While your correspondent, Mr Hinds, is writing on Strawberries in 'The Gardener,' I should feel obliged if he would explain to me and others the incomprehensible statement of his in his "calendarial writings" in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle' lately. He says:-

"A correspondent inquires whether I have found in practice that the yield of plants potted into 5-inch pots a fortnight later is better than that to be obtained from 6-inch pots, the plants of which are equally well rooted and ripened. My experience is that the produce of the former is equal in all respects to that of the latter, with this addition, that a good many more plants of the 5-inch size can be put into the same space, thus yielding a larger supply of fruit from any given space. This experiment was tried side by side with others last year, and the results inspected by competent authorities, whole lines of plants being submitted to the test and brought into bearing at the same time".

This we understood, but a little further on, in a sentence quite unconnected with the above, he says: "No size surpasses the 6-inch pot for all round work." What I wish to know is, how he makes this appear, after telling us that "the produce of a 5-inch pot is equal in all respects to that of a 6-inch pot," with this addition, that the 5-inch pot "yields a larger supply of fruit from any given space"? We are given to understand that the sorts experimented with by Mr Hinds were his "all round" favourites - viz., Sir C. Napier and Vicomtesse Hericart de Thury; and it puzzles one to understand why he should elect to use the 6-inch pot for "all round work," or most extensively, when he has proved to his own satisfaction, and the satisfaction of "competent authorities," that the 5-inch pot is by far the best, or, in other words, that it surpasses the 6-inch. The use of 5-inch pots means a gain of about 17 plants in every 100, or nearly 340 plants in 2000 - the number, I believe, Mr Hinds forces, as he has somewhere stated; and if that alone is not a sufficient proof that the 5-inch pot surpasses the 6-inch for "all round work," I misapprehend the meaning of figures, and the meaning of Mr Hinds's experiments.

Mr Hinds's statements simply amount to this - that the 5-inch pot produces nearly 20 per cent more, and equally good fruit, than the 6-inch pot, space for space; but for some unaccountable reason he prefers the latter for general purposes, and recommends as the best.

Learner.