The Strawberry or Winter Cherry
By Mrs. P. A. Halbert
I WISH to recommend to the readers of the REVIEW a valuable fruit called “strawberry or winter cherry,” “husk tomato,” and sometimes “ground cherry.” It is described in seed catalogues in connection with the tomato, but it is not like the tomato either in growth, form, or taste. Like the tomato, it is easily and quickly grown in one season, and is a fruit of which we can have bushels at trifling cost; and yet few seem to know much about it. People who raise it, prize it highly. It is enormously productive, and once in your garden, it will come up and thrive year after year. The cherries are less than an inch in diameter, of a strawberry shape, a beautiful, bright yellow color, of a delicate, sweet flavor, and inclosed in a husk, which is easily removed from the fruit. When ripe, they drop to the ground. They begin to ripen early if started in time, and continue to ripen until killed by frosts. Last fall, after frosts came, I counted as many as six or seven hundred cherries yet on the vines, in all stages of development. One could gather a bushel of the fruit from ten good plants. It is well worth growing for canning purposes, both on account of its fine quality and its immense productiveness. The pretty, bright-yellow fruits also make a handsome dessert dish, and they are excellent to eat raw. Children are delighted with them, and eat the luscious fruit with great relish. They are as pleasing to the eye as to the taste—both as a fresh fruit and also when cooked. One great advantage this fruit possesses over most fruits is its keeping qualities. It will keep nicely until January, when it may be put into cans, the sauce being as beautiful as the Crawford peach. In experimenting with the cherry, we find that it combines nicely with stronger flavored fruits, such as the raspberry, grape, elderberry; or with the sour fruits, such as the plum, currant, gooseberry, etc. A quart of the cherries cooked with two quarts of raspberries make what appears to be three quarts of raspberries. We would advise the readers of the REVIEW who have not yet grown this fruit, to try it this summer. It is not yet too late. If treated as they should be, the plants make a wonderfully rapid growth, and begin to blossom when very small. But the earlier they are planted, the larger the crop. We saved a large quantity of seed last year, and I would be glad to send some, free, to any one who will write for it, inclosing a self-addressed and stamped envelope. I will also give instructions as to growing. Address Mrs. P. A. Halbert, Taylor, Cortland Co., N. Y.