If the plants must be bought and transported from a distance during hot weather, I should not advise the purchase of any except those grown in pots. Nurserymen have made us familiar with pot-grown plants, for we fill our flowerbeds with them. In like manner strawberry plants are grown and sold. Little pots, three inches across at the top, are sunk in the earth along a strawberry row, and the runners so fastened down that they take root in these pots. In about two weeks the young plant will fill a pot with roots. It may then be severed from the parent, and transported almost any distance, like a verbena. Usually the ball of earth and roots is separated from the pot, and is then wrapped in paper before being packed in the shallow box employed for shipping purposes. A nurseryman once distributed in a summer throughout the country a hundred thousand plants of one variety grown in this manner. The earth encasing the roots sustained the plants during transportation and after setting sufficiently to prevent any loss worth mentioning. This method of the plant-grower can easily be employed on the Home Acre. Pots filled with earth may be sunk along the strawberry rows in the garden, the runners made to root in them, and from them transferred to any part of the garden wherein we propose to make a new bed. It is only a neater and more certain way of removing young plants with a ball of earth from the open bed.
Some have adopted this system in raising strawberries for market. They prepare very rich beds, fill them with pot-grown plants in June or July, take from these plants one crop the following June, then plow them under. As a rule, however, such plants cannot be bought in quantities before August or September.
As we go south, September, October, or November, according to lowness of latitude, are the favorite months for planting. I have had excellent success on the Hudson in late autumn planting. My method has been to cover the young plants, just before the ground froze, with two or three inches of clean earth, and then to rake it off again early in April. The roots of such plants become thoroughly established during the winter, and start with double vigor. Plants set out in late autumn do best on light, dry soils. On heavy soils they will be frozen out unless well covered. They should not be allowed to bear the following season. A late-set plant cannot before winter in our climate become strong and sturdy enough to produce much fruit the following season. I make it a rule not to permit plants set out after the first of October to bear fruit until a year from the following June.