246 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc 



ME. HULSART: By hoeing and cultivation, either the gang culti- 

 vator, the one hor.se cultivator or the hand hoe, and sometimes cut- 

 ting by hand. 



A Member: What do you mean by cutting 4 times? 



MR. HULSAKT: Four different cuttings. For instance, we will 

 cut the first cutting on Monday ; when there comes another crop 

 of shoots up, it might be Wednesday or Thursday of the same 

 week, or tAvo or three days later, about 4 or 5 cuttings; the warmer 

 the weather is the faster they come, the less cuttings you 

 want to cut because you want to get more in each cutting, you 

 don't want to rob it, just enough to develop that crown, make it 

 uniform, more buds. Now that coat of manure plowed under 

 there will stand by that asparagus longer than any other application 

 that is put on it. 



A Member: Whereabout do you cut the shoots off? 



MR, HULSART: Oh, just above the crown and sometimes you 

 cannot always do that, it is down there in the dark; you take 

 your chisel-bladed knife, some use a square one. I have seen growers 

 that use the concave knife. I use a fish-tail knife and the point 

 is notched, ground on one side. I like tliat for this reason, because 

 in shoving it into the ground, the corner just hits a shoot, draws 

 the knife to the spear and the spear to the knife, and its got to 

 cut off. Xow asparagus — right there on that knife question, 

 lest I forget — asparagus never wants to be planted on land 

 that has got stone in it. Any man that tries to cut aspara- 

 gus half a day on land with stone in it, he wants to leave 

 his religion in churcli before he comes away because you can't keep 

 a knife sliari) and the spears come through crooked. Weeds in 

 asparagus do not harm a knife to get it, but you cannot grow 

 asparagus — from 10 to 25 spears will make a bunch of that size — 

 with weeds on the land. Asparagus is a hungry crop, taking any- 

 where from 8 to 10 loads of manure to the acre and half a ton 

 of fertilizer and from 200 to 300 pounds of nitrate of soda. Now 

 if we are going to furnish that amount of fertility, and let weeds 

 take out the greater part of it, take out the moisture that the plant 

 needs, the next year the fellow that grew his asparagus separate 

 from weeds, will cut more bunches, larger grass, and the larger the 

 glass, the cleaner the p'ass, the better looking it is, not only the more 

 bunches he will gatlier, but the larger price he will receive. I 

 don't know of anything where the appearance amounts to as much 

 in price on the market, as we have to sell ours. In New York 

 (Mty, asparagus is .celling from |2 to 13.50 a dozen and the fancier 

 it is, the higher the price. The freight is as much on low priced 

 asparagus as on the medium or high-priced, the only thing that is 

 any higher is the commission. It pays to grow grass as good as we 

 can and as large as we can. We often hear tell of 2,000 bunches of 

 as}>aragus to the acre. You have heard tell of 100 bushels or more 

 of corn to the acre, but Pennsylvania doesn't average hardly 40 and 

 there is very few men that cut 2,000 bunches of asparagus to the 

 acre; my average is 1,500 on 5 or 6 acres and I find that my neighbors 

 are not cutting any more. Some seasons it cuts more than others. 

 Now I seemed to have created a little thought here and that is 



