4TS 



THE GARDEIT AITO ITS FRIHTS. 



[Chap. ^'. 



tlic house trained to trellises, or climbing strings up tbe house side, around 

 ■windows, or along a piazza front. 



53S. Asparas^uSt — But fe\v farmers have this delicious, early spring ve^o- 

 tahle in perfection, because they do not know how to cultivate it properly. 

 It is a perennial plant, M'liich, if once ^Ycll set, produces its crop of tender, 

 rich shoots, year after year, Avith very little annual cultivation. It may be 

 started from seeds or roots, which should be set iu a deeply-trenched be<4, 

 well drained, and made just _as rich as rieli can be, and heavily salted. 

 Every autumn, cut off the tops, and cover the bed with a thick coat of 

 manure, salted; and iu the spring, fork up the ground lightly, before the 

 sjirouts start, mixing in the manure, and if any of it is unrotted, lay it as a 

 niulcli betw'een the rows. Lime and ashes are both excellent for surface- 

 dressings. There are three varieties of asparagus — the Large Green Purple 

 Top, or Giant ; the Improved Ghent ; and Common Green — though some 

 contend that the difference is more in cultivation than anything else. The 

 common kind is certainly improved in size by high cultivation. 



In May, ISGO, a Mr. Fecks, of Oyster Bay, L. I., exhibited, to the 

 American Institute Farmers' Club, specimens of a giant asparagus, grown 

 at Oyster Bay, originated from seed at Matinicock, L. L, the bed of which 

 is now over thirty years old. Some of the stalks were nearly an inch in 

 diameter. He stated "that he had about four acres, ■which he called only a 

 ' small patch,' because other persons had more than t'wice as much, and he 

 had been told that one man near Jamaica has seventy acres. His beds are 

 made upon good potato-land, plowed deep, and highly manured -^vith stable 

 or hog-pen manure. At one year from seed, the plants are set in rows tour 

 feet apart, and fifteen or twenty inches apart in the rows. We trench four- 

 teen inches deep, ■with manure at bottom, which is covered with three inches 

 of soil, and the roots set, and the trench filled gradually during the summer. 

 In cultivation, ■we plow off the earth and put manure in the furrows abund- 

 antly. My bed is so near the level of salt water that the tide rises upon it 

 at very high water, and the yield is §300 an acre. We do not cut it much, 

 if any, the first two years. We put fifty loads of manure per acre, and five 

 hundred pounds of guano. Some growers use 1,500 pounds of guano per 

 aci'e. The bunches of sixteen stalks weigh four pounds. The best asparagus 

 is that which grows above ground. The ■white is always tough. We some- 

 times have bunches with eight inches of tender green." 



It is a mistaken notion to cut or try to eat tlie white part of asparagus 

 stalks. None but the tender green part is fit to eat. An article now be- 

 fore us has the following sensible remarks upon this subject. Tlie writer 

 says : 



" The stalk is generally cut abbut four inches long, often not more than 

 two or three inches, and from one third to one half the length is white, 

 showing it grew below the surface of the soil ; this part is always tough and 

 bitter, and unfit to eat. In truth, it is never eaten, so that fully one half of 

 the weight of a bunch of asparagus, purchased in the market, is a dead loss. 



