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.