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Show Let's talk about strawberries straw-berries for the home yard. ' First, select a site with good air and water drainage, and an area 50 feet or more from large shade trees, or 25 feet from fruit trees, says Melvin S. Burningham, Utah State University area horticulturist. horticul-turist. THE SOIL should be a light loam with good drainage and plenty of organic material in the soil. Rotate your plant bed so that a bed of strawberries stays in one location a maximum of four years. Commercial growers will plant a new berry bed every year and dig an old one up each year. They will have three or four patches of different age. A FAMILY of four who wants 100 quarts to eat fresh and preserve or freeze should have about 100 feet of row. The one crop varieties that produce only in June will produce about as many as the everbearing varieties. The everbearing are mostly for families who want to pick ' a bowl of berries to eat fresh over a long period of time. IF YOU want only a small amount of berries and your growing space is limited, you may want to grow berries in a pyramid, say one that is six feet square, or use the space around the garden where you ordinarily plant bedding plants. For varieties, the Marshall, an old standby for many years, Miss Utah or the Tioga seem to do the Dest here. Of the everbearing varieties, the Utah Centennial, Twentieth Century, Sequoia or the Superfection seem to do the best. IN MY yard the highly publicized Ozark or the ' Ogalla make beautiful ground cover, but not much fruit, says Mr. Burningham. Just as soon as you can work the soil without gumming gum-ming it up, strawberry plants should be planted. PLANTS that are planted this spring should not be allowed to bear fruit in June. You will profit by picking the early blossoms off even though this is hard to do, Mr. Burningham concludes. |