CHAPTER XIII. 



Asparagus. 



WHILE this is one of the most important and profitable 

 crops at the North, it has been greatly neglected by 

 southern truckers. But I believe it is destined in the 

 near future to be the principal vegetable grown for shipping 

 from the far South during the season of its maturity, seeing 

 that it comes in just with the early strawberry crop, and con- 

 tinues right along with it in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. 

 The great value of asparagus to this whole strawberry section 

 is that it can be utilized to divide car loads with the berries, 

 and thus prevent throwing a whole car load of the latter on 

 any one market at the same time. While not so popular at 

 the South as in the North, yet our home markets have never 

 yet been even half-way supplied, and there is no reasonable 

 fear that there will for many years be a glut of this delicious 

 vegetable anywhere. That it can be successfully grown here 

 has been fully demonstated time and again, and a really 

 excellent article has been on the market in Galveston the 

 present season, while it is well-known that the common wild 

 asparagus grows everywhere in South Texas with the per- 

 sistency and vigor of a weed. The only fault so far found 

 with this vegetable, as grown in the gulf coast region, is its 

 failure to develop shoots of the thickness and size they attain 

 farther north. This probably comes more from a lack of plenty 

 of salt and a sufficient quantity of manure, as well as deep, 

 loose soil, than anything else. While I have never grown 

 any, I have taken the trouble to look into the subject with 

 care, and will sum up my conclusions from the experience of 

 others. In France, where they grow it to great perfection, 

 the earth is scraped away every fall from the crowns, in order 

 to expose them to freezing, while in America, at the North, 

 the almost universal custom is to protect them by a heavy 



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