36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



back from the cities cannot get manure, and may have to 

 depend upon fertilizers, but they can grow just as good crops 

 one way as another. It is merely a matter of giving food 

 to the plant. They don't seem to object to the form it comes 

 in, so long as they get the necessary food. 



In the matter of seeds, I think it means a good deal to the 

 man who raises his crops under glass. A good deal of the 

 trouble with seeds is due to carelessness. Usually, if the soil 

 is properly prepared and you have all the conditions to make 

 the crop grow, it will grow, and otherwise will only invite 

 disease. 



Mr. Frank Wheeler (of Concord). I will say just a 

 few things about the asparagus question. It is a crop that 

 is adapted to being raised quite a ways from market, and is 

 perhaps one that cannot always be fertilized as well with 

 fertilizer as manure, although it is raised on chemicals a 

 good deal. I have been growing it for the last twenty years 

 for myself and for ten or fifteen years before that for my 

 father, and I have used both chemicals and manure, some- 

 times one and sometimes the other, for a term of years. I 

 always have claimed, and claim still, that you get better re- 

 sults from your manure and from your chemicals. If you 

 will use them together and not use either one separately; one 

 helps the other. My crop of asparagus has been very good, 

 on the whole. I have not been troubled a great deal with 

 rust, on the whole. I think rust has been a blessing to me 

 personally, because perhaps I have gained by other's losses, 

 — not that my crops are as good now as they were before 

 the rust, but they are much better than the average, and the 

 price received has more than made up for the loss in the 

 crop. 



I suppose this past summer I had the biggest stalk of 

 asparagus that ever grew in Massachusetts. It was grown 

 on a bod that is about fifteen years old. It was the last day 

 in the field, and we always cut close the last day. To get 

 the whole of this stalk my men took out the root, I should 

 say nine inches down, and brought it home to me. The stalk 

 was in form round shaped, and at the base was 5/4 inches 



