This section is from "The Horticulturist, And Journal Of Rural Art And Rural Taste", by P. Barry, A. J. Downing, J. Jay Smith, Peter B. Mead, F. W. Woodward, Henry T. Williams. Also available from Amazon: Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste.
Allow me to add one to the numerous accounts of large crops of that excellent fruit, the Strawberry.
In the spring 1849,I selected a small patch of ground 8 by 18 feet for a bed. It was nothing better than common garden soil, which in the spring of '48 had been trenched one spit deep, turning under plenty of stable manure. I gave it a top-dressing of well rotted manure, plaster and charcoal dust which had laid in the air and weather two or three years.
I planted my strawberry roots (Black Prince, originally from A. Saul & Co., Newburgh,) in rows eighteen inches apart and two feet in the rows. Every plant lived and grew finely. I allowed all the runners to take root, and the next spring ('50) the bed was a complete mat of vines strong and thrifty.
The first picking was twenty-one quarts; the next was lost by rotting before fairly ripening, owing to the excessively warm rainy weather at that time, probably as many as ten quarts rotted on the ground; however, what we actually picked and measured amounted to thirty seen, beingly uniformly large. Yours respect-fully, Butler Sheldon. Auburn, March, '51.
 
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