first place as a white currant. The White Grape is the largest fruit but the White Dutch is less sour and probably a little heavier bearer. Both are good to eat fresh or as a canned fruit, and both make beautiful jelly. Set four to six bushes.

Black currants. If you can find a variety that will fruit, set about half of one bush. If you fail to get any just get a few chinch bugs for flavor and you will not need the black currants. Set all the currants and gooseberries in a row seven feet from the raspberries. Set currants five to six feet apart and gooseberries three to four feet. Trim so each branch has free space to grow; they should not crowd or touch each other. When the bark changes color from a red green to black it is time to cut out that cane. Of course a few new ones must be left each year to replace the old ones. If you can, it is a good plan to go over the bushes after fruit is off and cut out the old black ones. It gives better chance for the younger ones to develop.

Watch for currant worms. They will appear first on the gooseberries. Poison with White Hellebore-one tablespoon

full to two gallons water. Sprinkle with water can.

Blackberries are the last to ripen and the least planted. Probably because they are more or less uncertain in many localities. The writer's experience with blackberries has been a great deal like most others, not wholly satisfactory. Ancient Briton and Snyder are the most common and the methods of culture are similar to raspberries. If you get a good crop a row 100 ft. long will be enough. If they do not fruit you certainly have enough and to spare.

All through central and northern Wisconsin raspberries and blackberries need winter protection. Probably the surest way is to bend down the canes and cover with earth.

All these fruits need good cultivation. Keep the weeds out, and fertilize annually. If the patch should get badly overrun with grass it is better to set a new patch than to try to get the grass out.

Prof. Moore: I think the Pearl gooseberry discounts the Downing a great deal; a much heavier bearer and just as nice a berry.

Mr. Smith: The Downing will bear until they cannot stand up; then what more do you want?

Prof. Moore: We get larger returns from our Pearl bushes than the Downing.

Mr. Kellogg: That paper is a very good paper for the beginner. I got one promising idea from it, that of flavoring jams. and jellies with the chinch bug.

YOUR FAMILY STRAWBERRY BED.

C. L. PEARSON, Baraboo.

Growing strawberries is such an easy task that I will not make it appear difficult by reading a long essay. A family strawberry bed is easily within the reach of every farmer or any person who owns or controls a few rods of tillable ground; their cultivation is a pleasure while you are anticipating the possibilities of an enormous yield of the lucious fruit strictly home grown and the fun really begins with the ripening of the berries.

Having available ground the next question is in regard to plants; order of a reliable plant grower and you will be likely to get varieties which will pollenize and bear fruit.

I have known farmers to order plants of nursery agents at $2.50 a hundred and when fruiting time came round there were no berries. The cause of failure being the improper mating of varieties. Good plants can be bought at $1.00 a hundred or less and two hundred plants will supply a large family with berries besides some big ones to brag about and give to your friends. A good list of varieties is Warfield, Beder Wood, Dunlap, Crescent, Sample and Aroma and there are others.

The ground should be prepared early in the spring as for other garden crops. About May, 1st is the best time for transplanting. A spade or garden trowel can be used in setting the plants which should be in rows about 31⁄2 ft. apart and 18 inches apart in the rows. The soil should be firmly pressed about the roots.

A family strawberry bed can be cultivated with a hoe and garden rake but if a horse and cultivator are available so much the better. If the plants send out too many runners cut off some of them and the result will be larger plants and better fruit.

About Nov. 1st cover the plants lightly with straw or some

2-H. S.

coarse litter. In the spring remove a part of this covering leaving enough to help hold moisture in the soil and also keep berries clean. All that is necessary now are a few balmy days and the whole family may enjoy a month of genuine strawberry happiness.

Mr. Davis: I would suggest for the Warfield and Dunlap, that they would be better planted three feet in the row and three and one-half feet between the rows. I have been trying that way, and I think that is plenty close enough. You get too many plants most of the time then.

Mr. Hager. In a home garden, as a general thing fewer plants. will be produced, because it will not be cultivated as well, so that I believe the same rule will not apply as to commercial growing. I would not advocate a person setting out two hundred and setting them that way.

Mr. Davis: I think you get plenty of plants any way; I think farmers as a rule have too many plants and they are not particular about thinning them out. I have grown them in the garden before I have grown them commercially, and I think plants should be 2% by 31⁄2 at the most.

