260 STATE HOKTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



FIELD CULTURE OF ASPARAGUS. 



When one grows a few plants, has a few cattle, or does anything else on a 

 very small scale, to see how great a yield he can secure without regard to time 

 or expense, he is not pursuing the methods that will achieve commercial 

 success on a large scale. The Rural New Yorker makes a happy note upon 

 the growth of asparagus in field culture, and scouts tiie old notion of the great 

 attention to be given to the preparation for the crop. It says : 



It is our humble belief that thousands of loads of manure have been thrown 

 away upon garden asparagus beds. Our teachers, or many of them, have 

 instructed us to trench two feet deep and fill in with manure and soil. Thus 

 treated, they say, ''an asparagus bed will last a lifetime." No doubt. We 

 know of fields of asparagus 20 acres in extent, that have never received any 

 manure, according to the statements of the owners, and they have yielded 

 plentifully for 25 years. The soil is simply a sandy loam, such as exists in a 

 long belt along the south side of tlie Long Island railroad. 



We do not wish to make any extreme statements. We have talked with the 

 asparagus-growers of this Long Island asparagus belt — as it may be called — 

 and many of them are of the opinion that asparagus grows as well, and as large, 

 without as with manure. This is inexplicable; but we are fully of the opinion 

 that an occasional top-dressing of manure is all that is needed in field culture, 

 and the same treatment should apply for a family bed. As for burying an 

 immense amount of manure a foot or more beneath the surface so that a bed 

 may 'Mast for a lifetime," probably a great part of the manure is not available 

 to the roots at all. For the rest, its effects could scarcely extend beyond 10 

 years, if so long. 



PRUNING TOMATOES. 



The Germantown Telegraph has the right of it in this matter of pruning 

 tomatoes. It is not that we wish to have less foliage, but that the rampant 

 growth of stem should be checked, that we prune tomatoes. Pinching back 

 tomatoes is a good practice when judiciously done. It may be overdone, however, 

 and injury result. In the first place it is no use to attempt it after the flowers 

 have fallen. The idea is to force the nourishment into the fruit at the earliest 

 start; for it is at that time that the future fate of the fruit is cast. A few 

 leaves beyond the fruit is an advantage. It is only the growth that is to be 

 checked. And then much damage is done by taking off the leaves as well as 

 the fruit. The tomato plant needs all the leaves it can get. It is only the 

 branches that are to be checked in their growth. No one who has not tried it 

 can have any idea of how valuable the leaves are to the tomato plant. One 

 may for experiment take off most of the leaves of a plant, and he will find the 

 flavor insipid and in every way poor. Of course it is the peculiar acidity of the 

 tomato that gives it so much value to all of us ; but the acid from a tomato that 

 has ripened with an iusuflicient amount of foliage is disagreeable to most tastes. 



