THE STRAWBERRY

The strawberry is not only healthful, but it is also a luxury. There is no better fruit than the ripe strawberry, fresh from the vine.SFCC 4.1

The Strawberry when allowed to receive the same attention the farmer gives his corn, is very productive. Each square rod, in a good season, on common soil, will yield at least a bushel of most delicious fruit. J. L. Edgar, of Wright, Ottawa Co., Mich., in 1868, picked one hundred and seventeen bushels of market Strawberries from seventy square rods. [This is yielding at the rate of two hundred and sixty-seven bushels to the acre.] These brought him from three to nine dollars a bushel. Land that will produce twenty bushels of wheat, or seventy bushels of corn, will yield at least one hundred and fifty bushels of the Strawberry. The largest varieties, on good soil, well cultivated, will produce berries of enormous size. The editor of the Review and Herald, Battle Creek, spent a few weeks with me at Greenville, Montcalm Co., Mich., in the year 1868. One morning he took a Strawberry from my vines and measured it, which girt nearly five inches. In 1869 I picked one that girt six inches.SFCC 4.2

The Strawberry, fresh from the vine, is a delicious fruit. It is an excellent berry to can, and scarcely loses any of its value when dried. Why pay out so much of our money for foreign fruits, when in our own country we can so easily grow that which is better?SFCC 4.3

A large crop of Strawberries may be expected every year with as much certainty as a crop of corn, and any one who can manage a crop of corn or potatoes, can grow Strawberries, and the expense and trouble of growing them, if entered upon rightly, is but a trifle greater. Says the eminent gardener, Mr. Pardee: “During many seasons we have had on trial in our garden from twenty to sixty varieties at a time, and although some were comparatively unproductive, yet the average cost of producing them for years has been less than fifty cents per bushel.”SFCC 4.4