Having from choice or necessity decided on the ground on which our future strawberries are to grow, the next step is to prepare the soil. The first and most natural question will be: What is the chief need of this plant? Many prepare their ground in a vague, indefinite way. Let us prepare for strawberries.

Whether it grows North or South, East or West, the strawberry plant is the same, and has certain constitutional traits and requirements, which should be thoroughly fixed in our minds. Modifications of treatment made necessary by various soils and climates are then not only easily learned but also easily understood.

When asked, on one occasion, what was the chief requirement in successful strawberry culture, Hon. Marshall P. Wilder replied substantially in the following piquant manner:—

"In the first place, the strawberry's chief need is a great deal of water.

"In the second place, it needs more water.

"In the third place, I think I would give it a great deal more water."

The more extended and full my experience becomes, the less exaggeration
I find in his words. The following strong confirmation of President
Wilder's opinion may be found in Thompson's "Gardener's Assistant," a
standard English work:—

"Ground that is apt to get very dry from the effects of only ten days' or a fortnight's drought is not suitable, on account of the enormous quantity of water that will be necessary; and if once the plants begin to flag for want of moisture, the crop is all but lost. A soil that is naturally somewhat moist, but not too wet, answers well; and where the land has admitted of irrigation, we have seen heavy crops produced every year."

If this be true in England, with its humid climate, how much more emphatically should we state the importance of this requirement in our land of long droughts and scorching suns.

Moisture, then, is the strawberry's first and chief need. Without it, the best fertilizers become injurious rather than helpful. Therefore, in the preparation of the soil and its subsequent cultivation, there should be a constant effort to secure and maintain moisture, and the failure to do this is the chief cause of meagre crops. And yet, very probably, the first step absolutely necessary to accomplish this will be a thorough system of underdrainage. I have spent hundreds of dollars in such labors, and it was as truly my object to enable the ground to endure drought as to escape undue wetness. Let it be understood that it is moist and not wet land that the strawberry requires. If water stands or stagnates upon or a little below the surface, the soil becomes sour, heavy, lifeless; and if clay is present, it will bake like pottery in dry weather, and suggest the Slough of Despond in wet. Disappointment, failure, and miasma are the certain products of such unregenerate regions, but, as is often the case with repressed and troublesome people, the evil traits of such soil result from a lack of balance, and a perversion of what is good.

The underdrain restores the proper equilibrium; the brush-hook and axe cut away the rank unwholesome growth which thrives best in abnormal conditions. Sun, air, and purifying frosts mellow and sweeten the damp, heavy malarious ground, as the plowshare lifts it out of its low estate. A swamp, or any approach to one, is like a New York tenement-house district, and requires analogous treatment.

If, however, we have mellow upland with natural drainage, let us first put that in order that we may have a remunerative crop as soon as possible. In suggesting, therefore, the best methods of preparing and enriching the ground, I will begin by considering soils that are already in the most favorable conditions, and that require the least labor and outlay. Man received his most essential agricultural instruction in the opening chapter of Genesis, wherein he is commanded to "subdue the earth." Even the mellow western prairie is at first a wild, untamed thing, that must be subdued. This is often a simple process, and in our gardens and the greater part of many farms has already been practically accomplished. Where the deep, moist loam, just described, exists, the fortunate owner has only to turn it up to the sun and give it a year of ordinary cultivation, taking from it, in the process, some profitable hoed crop that will effectually kill the grass, and his land is ready for strawberries. If his ground is in condition to give a good crop of corn, it will also give a fair crop of berries. If the garden is so far "subdued" as to yield kitchen vegetables, the strawberry may be planted at once, with the prospect of excellent returns, unless proper culture is neglected.

Should the reader be content with mediocrity, there is scarcely anything to be said where the conditions are so favorable. But suppose one is not content with mediocrity. Then this highly favored soil is but the vantage-ground from which skill enters on a course of thorough preparation and high culture. A man may plow, harrow, and set with strawberries the land that was planted the previous year in corn, and probably secure a remunerative return, with little more trouble or cost than was expended on the corn. Or, he may select half the area that was in corn, plow it deeply in October, and if he detects traces of the white grub, cross-plow it again just as the ground is beginning to freeze. Early in the spring he can cover the surface with some fertilizer—there is nothing better than a rotted compost of muck and barn-yard manure—at the proportion of forty or fifty tons to the acre. Plow and cross-plow again, and in each instance let the first team be followed by a subsoil or lifting plow, which stirs and loosens the substratum without bringing it to the surface. The half of the field prepared in such a thorough manner will probably yield three times the amount of fruit that could be gathered from the whole area under ordinary treatment; and if the right varieties are grown, and a good market is within reach, the money received will be in a higher ratio.

The principle of generous and thorough preparation may be carried still further in the garden, and its soil, already rich and mellow, may be covered to the depth of several inches with well-rotted compost or any form of barn-yard manure that is not too coarse and full of heat, and this may be incorporated with the earth by trenching to the depth of two feet. Of this be certain, the strawberry roots will go as deeply as the soil is prepared and enriched for them, and the result in abundant and enormous fruit will be commensurate. English gardeners advise trenching even to the depth of three feet, where the ground permits it.