Mr. Periam: We have had most excellent success in planting Warfield and Dunlap; they are planted three feet apart one way and eighteen inches the other; they were planted last spring and pretty well covered the ground. They were planted in the oldfashioned way, with an old post spade and trod down and we had a pretty good crop of berries; that was due to the fact that the last year was very dry, that the strawberry plants had better roots than usual, but for commercial work we must have a horse. The width apart that they should be planted depends upon the kind of berry. Some berries are strong growers. I think the mistake made generally among the amateurs is that they leave the roots too thick, that is, they leave too narrow a space between rows. I choose to have, not a matted row, but a row about ten inches across.

Mr. Davis: I would like to suggest the Bubach as the berry that has given the best satisfaction among home growers, that is, for table use, not for canning; the Bubach, Dunlap and Warfield, Dunlap as fertilizer, and of course these will have to be set at least 18 inches in the row as they do not run very well. I think you can get more quarts off the vine than from any other berry.

Mr. Kellogg: The Dunlap is generally used for a fertilizer'; it fertilizes all right, but it does not produce the fruit; it does not hang on and carry out as big a crop of fruit. It is the berry for any one to plant if they have but one kind, but I am never satisfied with the result. I am growing thirty now, but the Dunlap and Warfield go together nicely, and I think one Dunlap and two Warfields would be about right for a successful crop, if the Warfield will do well on your ground. If you are subject to drouth and blight, the Warfield will be a failure. Bubach is successful once in about four years with me. It is a fancy berry and on clay soil will do well.

Mr. Pearsons: How is Sample with you?

Mr. Kellogg: Sample is all right. Sample is one of the best pistillates, and Cooper is the finest fertilizer for Sample that I know of, a well shaped berry.

Mr. Periam: Mr. Kellogg says that the Warfield will do well if the soil is all right for it. Is not that just as true of the Dunlap as it is of the Warfield, or is it not just as true of any other variety as it is of this? It seems to me that that is the real factor in the case. I never could raise the Bubach although I have not tried of late years. Sometimes the Dunlap does not seem to do very well; again it produces more berries than the Warand so it goes. It is according to the variety and year and soil largely.

field,

Mr. Kellogg: And the man.

The President: Iwould like to say in regard to Bubach, I have seen it attempted many times and have seen some fine berries, but in our part of the world we have had so many failures that we dropped Bubach a long time ago. I am satisfied if you try to raise Bubach you have to set your plants early so as to get the plants early enough to be perfect before winter. I have seen fine plants that failed to blossom the following year; I think it is quite important to use fairly early plants so that they are mature enough to get a crop the year following.

Mr. Kellogg. There are a good many varieties that make plants all right; Dunlap and Warfield will run all over creation, and climb over into your neighbor's lot and get you into trouble. Certain varieties like the Bubach and a number of other varieties you can plant together a great deal thicker than the Dunlap and Warfield; you can plant them three or four feet apart and they will cover the whole ground.

Mrs. Howlett: I think what Mr. Kellogg says about the Warfield is right on certain kinds of soil. We had an experience with the Warfield and Brandywine, the Warfield in drouth would dry out until there were no berries at all, while we had good crops of Brandywine on the same ground, right in the same locality. I think the Warfield dries out worse than some other varieties do on heavy soil.

Mr. Kellogg Brandywine I consider one of the best late berries; I am glad to have it mentioned.

GRAPES.

MY HOME VINEYARD.

G. W. REIGLE, Madison, Wis.

My apple orchard, my strawberry plantation, my home vineyard, orally pronounced, are really more euphonius than "revise the tariff downward," "man behind the gun," or "big stick," and to many of us the former phrases easily hold first place in importance.

What grateful shade "my home vineyard" suggests. What harmony of odors surpassing even those of the sunny Indian island. Where else repose such tonic virtues the results of which have produced constellations of Rogers and Munsons. When and where the vine originated is quite as obscure as the early history of Greece and Rome and like the treasures of these ancient civilizations have survived the "dark ages," "the black plague," and "the brown rot," and is now pretty well distributed throughout the enlightened portion of the globe.

Its range of distribution surpasses that of the apple and like the apple succeeds best where wisdom is exercised in selecting varieties adapted to the soil and to the climatic conditions. To illustrate this, I think of no better example than that of the Worden grape.

In Wisconsin it ranks among our best, but in nearly all parts of the South this grape is practically worthless.

The home vineyard presupposes a shelter, a bit of land, a family, and a man: not one of those two-legged animals whose cerebrum is honey-combed with the mycelium of that incurable fungus of chronic laziness and carelessness.