Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota Part 21

(To be continued in April No.)

Everbearing Strawberries.

GEO. J. KELLOGG, JANESVILLE, WIS.

A few words about this new breed. Progressive, Superb and Americus are the best three I have found in the last ten years--don't confound American with Americus. Pan-American was the mother of the whole tribe.

This variety was found in a field of Bismark, by S. Cooper, New York, and exhibited all through the Buffalo World's Fair. There is where my first acquaintance with it was formed. From this one plant and its seedlings all the ten thousand everbearers have been grown. But Pan-American don't make many plants. There are a great many good kinds in the ten thousand, and a great many of them worthless. So look out when and where you buy. I have great hopes of your No. 1017, but kinds do not adapt themselves to all soils or climates.

I have not found any success with the everbearers south of the Ohio. I have tried them three years in Texas. I sent plants to Bro. Loring, in California, and they failed to produce satisfactorily. Missouri grows almost all Aroma; California but two kinds commercially; Texas only Excelsior and Klondike for s.h.i.+pment. I hope our No. 3 Minnesota June-bearing and our No. 1017 Everbearing, will have as great a range as Dunlap.

Friend Gardener, of Iowa, has a lot of "thousand dollar kinds." I hope some of them will do wonders. He sold 5,000 quarts of fruit after August 15. A firm at Three Rivers, Mich., this season advertised 30,000 cases in September, but perhaps it was only 3,000; I have known printers to make mistakes. My boy's beds of Superb, Progressive and Americus were loaded with ripe and green fruit and blossoms October 1st this year.

Most, if not all, know the fruit must be kept off the everbearers the season of planting till the plants get established, usually two or three months, then let them bear. If you want all fruit, keep off the runners; if all plants, keep off the fruit. Beds kept over that have exhausted themselves will need rest till July to give big crops. Beds kept over will fruit a week earlier than the June varieties, rest a few weeks, then give a fall crop, but don't expect too much unless you feed them.

There are ten thousand kinds of new everbearers, so don't buy any that have not been tried and proven worthy. There are thousands that are worthless. Friend Haralson only got No. 1017 out of 1,500 sorts. He has now 3,000 new kinds, set out four feet apart each way, he is testing.

From what many growers are doing this breed will pay commercially, but it will be by experts. I have not time to advocate cultivation in hills or hedge rows; if you want big berries this is the way to get them. Be sure your straw mulch and manure mulch are free from noxious weed or clover and gra.s.s seeds. Everbearers need the same winter care as June varieties and a good deal more manure. Don't cover with asparagus tops unless free of seed. Put manure either fresh or rotted on the old bed with a manure spreader or evenly by hand. There is a possibility of manuring too heavily.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A typical everbearing strawberry plant as it appears in September.]

Mr. Durand: What is the best spray for leaf-spot and rust in strawberries?

Mr. Kellogg: Cut it out and burn it, but then there are some sprays with bordeaux mixture that will help you, but you have got to put it on before the rust shows itself.

Mr. Miller: I would like to ask Mr. Kellogg if he advises covering the strawberries in the winter after snow has fallen and with what success?

Mr. Kellogg: If the snow isn't too heavy you can do it just as well after the snow comes as before, but if your snow comes early and is a foot deep you have got to wait until the January thaw before you can successfully mulch them. That snow will protect them until it thaws off, until the ground commences to freeze. If the snow comes early and stays late it is all the mulch you need.

Mr. Franklin: Are oak leaves as they blow off from the trees on the strawberry beds, are they just as good to protect them as straw would be--when there are lots of oak leaves?

Mr. Kellogg: If you don't put them on too thick. You don't want more than two inches of leaves. If you do they will mat down and smother your plants.

Mr. Ludlow: Have you had any experience with using cornstalks that have been fed off, just the stalk without the leaves. Is that sufficient for a winter protection without the straw or leaves? I put on mine just to cover them. They are four inches apart one way and then across it the other way so as to hold it up and not get them smothered.

Mr. Kellogg: That is all right. I have covered with cornstalks.

Mr. Ludlow: Would it be policy to leave that on and let the strawberries come up through, to keep them clean?

Mr. Kellogg: If you get the stalks on one way and haven't them covered too thick the other way, leave them on; the strawberries will come through.

