92 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



but there was a foot of asparagus roots still in that bed after 

 I ploughed it up. They "were not rotted. It is no use to 

 put them in the pig pen, for you cannot rot thera ; they are 

 good for twenty-five years. A tussock will rot quicker than 

 an asparagus root. 



Question. I would like to ask Mr. Moore if it is the 

 practice to use salt on asparagus beds ? 



Mr. Moore. In the town of Concord I think there is but 

 one man who uses salt. Salt was formerly used very gen- 

 erally. I have used it at the rate of one hundred and fifty 

 bushels to the acre. It docs no good; in fact, it is an in- 

 jury, because, if the application of salt makes one week's 

 diflTerencc in the time of srettinc; the veo:etablc into the 

 market in the spring, it is a serious matter. I understand 

 that the books have laid it down that asparagus is a marine 

 plant and wants salt. You can rake up any of the old books 

 treating of gardening back a hundred or a hundred and fifty 

 years, and you will find salt laid down as absolutely neces- 

 sary for asparagus. I had occasion at one time to look up, 

 for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the history of 

 asparagus. I went back as far as I could find anything in 

 the English books — and some of them were more than a 

 hundred years old — and I found in one of those very old 

 books that the writer said that asparagus was a marine plant, 

 growing on the coast of Spain (naming the particular local- 

 ity on the Bay of Biscay, but the name has escaped my 

 memory), where it was flooded at high Avater by the tides, 

 and therefore, he argued, because salt did not kill it, that it 

 was a marine plant. This writer Avcnt along pretty well un- 

 til he got nearly through his statement, when he said that at 

 this place which he mentioned they grew the largest and 

 finest asparagus that was grown in Europe, and they applied 

 two inches of night soil to it every year. 1 made up my 

 mind that the real cause of the large size of the stalks Avas 

 due to the nioht soil. I followed that history clear through 

 the books, down to Peter Henderson, audi found that every 

 one of them had copied that same thing. They did not Avrite 

 it from what they knew ; they had made it up to order, as a 

 good many books arc made, and evidently they had copied 

 it without giving the matter any attention or testing it to find 



