A few words about this new breed.  Progressive, Superb and Americus are the best three I have found in the last ten years—­don’t confound American with Americus.  Pan-American was the mother of the whole tribe.  This variety was found in a field of Bismark, by S. Cooper, New York, and exhibited all through the Buffalo World’s Fair.  There is where my first acquaintance with it was formed.  From this one plant and its seedlings all the ten thousand everbearers have been grown.  But Pan-American don’t make many plants.  There are a great many good kinds in the ten thousand, and a great many of them worthless.  So look out when and where you buy.  I have great hopes of your No. 1017, but kinds do not adapt themselves to all soils or climates.

I have not found any success with the everbearers south of the Ohio.  I have tried them three years in Texas.  I sent plants to Bro.  Loring, in California, and they failed to produce satisfactorily.  Missouri grows almost all Aroma; California but two kinds commercially; Texas only Excelsior and Klondike for shipment.  I hope our No. 3 Minnesota June-bearing and our No. 1017 Everbearing, will have as great a range as Dunlap.

Friend Gardener, of Iowa, has a lot of “thousand dollar kinds.”  I hope some of them will do wonders.  He sold 5,000 quarts of fruit after August 15.  A firm at Three Rivers, Mich., this season advertised 30,000 cases in September, but perhaps it was only 3,000; I have known printers to make mistakes.  My boy’s beds of Superb, Progressive and Americus were loaded with ripe and green fruit and blossoms October 1st this year.  Most, if not all, know the fruit must be kept off the everbearers the season of planting till the plants get established, usually two or three months, then let them bear.  If you want all fruit, keep off the runners; if all plants, keep off the fruit.  Beds kept over that have exhausted themselves will need rest till July to give big crops.  Beds kept over will fruit a week earlier than the June varieties, rest a few weeks, then give a fall crop, but don’t expect too much unless you feed them.

There are ten thousand kinds of new everbearers, so don’t buy any that have not been tried and proven worthy.  There are thousands that are worthless.  Friend Haralson only got No. 1017 out of 1,500 sorts.  He has now 3,000 new kinds, set out four feet apart each way, he is testing.  From what many growers are doing this breed will pay commercially, but it will be by experts.  I have not time to advocate cultivation in hills or hedge rows; if you want big berries this is the way to get them.  Be sure your straw mulch and manure mulch are free from noxious weed or clover and grass seeds.  Everbearers need the same winter care as June varieties and a good deal more manure.  Don’t cover with asparagus tops unless free of seed.  Put manure either fresh or rotted on the old bed with a manure spreader or evenly by hand.  There is a possibility of manuring too heavily.