not be laboriously raked from the garden-bed or field, and then carted back again. Begin on one side of a plantation and rake toward the other, until three or four rows and the spaces between them are bare; then fork the spaces, or run the cultivator—often the subsoil plow—deeply through them, and then immediately, before the moist, newly made surface dries, rake the winter mulch back into its place as a summer mulch. Then take another strip and treat it in like manner, until the generous impulse of spring air and sunshine has been given to the soil of the entire plantation.

This spring cultivation should be done early—as soon as possible after the ground is dry enough to work. The roots of a plant or tree should never be seriously disturbed in the blossoming or bearing period; and yet I would rather stir the surface, even when my beds were in full bloom, than leave it hard, baked, and dry; for, heed this truth well—unless a plant, from the time it blossoms until the fruit matures, has an abundance of moisture, it will fail in almost the exact proportion that moisture fails. A liberal summer mulch under and around the plants not only keeps the fruit clean, but renders a watering much more lasting, by shielding the soil from the sun. Never sprinkle the plants a little in dry weather. If you water at all, soak the ground and keep it moist all the time till the crop matures. Insufficient watering will injure and perhaps destroy the best of beds. But this subject and that of irrigation will be treated in a later chapter.

When prize berries are sought, enormous fruit can be obtained by the use of liquid manure, but it should be applied with skill and judgment, or else its very strength may dwarf the plants. In this case, also, all the little green berries, save the three or four lowest ones, may be picked from the fruit truss, and the force of the plant will be expended in maturing a few mammoth specimens. Never seek to stimulate with plaster or lime, directly. Other plants' meat is the strawberry's poison in respect to the immediate action of these two agents. Horse manure composted with muck, vegetable mould, wood-ashes, bone meal, and, best of all, the product of the cow-stable, if thoroughly decayed and incorporated with the soil, will probably give the largest strawberries that can be grown, if steady moisture, but not wetness, is maintained.

Many advise the mowing off of the old foliage after the fruit has been gathered. I doubt the wisdom of this practice. The crowns of the plants and the surface of the bed are laid open to the midsummer sun. The foliage is needed to sustain or develop the roots. In the case of a few petted and valuable plants, it might be well to take off some of the old dying leaves, but it seems reasonable to think that the wholesale destruction of healthful foliage must be a severe blow to the vitality of the plants. Still, the beds should not be left to weeds and drought. Neglect would be ungracious, indeed, just after receiving such delicious gifts. I would advise that the coarsest of the mulch be raked off and stored for winter covering, and then the remainder forked very lightly or cultivated into the soil, as a fertilizer immediately after a soaking rain, but not when the ground is dry. Do not disturb the roots of a plant during a dry period. Many advise a liberal manuring after the fruit is gathered. This is the English method, and is all right in their humid climate, but dangerous in our land of hot suns and long droughts. Dark-colored fertilizers absorb and intensify the heat. A sprinkling of bone dust can be used to advantage as a summer stimulant, and stronger manures, containing a larger per cent of nitrogen, can be applied just before the late fall rains. A plant just after bearing needs rest.