The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-01-25

your varieties without advice from a
iocal grower. try the following: Cres-
cent, Haviland, Warfeld and Green
vile, with row of some good fertiliz-
ing variety in the middle. l use
Leviathan for this purpose, but this
cannot be had of most nurservmen.
and you had better leave it to them TO
select your fertilizer.
Set your beds five rows wide, with
the fertilizing variety in the middle.
and make the rows four feet apart, and
the plants two feet in the row. Set
early in the spring, as soon as the
plants are in good condition and the
land will work mellow. Pick off all the
blossom buds as soon as they show,
and keep all runners cut off for two
months or so, for the first thing to be
done is to get a staVing healthy plant
In July allow about four runners 10
set for each plant. and when they are
rooted, cut $off any others that may
start An one end of the bed let a
much larger amount of runners grow,
and here you Will get plants TO set
new bed the next year. for IT pays best
TO pillow down a bed after it has grown
one crop 1.-TWO crops will do as well.
Ed.I and so have a fresh, vigorous
bed each year, rather than to try and
keep an old bed over. and il is not a
good plan to disturb a bearing bed
by taking up plants through IT.
II is better to dig up entirely as
much of one end of the bed as is nee
essarv and grow something else on the
land than to dig plants between the
rows The picking season usually ends
from the goth to the 25th of June am
writing for my own latitude-and this
is early enough to grow full crop OF
sweet corn, cabbage, tomatoes, or
many other crops.
The cultivation of the bed must be
thorough, and must be kept up all
summer, and the secret of doing il
cheaply is TO work the bed after each
rain so as to destroy all the weeds
before they do any harm. The Gull
tivatiOn should be shallow, the 10
tooth Planet. Jr." cultivater is the
best tool / have ever found. and the
rows must be hOed; but if done at che
right time the work is light and can
be done rapidly.
A bed containing ten square rods VIII
furnish a large family supply, and an
hours work Will put it in good con-
dition, and often il will not take Ealf
so long as that, and there are few
crops which pay better for thorough
work. A bushel of straw berries to the
square rod is not an uncommon crop.
with favorable weather, and [ have
seen double the amount grown, but
even five bushels of berries from ten
square rod bed will pay largely for the
work for it will not take more than
two days work in a season; but the
work must be done just when it will do
the most good and can be done to the
best advantage.
One important thing is good winter
protection for the bed, and the best
material I have ever found is manure
from the horse stable. when the team
is fed on corn fodder and bedded with
the waste, the fodder being either
shredded or cut in lengths of from tx
inches to a foot.
Let the bedding and manure accumu-
late under them as long as you can; if
IS inches deep, all the better. as it will
absorb all the urine and be rich. The
stalks are light and the pitch alb
serbs the rich urine. and the rain and
melting SHOWS of winter will beat it
all down TO the roots. just where it is
needed, and by spring it is perfectly
clean and OdOrlesS.
Do not remove it in the spring, but.
if necessary, open the mulch a little
over the soil to let the plants grow
through and if weeds or grass start,
pull them out by hand when the land
is soft after a rain. When the bed is
plowed down it Will give a rich spot
for some years to come.
l usually plant sweet corn on my
strawberry bed, as it gives not only
plenty of roasting ears, but large
amount of valua bic feed for cows and
/ hogs at a season when the pasture is
generally poor. l always plant liber-
ally of straw berries so as to be sure
4 of an abundant supply. and rarely fail
/ to sell enough to pay all the expense
] of growing and give some profit be-
/ sides.
/ In 1895 1 sold S2S worth from a bed
/ containing % square rods. and we
had an abundance for family use that
/ cost US nothing but the picking, for,
at the most liberal estimate, the cost
! of our bed did not exceed IS. and so
we had $50 net profit. beside the berries
we used in the family.
I have never seen the time that
good berries could not be sold at
good profit. and even at or cents
a quart by the bUshel, there is profit
in them.