154 ASPARAGUS 
the plants feed. It appears to me this is the secret of 
success. 
Much depends upon how asparagus is put up for 
the market, making it look attra¢tive, in nice, clean, 
new crates and neatly prepared bunches, and the stalks 
must be large, tender, and of good flavor. Grass from 
a strong bed grown in twenty-four hours is much more 
tender and better in every way than grass grown in 
forty-eight hours from a poor bed. We are compelled 
to cut every twenty-four hours, or the asparagus would 
waste, and the gathering is accomplished in about three 
and one-half hours each day, early in the morning. 
JOEL BORTON. 
Salem County, N. /. 
ASPARAGUS IN THE SOUTH 
There is no crop grown by the Southern trucker 
that has paid better than asparagus year after year. 
With many of the other truck crops sent North the 
growers have to contend with a host of planters 
who rush in at times to plant certain crops like 
early potatoes, peas, and beans, and whose inferior 
crops often glut the market and make the season 
unprofitable all around. These men drop out after 
a season that their particular venture did not pay, and 
the regular truckers, being well aware that they would 
do so, always redouble their efforts the year after a 
bad season with any particular crop, knowing from 
experience that then it would be certain to be profit- 
able. 
But the asparagus crop is one into which the tem- 
