Thus far he has given the bearing fields no spring culture, adopting the common theory that the ground around the plants must not be disturbed at this season. I advocate the opposite view, and believe in early spring culture, as I have already explained; and I think his experience this year will lead him to give my method a trial in 1880. The latter part of April and early May was very dry at Norfolk, and the ground between the bearing plants became parched, hard, and in many instances full of weeds that had been developing through the long, mild spring of this region. Now I am satisfied that if he, and all others in this region who adopt the narrow row system, would loosen the ground deeply with a subsoil plow early in the season, before the plants had made any growth, and then stir and pulverize all the surface between the plants in the rows, they would increase the size and quantity of the berries at least one-third, and in many instances double the crop. It would require a very severe drought, indeed, to injure plants thus treated, and it is well known, also, that a porous, mellow soil will best endure too frequent rains. I have sometimes thought that light and air are as indispensable to the roots of plants as to the foliage.
The winter mulch need not prevent this spring culture. Let the men begin on one side of a field, and rake inward until half a dozen rows are uncovered. Down through these the subsoil plow and the cultivator can pass. Then the hay can be raked back again as the summer mulch, and a new space cleared, until the whole field is cultivated and the mulch left as it was before.
Now, however, it is not a surface like hard-pan that is covered, but a mellow soil in which the roots can luxuriate.
Mr. Young uses fertilizers, especially those containing ammonia, only to a limited extent, believing that while they undoubtedly increase the size of the fruit, they also render it soft and unfit for long carriage, and promote an undue growth of vine. This theory is true, to a certain extent, but I think the compensating benefits of fertilizers of almost any kind far outweigh the disadvantages. At his distance from the market, firmness in the berry is essential, but I think he will find this quality is dependent more upon the weather and the variety than upon the fertilizer. Of course, over-stimulation by hot manures will always produce an unwholesome, perishable growth, but a good coat of well-rotted compost scattered down the rows, just before they receive their fall or spring culture, would be exceedingly beneficial in nine cases out of ten. I most heartily agree with him, however, that all fertilizers containing potash are peculiarly adapted to the strawberry.
Having considered his methods of planting and culture, we now return again to the culminating period in which the hopes and labors of the year are rewarded or disappointed. When we awoke the morning following our arrival, we found the landscape obscured by a dense fog. Through this, in dim, uncertain outline, throngs of pickers were streaming out from the city to Mr. Young's place and the strawberry farms beyond. The broad fields seemed all the more vast from the obscurity, and the stooping forms of the fruit-gatherers took on odd and fantastic shapes in the silvery mist.
But while we drank our coffee the sun sipped these morning vapors, and when we stepped out under the pines, the day was hourly growing brighter and warmer. The balmy, fragrant air, the meadow larks singing in the distance, the cheery voices of the pickers in an adjacent field, would tempt gloom itself to forget its care and stroll away through the sunlight. The pickers were beginning to take possession of a field containing thirty acres of Triomphe de Gands, and we followed them, and there lighted on one of the oddest characters on the plantation—"Sam Jubilee," the "row-man," black as night, short, stout, and profane. It is Sam's business to give each picker a row of berries, and he carries a brass-headed cane as the baton of authority. As we came up, he was whirling a glazed hat of portentous size in one hand and gesticulating so wildly with his cane that one might think he was in convulsions of rage, but we soon learned that this was "his way."
"Heah, you, dah!" he vociferated, to the slouching, leisurely pickers that were drifting after him, "what's de matter wid yer j'ints? Step along lively, or by—" and then came a volley of the most outlandish oaths ever uttered by a human tongue.
"Don't swear so, Sam," said Mr. Young.
"Can't help it, sah. Dey makes me swar. Feels as if I could bust inter ten thousand emptins, dey's so agerwatin. Heah, my sister, take dat row. You, gemlin" (to a white man), "take dat. Heah, chile, step in dar an' pick right smart, or I'll warm yer!"
Sam "brothers and sisters" the motley crowd he domineers like a colored preacher, but I fear he is not "in good and regular standing" in any church in Norfolk.