There are advocates of success of strawberry culture under three systems:

1. To get but one or two crops from the ground, allowing the vines to run broadcast, and then plow the bed under, starting a new bed each year. It is claimed that it is cheaper to do this, than expend too much labor in keeping to the hill or row system.

2. The row system, by which the plants are permitted to run in the row, while the ground between is kept constantly cultivated by horse power and kept free from weeds; the rows grow a little larger each year, and the third year the old rows are plowed in, and new rows are set out in the vacant soil between the old rows, hitherto kept cultivated.

3. Entirely in hills: this is garden culture properly, and requires the very best attention - manuring, mulching, and careful preparation of the ground. It is more costly, but pays better; still a cultivator can not care for as much ground as on either of the other two systems.

No association of fruit growers have agreed on any practice as definitely the best, although the majority of best cultivators uniformly advise the hill system. It is the one we practice, and which is the best conducive to the long life, health and productiveness of the strawberry beds, It is more easy to try the other two, yet when once a cultivator has spent $200 or $300 in preparation of his bed, he wishes to feel it is permanent for some length of time, and few care to repeat the same process every year or two on the same ground. It makes strawberry growing almost too costly in the end. We think strawberry beds should be made as permanent as possible, and give as little charge or occasion for expense in renewal as possible ; still the habits of growth require some renewal every few years.

We observe a strawberry grower, in the Small Fruit Recorder, has reported the results of experiments in the hill system and matted row system : 1,500 plants of the Wilson's Albany were kept in hills, the runners pulled off every time they appeared; the other 1,500 were cultivated on the "matted row " system, thoroughly hoed and cultivated. In the middle of November, both beds were mulched; half of them were mulched with straw, one-quarter with coarse stable manure, and one-quarter were not mulched at all. The results are as follows: Those kept in hills and mulched with straw, were decidedly the largest and finest berries; those kept in rows and mulched with straw were also very fine; those in beds and mulched with manure, did not yield more than half as many berries, and of an inferior quality, as those mulched with straw; and those that were not mulched at all, were hardly worth picking.

Although those kept in hills yielded the best berries, which might be called extra, yet as the difference of price was not enough extra, it was found that more money was realized from the rows mulched with straw, while those kept in hills cost enough less for labor and cultivation to more than counterbalance the difference; so that the verdict of profit proved to be in favor of the hill system as yielding better fruit at less cost.

Those kept in hills did not begin to ripen until two or three days after the other, and lasted continuously for a long time, while those grown in raws and mulched the same, were all dried up.