248 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



MR. HULSART : Ask the hard questions of the other fellow, don't 

 you put them at me. If we are getting |3.00 a dozen or $2.50, it 

 would be easy figuring, but one day or two days we may be receiving 

 13.50 and the next week the weather changes, it comes hot enough 

 to make you stroke your brow and down will come the price to $1.75 

 or $2.00. If you will tell me what the price is going to be until 

 the 1st of July, I can answer the question fairly well. Unless you 

 can tell me that, I cannot answer the question. We start some- 

 where around $3.25 to $3.75 and sometimes take as low as $1.50 and 

 then comes a little cold spell like last week and up it will go to 

 $2.50 or $2.75, sometimes $3.00. The average good acre of asparagus 

 through our section runs somewhere around $200 an acre. I know 

 some men who claim to get $250 an acre; I don't want to set any- 

 body crazy thinking they are going to get rich growing asparagus 

 because I happen to come here, and if they meet me somewhere 

 else after they have made a failure of it, have them hit me back 

 of the neck because they made a failure of it. 



A Member: After you quit cutting and the top grows up prob- 

 ably 3 feet high, when do you cut that off? 



MR, HULSART: I don't cut that off until about time spring is 

 opening, and the frost is leaving the ground. In my section, we 

 don't have much snow and sometimes when we do have snow, it is 

 all over along the fence. I'd rather have it in the field and if we 

 leave the tops on, it doesn't drift. About the time the frost is 

 going, I have men go up and down the ground with a sharp hoe. 

 It doesn't take very long. Remember, the asparagus plant grows 

 seed on one plant and fertility on another plant. There's male 

 and female plants in asparagus and the plant that does not produce 

 seed is always the best crop producer. When the man comes for- 

 ward that can pick out the male plants from the females and set 

 our beds from that kind, we will be able to produce a greater yield 

 of asparagus. If you are going to set them out and wait until they 

 seed and go back and set them into permanent beds, you will lose 

 more than you will gain. I know one man that claims he can tell 

 a great many of them. How near he is doing it, I don't know. In 

 his own field, he does it by the shape of the bed when they are one 

 year old. How near a success he is making, I don't know. I don't 

 claim to be able to tell them at all. If I could, I wouldn't set any- 

 thing but the male plants, they are the best crop producers. Friends, 

 I thank you for your attention. Mr. Martin, will you take that 

 home with you? 



A Member: Mr, Hulsart, what do you think about hibernating 

 insects in the tops standing over? 



MR, HULSART: The asparagus beetle hibernates under shelter 

 of any kind. If they have asparagus beds in the open where there 

 are no fence rows, wood or collection of trash, the bugs will go to 

 a distance to hibernate. If you have got leaves the trash, etc., they 

 will get under there. I have known instances where men put things 

 around the asparagus field for them to go under and when they 

 get them gathered together in their winter quarters, then they de- 

 stroy them. The only way the farmer can get clear of the great 

 crops of asparagus bugs, is to follow up the late brood and poison 



