"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.