No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. M7 



one of the objects of a man on the platform. I don't snjipose there 

 is a -commercial asparagus grower in this audience. If there is, I 

 made a wrong guess, but 1 said I have created tliought, and if 

 you will ask nny questions along any line of asjjaragus growing, if 

 I am able, I will try to answer them. 



MR. ROW: Won't it push through air sooner than through that 

 extra amount of dirt? You said you wanted it white and we want 

 it green. 



MR. HULSART: No, but you have got to let it stand louger be- 

 fore you can cut it, and if you are an as])aragus gi'ower, Mr. Row, 

 you know this, when an asparagus crown sends up 4 or 5 shoots, it 

 does not send up any more until you cut them. If we cut ours 

 to-day, we start a new crop. If you don't cut yours until to-morrow, 

 you don't start a new crop until to-morrow, and the closer and 

 oftener you cut it, the faster you start the new ones, and further- 

 more, it takes more shoots to make a bunch of green grass than 

 of white. It is like putting a piece of hot iron through a rolling 

 mill, the shoot gets smaller every inch it makes up after it comes 

 out into daylight. I'd like to grow green grass, but I am in an 

 asparagus section where you can look in any direction and see 

 3 or 4 or 5 acres of asparagus and anywhere from 30,000,000 to 40,- 

 000,000 bugs at certain times of the year, and these bugs will soon 

 spoil the grass and that's what sells the grass, the tops. 



A Member: Could you renew a bed that has been neglected in 

 the way of feeding and might be 10 or 12 years old? Could you 

 renew that by an application of manure? 



MR. HULSART: If the crowns are not too near the top. If it 

 is only a garden plot, I would say yes, but if it is for commercial 

 purposes, you have got to cut the grass so near the level of the 

 surface of the land, that I am afraid you would have trouble even 

 though that is green grass. The knife is thrust under the ground 

 a little way and as soon as the crown gets up level with the surface 

 when the knife is thrust in, you are all the time pricking the crown 

 with that knife and damaging the buds. These that you damage a 

 little start to grow and come up and you grow crooked, deformed 

 spears and all that is waste. I'd rather have the manure down the 

 centre of the row as deep as you can put it and if it goes right in 

 between the rows, it doesn't make much difference. I want the 

 greater part of my soluble fertility put on after the cutting season 

 is over. No amount of manuring early in the spring will do that 

 cutting any good. You are manuring for next year's crop. You can- 

 not form plant food that will build cellular tissue until you have got 

 a green top, and as long as you are cutting the shoots every day, you 

 have no green top. The greater part of the manuring should be 

 after the cutting season ceases, and you store up fertility for the next 

 season; at the same time, that plant is making eyes to send up 

 shoots for next season's crop. We quit cutting between the 1st and 

 4th of July, always try to get cleaned up so we can shoot fire-crackers 

 on the Fourth. 



A member: What does the producer get for those 1,500 bunches 

 to the acre? 