Few soils can be found so deep and rich by nature that they cannot be improved by art; and the question for each to decide is, how far the returns will compensate for extra preparation. Very often land for strawberries receives but little more preparation than for wheat, and such methods must pay or they would not be continued. Many who follow these methods declare that they are the most profitable in the long run. I doubt it.

If our market is one in which strawberries are sold simply as such, without much regard to flavor or size, there is not the same inducement to produce fine fruit. But even when quantity is the chief object, deeply prepared and enriched land retains that essential moisture of which we have spoken, and enables the plant not only to form, but also to develop and mature, a great deal of fruit. In the majority of markets, however, each year, size and beauty count for more, and these qualities can be secured, even from a favorable soil, only after thorough preparation and enriching. I find that every writer of experience on this subject, both American and European, insists vigorously on the value of such careful pulverization and deepening of the soil.

Having thus considered the most favorable land in the best condition possible, under ordinary cultivation, I shall now treat of that less suitable, until we finally reach a soil too sterile and hopelessly bad to repay cultivation.

I will speak first of this same deep, moist loam, in its unsubdued condition; that is, in stiff sod, trees, or brush-wood. Of course, the latter must be removed, and, as a rule, the crops on new land—which has been undisturbed by the plow for a number of years and, perhaps, never robbed of its original fertility—will amply repay for the extra labor of clearing. Especially will this be the case if the brush and rubbish are burned evenly over the surface. The finest of wild strawberries are found where trees have been felled and the brush burned; and the successful fruit grower is the one who makes the best use of such hints from nature.

The field would look better and the cultivation be easier if all the stumps could be removed before planting, but this might involve too great preliminary expense, and I always counsel against debt except in the direst necessity. A little brush burned on each stump will effectually check new growth, and, in two or three years, these unsightly objects will be so rotten that they can be pried out, and easily turned into ashes, one of the best of fertilizers. In the meantime, the native strength of the land will cause a growth which will compensate for the partial lack of deep and thorough cultivation which the stumps and roots prevent. Those who have travelled West and South have seen fine crops of corn growing among the half-burned stumps, and strawberries will do as well.

But where trees or brush have grown very thickly, the roots and stumps must be eradicated. The thick growth on the sandy land of Florida is grubbed out at the cost of about $30 per acre, and I know of a gentleman who pays at the rate of $25 per acre in the vicinity of Norfolk, Va. I doubt whether it can be done for less elsewhere.

In some regions they employ a stump extractor, a rude but strong machine, worked by blocks and pulleys, with oxen as motor power. From the "Farmer's Advocate" of London, Ont., I learn that an expert with one of these machines, aided by five men and two yoke of oxen, was in the habit of clearing fifty acres annually.

I have cleaned hedge-rows and stony spots on my place in the following thorough manner: A man commences with pick and shovel on one side of the land and turns it steadily and completely over by hand to the depth of fourteen to eighteen inches, throwing on the surface behind him all the roots, stumps and stones, and stopping occasionally to blast when the rocks are too large to be pried out. This, of course, is expensive, and cannot be largely indulged in; but, when accomplished, the work is done for all time, and I have obtained at once by this method some splendid soil, in which the plow sinks to the beam. A drought must be severe, indeed, that can injure such land.

There is a great difference in men in the performance of this work. I have one who, within a reasonable time, would trench a farm. Indeed, in his power to obey the primal command to "subdue the earth," my man, Abraham, is a hero—although, I imagine, he scarcely knows what the word means and would as soon think of himself as a hippopotamus. His fortunes would often seem as dark as himself to those who "take thought for the morrow;" and that is saying much, for Abraham is "colored" as far as man can be.

I doubt whether his foresight often reaches further than bedtime, and to that hour he comes with an honest right to rest. He is a family man, and has six or seven children, under eight years of age, whom he shelters in a wretched little house that appears tired of standing up. But to and from this abode Abraham passes daily, with a face as serene as a May morning. In that weary old hovel I am satisfied that he and his swarming little brood have found what no architect can build—a home. Thither he carries his diurnal dollar, when he can get it, and on it they all manage to live and grow fat. He loses time occasionally, it is true, through illness, but no such trifling misfortune can induce him, seemingly, to take a long, anxious look into the future. Only once—it was last winter—have I seen him dismayed by the frowning fates. The doctor thought his wife would die, and they had nothing to eat in the house. When Abraham appeared before me at that time, "his countenance was fallen," as the quaint, strong language of Scripture expresses it. He made no complaints, however, and indulged in no Byronic allusions to destiny. Indeed, he said very little, but merely drooped and cowered, as if the wolf at the door and the shadow of death within it were rather more than he could face at one and the same time. It soon became evident, however, that his wife would "pull through," as he said, and then the wolf didn't trouble him a mite. He installed himself as cook, nurse, and house man-of-all-work, finding also abundant leisure to smoke his pipe with infinite content. One morning he was seen baking buckwheat cakes for the children; each one in turn received an allowance on a tin plate, and squatted here and there on the floor to devour it; and, from the master of ceremonies down, there was not an indication that all was not just as it should be. A few days later I met him coming back to his work with his pipe in the corner of his mouth, and the old confident twinkle in his eye as he said, "Mornin', Bossie." Now, Abraham carries his peculiar characteristics into grubbing. If I should set him at a hundred-acre field full of stumps and stones, and tell him to clear it to the depth of two feet, he would begin without any apparent misgiving, and with no more thought for the magnitude of his task than he has for the tangled and stubborn mysteries of life in general, or the dubious question of "what shall be on the morrow" in his own experience. He would see only the little strip that he proposed to clear up that day, and would go to work in a way all his own.

