SIXrUENTII ANNUAL MEETING. 145 



Your Secretary in writing asked me if I could give a short 

 talk on small fruits and incidently say a few words on the 

 growing of asparagus. Now, while the asparagus can hardly 

 he called a fruit, yet many of our fruit growers handle it and 

 nowhere witli greater success than in my native town. For 

 most of the farmers there combine asparagus and strawberries. 



At the present we have about 25 acres of asparagus on our 

 farms and while this ma}^ not seem a great deal to some of the 

 New jersey growers, when you consider how difficult it is to 

 get land free from stone in Massachusetts, 25 acres of aspara- 

 gus on one farm will seem large. 



W'e have worked our present stock up from two varieties, 

 Argentieul and Palmetto, selecting from both only those plants 

 which seem to be able to withstand the rust. These selected 

 [)lants are allowed to bear seed, from which the new roots are 

 raised. We find at present that this is the only way to safe- 

 guard against the rust. The seed is carefully collected, cleaned 

 and dried and put away in tight bags for next season's use. 

 The seed bed. which is always on new land, — that is, new land 

 for asparagus — is very carefully prepared and highly manured 

 with stalile manure, tankage and muriate of potash, at the rate 

 of fifteen cords of manure, 1 ton of tankage, and 400 pounds 

 of potash per acre. Later on after the plants have grown 

 about one-half a dressing of one-half ton of guano and 1 ton 

 of wood ashes per acre is applied. 



The seed is sown with a Michigan seed drill and more seed 

 is dropped than are intended to remain, as some of the seed- 

 lings are sure to get damaged in weeding, etc. Five seeds to 

 the inch are about the number. It takes tlie seed nearly five 

 weeks to germinate. During this time the bed is twice hoed 

 with an Arlington scuffle hoe. Just before the seedlings ap- 

 pear the hoe is run very lightly over the top of the row, thus 

 saving a vast amount of land labor later on. The summer 

 work consists in keeping tlie w^eeds down, which is done largely 

 witli the scuffle hoe, and a narrow light cultivator that can go 

 in a 20-inch row. This horse work more than doubles the 

 size of the root over those beds wliich are not cultivated with 

 horse labor. We have been troubled a good deal by the as- 

 paragus beetle, which if allowed to get the upper hand will 



