A Member:  Don’t they break right off from the main stalk in laying down?

Mr. Johnson:  No, no.

A Member:  We have a great deal of trouble with that.  How do you get these bushy bushes to lie down?

Mr. Johnson:  I take three or four canes, and kind of twist them, give them a little twist, and lay them flat on the ground.

Mr. Anderson:  Don’t you take out any dirt on the sides?

Mr. Johnson:  No, sir; sometimes I might put a shovel of ground against them to bend the canes over.

Mr. Rogers:  Do you plant in the hedge row or in the hill system?

Mr. Johnson:  In the hedge row.  I think it is better because they protect one another.

Mr. Ludlow:  How far do you put them apart in the hedge row?

Mr. Johnson:  Four feet.  That is the trouble with the King, if you don’t keep them down, your rows will get too wide.

A Member:  I heard you say a while ago you covered these.  Do you plow them after you get them down or do you cover them with a shovel?

Mr. Johnson:  I cover mostly with a shovel.  Sometimes I take a small plow through.

A Member:  Don’t you think in covering them with a plow you might disturb the roots?

Mr. Johnson:  That is the danger.

A Member:  I saw a fellow covering up twelve acres of black caps and he plowed them shut.  After I heard what you said I thought maybe that he was injuring his roots.

Mr. Johnson:  You know the black cap has a different root system from the reds.  The roots of the reds will run out all over the road.

Mr. Willard:  How thick do you leave those canes set apart in the row, how many in a foot?

Mr. Johnson:  I generally try to leave them in hills four feet apart, not let them come in any between.  About three or four in a hill.  I generally try to cut out the weak ones.

Mr. Willard:  You pinch the end of the tops, I think?

Mr. Johnson:  Yes, sir.

A Member:  When do you cut those sucker canes?

Mr. Johnson:  I generally hoe them just before picking time and loosen the ground in the row.  That is very important, to give them a hoeing, not hoe down deep, but just loosen that hard crust there and cut all the plants that you don’t want, and then generally, after the berries commence to ripen, your suckers don’t come so fast, and you keep on cultivating once in a while.

Mr. Brackett:  I have some King raspberries, and I never covered them up in ten years.  I will change that.  The first year I did cover a part of my patch, at least one-half of them, and that left the other half standing, and I couldn’t see any difference.  Around Excelsior there are very few people that cover up the King raspberry.  But the King raspberry has run out; all of the old varieties have run out.  We have at our experiment station the No. 4—­you can get double the amount of fruit from the No. 4 than from the King.  The