Commercial Gardening 



string or raffia, and then these hands are bound with rods into bundles 

 of 100 or 125. Sometimes little sorting is done except to pick out 

 "stickers" for the face, and the bundles of 100 or 125 are tied right 

 away with rod or raffia. In either case, boxes are used to lay the buds 

 in for tying or binding. The bundles are washed before sending away. 

 In this process a brush is used, and care is taken to use it along and 

 not across the buds, and so as not to move the rod. A bundle of 

 Asparagus can soon be set loose by careless washing. 



In hot summer weather it may be necessary to cut twice a day. A 

 good, well-established bed of Asparagus will continue worth cutting from 

 eight to ten years. A good plan two years before the time for throwing it 

 up is to extend the time of cutting a week or ten days the first year, and 



fourteen to twenty days the next year, 

 finally cutting as long as anything comes 

 worth cutting. The price of Asparagus 

 always goes up considerably as soon as the 

 regular time for ceasing cutting comes. 

 Many invalids and others are willing to 

 pay a good price for it as long as they can 

 get it. 



Winter Treatment. After the haulm 

 has quite died back in the autumn it can 

 be cut and burnt. Then is a good time to 

 give a coat of well-rotted manure, thirty 

 to forty loads to the acre, which can be 

 forked into the beds. Where the plough 

 is used a very light furrow may be turned 

 from each side of the row, leaving 1 ft. 

 between the inside of the two furrows. 

 This will be a good way of burying any 

 autumn weeds there may be. The manure 

 may now be drawn on and spread up the rows. It will fall into the 

 two furrows and on to the space left between them; this space can be 

 forked over shallow, care being taken to insert the fork obliquely, so as 

 not to wound the crowns; in the process the manure will be turned in 

 on to the crowns and that lying in the furrows covered. 



Before the buds are moulded up again in the spring they may be 

 dressed with 10 cwt. agricultural salt and 2 cwt. sulphate of potash to 

 the acre, or, as a variant, every third or fourth year, 2 cwt. of nitrate 

 of potash to the acre. Some growers use a good deal of soot as a spring 

 dressing; it lightens the land, and it is claimed retains more of the sun 

 heat. If the winter dressing of manure is not given, 2 cwt. of nitrate 

 of soda or sulphate of ammonia should be applied in the spring. 



Forcing". Asparagus is also grown for forcing. The procedure in this 

 case is quite different. Probably no crop grown in market gardens requires 

 so much money to be laid out before there is any return as does forced 



Fig. 458. Bundle of Asparagus for Market 