Although not talkative to other people, he is very social with himself, and, in the early days of our acquaintance, I was constantly misled into the belief that somebody was with him, and that he was a man of words rather than work. As soon, however, as I reached a point from which I could see him, there he would be, alone, bending to his task with the steady persistence that makes his labor so effective; but, at the same time, until he saw me he would continue discussing with equal vigor whatever subject might be uppermost in his mind. I suppose he scarcely ever takes out a stone or root without apostrophizing, adjuring, and berating it in tones and vernacular so queer that one might imagine he hoped to remove the refractory object by magic rather than by muscle. When the sun is setting, however, and Abraham has complacently advised himself, "Better quit, for de day's done gone, and de ole woman is arter me, afeared I've kivered myself up a-grubbin'," one thing is always evident—a great many stones and roots are "unkivered," and Abraham has earned anew his right to the title of champion grubber.

But, as most men handle the pick and shovel, the fruit grower must be chary in his attempts to subdue the earth with those old-time implements. It is too much like making war with the ancient Roman short sword in an age of rifled guns. I agree with that practical horticulturist, Peter Henderson, that there are no implements equal to the plow and subsoiler, and, in our broad and half-occupied country, we should be rather shy of land where these cannot be used.

The cultivator whose deep moist loam is covered by sod only, instead of rocks, brush, and trees, may feel like congratulating himself on the easy task before him; and, indeed, where the sod is light, strawberries, and especially the larger small fruits, are often planted on it at once with fair success. I do not recommend the practice; for, unless the subsequent culture is very thorough and frequent, the grass roots will continue to grow and may become so intertwined with those of the strawberry that they cannot be separated. Corn is probably the best hoed crop to precede the strawberry. Potatoes too closely resemble this fruit in their demand for potash, and exhaust the soil of one of the most needed elements. A dressing of wood ashes, however, will make good the loss. Buckwheat is one of the most effective means of subduing and cleaning land, and two crops can be plowed under in a single summer. Last spring I had some very stiff marsh sod turned over and sown with buckwheat, which, in our hurry, was not plowed under until considerable of the seed ripened and fell. A second crop from this came up at once, and was plowed under when coming into blossom, as the first should have been. The straw, in its succulent state, decayed in a few days, and by autumn my rough marsh sod was light, rich, and mellow as a garden, ready for anything.

If it should happen that the land designed for strawberries was in clover, it would make an admirable fertilizer if turned under while still green, and I think its use for this purpose would pay better than cutting it for hay, even though there is no better. Indeed, were I about to put any sod land, that was not very stiff and unsubdued, into small fruits, I would wait till whatever herbage covered the ground was just coming into flower, and then turn it under. The earlier growth that precedes the formation of seed does not tax the soil much, but draws its substance largely from the atmosphere, and when returned to the earth while full of juices, is valuable. In our latitude this can usually be done by the middle of June, and if on this sod buckwheat is sown at once, it will hasten the decay, loosen and lighten the soil in its growth, and in a few weeks be ready itself to increase the fertility of the field by being plowed under. In regions where farmyard manure and other fertilizers are scarce and high, this plowing under of green crops is one of the most effective ways both of enriching and preparing the land; and if the reader has no severer labors to perform than this, he may well congratulate himself.

But let him not be premature in his self-felicitation, for he may find in his sod ground, especially if it be old meadow land, an obstacle worse than stumps and stones—the Lachnosterna fusca.

This portentous name may well inspire dread, for the thing itself can realize one's worst fears. The deep, moist loam which we are considering is the favorite haunt of this hateful little monster, and he who does not find it lying in wait when turning up land that has been long in sod, may deem himself lucky. The reader need not draw a sigh of relief when I tell him that I mean merely the "white grub," the larva of the May-beetle or June-bug, that so disturbs our slumbers in early summer by its sonorous hum and aimless bumping against the wall. This white grub, which the farmers often call the "potato worm," is, in this region, the strawberry's most formidable foe, and, by devouring the roots, will often destroy acres of plants. If the plow turns up these ugly customers in large numbers, the only recourse is to cultivate the land with some other crop until they turn into beetles and fly away. This enemy will receive fuller attention in a later chapter.

It is said that this pest rarely lays its eggs in plowed land, preferring sod ground, where its larvae will be protected from the birds, and will find plenty of grass roots on which to feed. Nature sees to it that white grubs are taken care of, but our Monarch strawberries need our best skill and help in their unequal fight; and if "Lachnos" and tribe should turn out in force, Alexander himself would be vanquished.