Growing Asparagus.

A DISCUSSION LED BY E. W. RECORD, MARKET GARDENER, BROOKLYN CENTER.

A Member: I want to ask if many put salt on asparagus?

Mr. Record: Salt is very good, but I think only for the reason that it makes the plant tender and keeps down insects. But if I was to use anything to keep insects down I should use Paris green. Shorts or bran, that is the best for cutworms. Everybody knows that with the least scratch or mar on the side of the asparagus it will grow crooked, and then it is a pretty hard proposition to get it into the bunch ready for market in any kind of shape.

A Member: Some have the idea that salt helps the growth of the plant.

Mr. Record: Well, I never found it did.

Mr. Baldwin: I would like to know how to control rust on the stems in the summer time.

Mr. Record: Well, I can't answer, but I find that the Palmetto has less rust on it than any other variety. I have never been bothered with asparagus rust yet.

Mr. Baldwin: After the bed gets to be a few years old the grass and weeds commence to come up. After you get through cutting, it is pretty hard work to get in there and clean them out. Do you find it the best way to hoe them after you get through cutting?

Mr. Record: I will tell you. I cultivate right over the tops of the rows and keep on cultivating until the asparagus comes up and begins to sprout. By the time the weeds come up the second time, it is time to quit cutting.

Mr. Baldwin: How deep do you put the plant below the surface in transplanting?

Mr. Record: From twelve to fourteen inches. In the east they are growing asparagus, and they set out their plants, and they fill in and wait until the asparagus comes up and then they fill with rotted manure and never fertilize any more, but here there are very few that do that. I never did, but I find in putting on manure broadcast a year afterwards the shoots were very crooked. I did that one year only. After I put it on I thought I would have something good, and I didn't have anything. As soon as it comes up it starts to get crooked.

Mr. Baldwin: You mean to say that putting manure on top makes the asparagus crooked?

Mr. Record: That was my experience.

Mr. Baldwin: I have always practiced that. I think what makes it crooked is cultivating the top and cutting the crowns off.

A Member: When the weeds come in we disk it.

Mr. Record: I never like to disk it. If your bed is very old you are liable to cut some of your crowns rather than to keep the weeds out.

A Member: Your manure would be all gone then?

Mr. Record: I know there was a man right adjoining me who had an asparagus bed, and he used a lot of rotten manure the summer before, and he got very little asparagus that was marketable. I asked him what the trouble was, and he said he didn't know. This year he had a good crop. I can't say it was the manure that did that, only it looks that way.

A Member: How would you start a new planting?

Mr. Record: I would plow my ground thoroughly and get it in good shape.

A Member: Wouldn't fertilize the first season?

Mr. Record: I would. I would fertilize my asparagus ground two years.

A Member: I mean in preparing your patch for the new planting?

Mr. Record: I would first plow and harrow and then fertilize. Plow both ways from fourteen to sixteen inches deep and with a fine cultivator loosen up the bottom of furrow and put in the plants and cover with a little earth. Then with the horse keep filling in the furrow. I saw this summer several men with hoes working. That is all right, but it takes a long time, especially with the proposition we are up against about hired help. I can do it just as well with the horse and four times as fast. The second year you can harrow it any way you want to.

A Member: Common corn land, is that fit for raising asparagus?

Mr. Record: Yes, sir, asparagus will grow on poor ground better than many other vegetables will.

A Member: Will it improve that land by fertilizing with top dressing?

Mr. Record: I think so.

A Member: The heavy land I suppose wouldn't be good for it?

Mr. Record: They raise good asparagus on clay land, but I don't think it will grow as good as on sandy soil. It is not quite so warm; it packs harder and I think more liable to grow crooked.

A Member: I was called out to see a man's asparagus bed. He asked me what kind of ground I thought it must be, and I said a light soil. This man had a heavy clay, and it rained on it, and then the sun came out very hot and the top cooked, and when the little shoots were to come up they turned back. That ground wasn't good for asparagus.

Mr. Record: It should have been harrowed well after that rain.

A Member: You see he couldn't get in there.

A Member: What fertilizer is good? Is bone meal good?

Mr. Record: Any commercial fertilizer is good, I think. Bone meal is good.

Mr. Crawford: Can you raise asparagus successfully in the shade or a partial shade?

Mr. Record: Well, I wouldn't want too much. I have shade on both sides of mine; it is a hedge. I notice it isn't near so good next to the hedge as it is out in the middle of the bed, although shade on both sides protects it from the wind and makes it hotter. The hotter it is, the faster it will grow.

Mr. Crawford: I asked the question because I have a west line shade several years old, trees are willow and box elder. Considerable of the ground is a loss to me, practically so, from that shade.

Mr. Record: I don't think it is a very good place for asparagus.

A Member: I would like to ask if a person on clay soil could use sawdust to work in?

Mr. Record: Horse manure with sawdust, we use a great deal of that, that is, planing mill shavings. That is all right. That will loosen up the ground some, but when it is turned over, of course, it will harden up again if there comes a good hard rain on it.

A Member: How many years have you maintained a bed?

Mr. Record: Why, it will go from twelve to fourteen years, although the place that I am on now, I know that was good for twenty-five or twenty-six. It is practically gone now, but for twenty years it was good. But of late years it won't run over twelve to fifteen.

Mr. Willard: I would like to ask something about changing an old asparagus bed to a new position.

Mr. Record: I wouldn't advise you to use the old roots. You get a bed quicker by using plants that are two years old, and of course there are some plants better than others. I bought my plants in the east. Now they have good plants here, a good many of them, too, but I have never seen anything as good as I got for my last bed. The best way if I was going into it, being a market gardener, would be to go to some neighbor that had a good straight bed and get my own seed. It is very easy to save, and most anyone would give a man all he wanted and charge him nothing. All he would do would be to gather it up.

Mr. Miller: I would like to ask—I only grow for kitchen garden and I presume most of us are in the same boat—we were told to plow a furrow deeply and fill it with good manure and to plant the roots with the crowns about four inches below the surface of the bed.

Mr Record: Well, I wouldn't fertilize it first. I would, as I say, plow my furrow and loosen up the bottom of it, so that the plants will get a chance to get started. You know if you are plowing it out or shoveling it out it will get down to hard ground. That isn't so good. You loosen up the bottom and put your plants evenly over the ground and put in a little dirt, and if you have it a little barnyard manure.

Mr. Miller: I suppose the idea of putting that in the bottom is that it is so hard to cultivate the manure on the top without doing as you mentioned?