Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/218

 .—They should be put out in rows three feet apart and four feet from row to row. Two hundred plants is not too many for a family. Give them plenty of manure every year. Dig deep, but not close to the bottom of the plant. A situation partially shaded, or naturally moist, though not wet, is the best locality. A plantation will last twenty years if properly attended to by enriching every year.

.—The first fruit I ever pruned was the Raspberry, and it is the only one that can be reduced to a simple rule. In the Autumn cut out all the old wood that produced fruit the past summer, close to the ground; tie up the new shoots to a stake or trellis, about five feet high; then cut off about a foot of the tops of the shoots, and the work is done. In cold situations the plants, after having been deprived of their old wood, have to be laid down all Winter, and covered with earth, Spruce, or Pine branches, till Spring, when they are lifted and tied up as above. The Ohio and Franconia varieties do not require this protection.

Strawberry, so called from the ancient practice,—and still continued—of laying straw between the rows to keep the fruit clean. It is not properly a berry, but considered “a fleshy receptacle, studded with seeds.” It is a wholesome and most luscious fruit, and wisely distributed by a bountiful hand over nearly every part of the world. Its cultivation has been little regarded till within the past thirty years; and even at the present period is very imperfectly understood. Its healthful influence upon nearly all constitutions, when taken in mod-crate quantities, is admitted by medical men. The demand for it in a commercial point of view is rapidly on the increase, which has created a desire to know its character and improve