can be prepared as has been described.  If the soil is in good condition, rich and deep, it can be dug thoroughly, and the plants set out at once in the cool of the evening, or just before a shower.  During the hot season a great advantage is secured if the plants are set immediately after the ground is prepared, and while the surface is still moist.  It is unfortunate if ground is made ready and then permitted to dry out before planting takes place, for watering, no matter how thorough, has not so good an influence in starting new growth as the natural moisture of the soil.  It would be better, therefore, to dig the ground late in the afternoon, and set out the plants the same evening.  Watering, however, should never be dispensed with during warm weather, unless there is a certainty of rain; and even then it does no harm.

Suppose one wishes to set a new bed in July.  If he has strawberries growing on his place, his course would be to let some of his favorite varieties make new runners as early as possible.  These should be well-rooted young plants by the middle of the month.  After the new ground is prepared, these can be taken up, with a ball of earth attached to their roots, and carried carefully to their new starting-place.  If they are removed so gently as not to shake off the earth from the roots, they will not know that they have been moved, but continue to thrive without wilting a leaf.  If such transplanting is done immediately after a soaking rain, the soil will cling to the roots so tenaciously as to ensure a transfer that will not cause any check of growth.  But it is not necessary to wait for rain.  At five in the afternoon soak with water the ground in which the young plants are standing, and by six o’clock you can take up the plants with their roots incased in clinging earth, just as successfully as after a rain.  Plants thus transferred, and watered after being set out, will not wilt, although the thermometer is in the nineties the following day.  If young plants are scarce, take up the strongest and best-rooted ones, and leave the runner attached; set out such plants with their balls of earth four feet apart in the row, and with a lump of earth fasten down the runners along the line.  Within a month these runners will fill up the new rows as closely as desirable.  Then all propagation in the new bed should be checked, and the plants compelled to develop for fruiting in the coming season.  In this latitude a plant thus transferred in July or August will bear a very good crop the following June, and the berries will probably be larger than in the following years.  This tendency to produce very large fruit is characteristic of young plants set out in summer.  It thus may be seen that plants set in spring can not produce a good crop of fruit under about fourteen months, while others, set in summer, will yield in nine or ten months.  I have set out many acres in summer and early autumn with the most satisfactory results.  Thereafter the plants were treated in precisely the same manner as those set in spring.