Mr. Gowdy: I would like to ask Mr. Kellogg what he thinks of planting different varieties together.

Mr. Kellogg: It is a good plan. I spoke of Dunlap and Warfield. The Warfield is a pistillate. If you plant all Warfields you get no fruit.

If you plant all Dunlap it will bear well but it will do better alongside of a pistillate, or it will do better alongside of some other perfect. It will do better to plant two or four kinds. They used to ask me what kinds of strawberries I wanted, and what was the best one kind.

I told them I wanted six or eight in order to get the best kind. I want an early, and a medium, and a late, two of a kind.

Mr. Gowdy: I planted one year three varieties with great success.

Mr. McClelland: What time do you uncover your strawberries?

Mr. Kellogg: I don't uncover them at all. If you got on four inches of mulch you want to take off enough so the plants can get through, but keep on enough mulch in the spring to keep your plants clean and protect from the drouth.

Mr. McClelland: Will they come through the mulch all right?

M. Kellogg: They will come through all right if it isn't more than two inches. If they shove up and raise the mulch open it up a little over the plants.

Mr. Willard: I would like to ask the speaker, the way I understood him, why he couldn't raise as good strawberries on new ground as on old ground?

Mr. Kellogg: The soil seems to be too loose. Now, that twenty-one acres I had, it was full of leaf-mold. It was six inches deep and had been acc.u.mulating for ages. I couldn't account for it only that it was too loose, and I had to work it down with other crops before I could grow strawberries.

Mr. Willard: So it would be better to plant on old ground or old breaking than new?

Mr. Kellogg: Yes, old ground that has been well manured, or old ground that has never been manured, will grow better strawberries than new soil, as far as I have tried it. New clover soil is a good soil.

Mr. Wedge: It might add to the value of this discussion to state that Mr. Kellogg's soil at Janesville is rather light soil anyhow. I am under the impression that if his soil at Janesville which produced so poorly on new soil had been a heavy clay soil that the result would have been different.

Mr. Kellogg: That twenty-one acres was clay after you got down to it and was in the woods; my other fields were out on the prairie. I don't think the light soil had anything to do with it, with my failure in the woods, I think it was the new soil.

Mr. Sauter: Can the everbearing and the common varieties be planted together?

Mr. Kellogg: Yes, if you are growing plants you want everything.

Mr. Sauter: How far apart must they be planted?

Mr. Kellogg: So their runners won't run together, and they won't mix. If the runners mix maybe you would get some crosses that are valuable.

Mr. Clausen: I was just thinking it might interfere, that some one might not plant strawberries at all on account of new soil. I would say I have a neighbor, and he had entirely new soil. It was black oak and hickory--I have some of that myself. I never saw a better patch of strawberries than he had. I don't think I ever saw a better strawberry patch than he had of the everbearing kind, so I don't think it is just exactly the old soil.

Mr. Willis: I have my strawberries on new ground, and they did very fine, couldn't be better. From a s.p.a.ce of five feet square I got twenty-eight boxes, that is, of No. 3.

Mr. Wedge: Forest soil or prairie?

Mr. Willis: It was light clay. I have got about an acre and a half on new soil now, and they look very fine.

Mr. Glenzke: What would be the consequence of the berries being planted after tomatoes had been planted there the year before? What would be the consequence as to the white grub that follows the tomatoes, and other insects?

Mr. Kellogg: That white grub don't follow tomatoes, if the ground was clear of white grubs before. It is a three year old grub, and it don't come excepting where the ground is a marsh or meadow, and doesn't follow in garden soil, hardly ever. If the ground has been cultivated two years, you don't have any white grub.

Mr. Glenzke: Part of this ground had been in red raspberries, and I found them there. This year I am going to put in tomatoes and prepare it for strawberries. Will that be all right?

Mr. Kellogg: You may get some white grubs after the raspberry bushes if your raspberries have been two or three years growing. Potato ground is the best you can follow strawberries with.

Mr. Rasmussen (Wisconsin): What trouble have you experienced with overhead irrigation with the strawberries in the bright suns.h.i.+ne?

Mr. Kellogg: Everything is against it. You wet the foliage, and it is a damage to the plants. You can't sprinkle in the hot sun without damage.