244 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off.- Doc. 



teenth year, I did not bring that bunch to advertise anything before 

 this audience at all. I wanted to show a few friends what asparagus 

 will do along the southern shore of Earitan Bay when it becomes 15 or 

 16 years of age. 



The question has been asked, "How long will a bed last?" No- 

 body knows; some, ten or twelve or fourteen years, and other beds 

 twenty or twenty-five years; it depends largely on the soil and the 

 man who is farming. If the subsoil is porous for four or five feet, 

 an asparagus bed will last much longer than if it has a clay bot- 

 tom two or two and a half feet from the surface. An asparagus 

 plant has a tendency to come up, and once it gets near the surface, 

 it is almost impossible to get the shoots of size and get them of 

 length. In planting the plants in the field, we i)lant them in a 

 trench as deep as a two-horse turning plough will turn the furrow 

 going once in each direction, turn it and come back in the same 

 row and plant the plants in the bottom of the furrow. Men have 

 asked me, "Shall we put in manure?" I know men who advocate 

 it and who have had success in doing it, but there is a reason for 

 not doing it. In many instances the asparagus will do fairly well, 

 provided that manure compost is put on the top of plants, but 

 in many instances field mice get under there and dearly love to 

 chew the little roots and we have a ragged plantation. 



Never put manure underneath an asparagus plant when you are 

 going to plant it; the plant will start better, grow faster and be 

 a larger plant at the end of one season, if planted on a hard, 

 solid bottom. Some of our scientific writers, some of those who. I 

 suppose never set an asparagus row as long as this hall in their 

 lives, advocate making a little mound of earth with the roots, so 

 that they will spread out in a cup shape. Suppose a man has four 

 or five acres to set; how long will it take to plant them that way? 

 Many things work out splendidly on paper, but when the sun is 

 shining on your back and you get out at six o'clock in the morning 

 and stay until six at night, bent double, that mound question will 

 soon be foregotten. I have been there till my back ached and 

 I set them right on the bottom of the furrow and with no manure. 

 Plant your asparagus, plow it, put on manure and the more the 

 better, all your pocket will stand, if it's twenty-five tons to the 

 acre. I have a bed of asparagus seven or eight years old and 

 there's just a trifle over three acres in it, and I put on forty loads 

 of New York stable manure before I ever plowed it at all. First, 

 I grew them all summer and then plowed them with a two-horse 

 plow away from each side of the row and put a ton of manure to 

 each row in November and then plowed the soil back. 



A Member: How much manure do you call a load? 



MR. HULSART: 2,200 or 2,300 pounds, practically a ton to the 

 row, is what we put on. It has had two or three applications 

 of manure between that time and now. After we get a certain 

 amount of vegetable matter in the soil, we can grow good crops 

 with commercial fertilizer. 



A Member: How is mnnure out of a mushroom house? 



MR. HULSART: In connection with commercial fertilizer, it will 

 he ideal. All you get is the humus making material from that 



