Having started a strawberry-patch without loss of time wherever it is handiest, we can now give our attention to the formation of an ideal bed.  In this instance we must shun the shade of trees above, and their roots beneath.  The land should be open to the sky, and the sun free to practice his alchemy on the fruit the greater part of the day.  The most favorable soil is a sandy loam, verging toward clay; and it should have been under cultivation sufficiently long to destroy all roots of grass and perennial weeds.  Put on the fertilizer with a free hand.  If it is barnyard manure, the rate of sixty tons to the acre is not in excess.  A strawberry plant has a large appetite and excellent digestion.  It prefers decidedly manure from the cow-stable, though that from the horse-stable answers very well; but it is not advisable to incorporate it with the soil in its raw, unfermented state, and then to plant immediately.  The ground can scarcely be too rich for strawberries, but it may easily be overheated and stimulated.  In fertilizing, ever keep in mind the two great requisites—­moisture and coolness.  Manure from the horse-stable, therefore, is almost doubled in value as well as bulk if composted with leaves, muck, or sods, and allowed to decay before being used.

Next to enriching the soil, the most important step is to deepen it.  If a plow is used, sink it to the beam, and run it twice in a furrow.  If a lifting subsoil-plow can follow, all the better.  Strawberry roots have been traced two feet below the surface.

If the situation of the plot does not admit the use of a plow, let the gardener begin at one side and trench the area to at least the depth of eighteen inches, taking pains to mix the surface, subsoil, and fertilizer evenly and thoroughly.  A small plot thus treated will yield as much as one three or four times as large.  One of the chief advantages of thus deepening the soil is that the plants are insured against their worst enemy—­drought.  How often I have seen beds in early June languishing for moisture, the fruit trusses lying on the ground, fainting under their burden, and the berries ripening prematurely into little more than diminutive collections of seeds!  When ground has been deepened as I have said, the drought must be almost unparalleled to arrest the development of the fruit.  Even in the most favorable seasons, hard, shallow soils give but a brief period of strawberries, the fruit ripens all at once, and although the first berries may be of good size, the later ones dwindle until they are scarcely larger than peas.  Be sure to have a deep, mellow soil beneath the plants.

Such a bed can be made in either spring or fall—­indeed, at any time when the soil is free from frost, and neither too wet nor dry.  I do not believe in preparing and fertilizing ground during a period of drought.