The New Haven News says:

"Portable strawberry beds are the latest in the long list of inventions of the nineteenth century, and in a few years every citizen who has a little patch of garden, or a sunny spot on the roof of his house, can raise strawberries all the year round. These beds have three or four advantages over the old-fashioned style, which cannot be over-estimated. All the disadvantages of wind, rain and drought are done away with. Between Branford and Guilford is a back road that is little travelled, and on one of the loneliest, rockiest, and most generally forlorn clearings lives the man who is destined to revolutionize the market gardening of the future. He is an aged negro rejoicing in the appellation of Caesar Johnson. A reporter, with a taste for the wild and beautiful in nature, and who had saved up three months' salary and hired a team and taken a friend to ride, chanced to drive past the habitation of Caesar, a day or two ago, and was surprised to see the old man sitting in front of his house, regarding, with an air of pride, three or four fine specimens of strawberries.

"'Where in the world did you get those?' he asked, as he drew up his animated quadruped, and forgot all about his companion and the fact that horse hire goes by the hour.

"'I growed 'em,' said Caeser, as he calmly devoured a berry that would bring 25 cents in the New York market.

"'You grew them ? How?'

"'Yes, sar, I done growed them in buckets. You jess come and see.'

"The reporter followed, and sure enough back of the hovel, on a bench, stood twenty pails, each with a flourishing strawberry plant. Some of the plants were covered with blossoms, and on the others the deep and delicately greenish white of the ripe and unripe fruit, peeped from under luxuriant leaves.

"'You see dem pails is mighty handy to take round,' explained Caesar as he held one up in each hand for the news gatherer's inspection. ' I done made a lot of them pails, and fill'em up wid de blackest kind of wood dirt. Den once a week I cuts a runner off an old plant, and puts it in a fresh pail, and that way I keeps a fresh stock. Dese old plants can stand de cold, so I leabs dem out, until late in the afternoon, but the young 'uns, dey looks kinder peaked if I lets dem be out, ex-cept in de middle ob de day.'

"The roof of the house was mostly composed of old sashes neatly glazed, and in the centre of the garret floor stood an old wood stove, which kept the temperature at summer heat. There were more pails, each containing plants of different ages which Caesar explained would bear all winter if he did not forget and let the fire go out".