MAKKET GARDENING. 93 



out whether salt does any good or not. I don't believe it 

 does. It certainly does not with me, or with the asparagus 

 grown in my neighborhood, and there are two hundred acres 

 of it within two miles of my house. I don't think these 

 growers can all be mistaken. I would not spend one cent 

 for salt for anything, unless it is to cure meat. 



Mr. Everett. In relation to the longevity of the aspara- 

 gus bed, I will state a fact which comes within my own per- 

 sonal observation. The farm upon which I live Avas occu- 

 pied, a hundred and twenty years ago, by an English officer 

 by the name of Bowen : he was a half-j)ay captain in the 

 British army. He bought that farm in the town of Prince- 

 ton, where I now live, about a hundred and twenty-five 

 years ago, and immediately planted an asparagus bed. It 

 now stands A'cry near the house in which I live, not more 

 than fifteen feet from one end of it, and is about eighteen or 

 twenty feet in one direction and twelve feet in the other. 

 That asparagus bed has been growing with the greatest fer- 

 tility from that period to this. The same identical roots 

 have been in the ground about one hundred and twenty-five 

 years, and I will defy you to find, in Concord or anywhere 

 else, a more vigorous growth of asparagus than is found in 

 that plot at the present time ; we cut it generally until about 

 the middle of June, — sometimes later and sometimes earlier. 

 It glows up thick and rank, with only a small coating of 

 manure once in perhaps three or four years. It is in a very 

 good soil. I have sometimes taken a little boy, six or eight 

 years old, when I have been playing with children around 

 my premises, and thrown him right on the bed, and he will 

 not sink down through it. That bed, as I say, has been 

 growing one hundred and twenty-five years. I think that is 

 a pretty good answer to the question as to the longevity of 

 the asparagus. 



Mr. Paul. I will inquire whether Mr. Moore has tried 

 chemical fertilizers, and, if so, with what result? 



Mr. Moore. I have tried chemicals to keep asparagus 

 which has been run for four or five years. The result is not 

 worth telling you, because I do not know what it is myself. 

 Experiments of a year or two with fertilizers do not amount 

 to anything ; you have got to go through a long course of 



