1914. 
73 
THE RURAk NEW-YORKER 
ASPARAGUS FOR HOME MARKET. 
The growing of asparagus roots for 
sale is mainly in the hands of profes¬ 
sional planters, seedsmen and nursery¬ 
men, and it is a very profitable under¬ 
taking for them. Now here is, I believe, 
a splendid opportunity for at least one 
person in each community to realize quite 
a little extra money with a minimum of 
•pace and effort. 
The demand for asparagus is universal; 
everyone likes it. To think of aspara¬ 
gus growing naturally calls to mind the 
finished product, but some one must first 
start the seed and furnish the plant. 
Why not you? Hardly a home garden 
is without its bed for table use. Not 
one out of a hundred grew their plants 
from seed, but bought from a catalogue 
or agent at prices ranging from $1 to 
$3 a hundred, and a good farm wife told 
me not long ago that she had been in¬ 
duced to pay $3.50 for 50 asparagus 
roots. There is good money in retailing 
asparagus roots at 60 cents a hundred, 
which is the price the writer obtains lo¬ 
cally. 
My asparagus seed bed is 80 feet 
across, and I put in the seed in early 
Spring, carefully one at a time an inch 
apart across the bed, and five rows each 
an inch apart, thus making a row five 
inches wide, 80 feet long and contain¬ 
ing 4,800 seeds. I had a dozen or so 
such strips. As the seed is very slow 
to germinate I marked the rows with 
radish seed, a seed say each six inches, 
which gave me more radishes than I 
could use before the asparagus came up. 
The ground should be rich to induce a 
heavy growth the first year, and hand 
weeding under the above arrangement 
will have to be resorted to. But with 
average germination you should have 
a stand of 4,000 plants to such a row, 
which would retail for from $12 to $15 
or about $2 per square foot. However, 
unless you felt sure of marketing the 
crop the first Spring, I would sow the 
seed two inches apart instead of one. 
I believe, if you intend to sell locally 
only, that it is conservative to plan for 
an annual output of 1,200 plants, or 
roots, to each 200 homes in your selling 
territory. You will have sales occasion¬ 
ally up into the thousands, but the aver¬ 
age family buys 100 roots. A family of 
five or more where all Use it, should have 
a bed of 200 roots at least. 
A classified advertisement in the coun¬ 
ty paper has been my best means of ad¬ 
vertising the roots, as well as other things 
I had for sale. A fair proportion of or¬ 
ders came from out of town, say within 
a radius of five miles. Reports from 
nearly all customers last year evidenced 
the fact that they had had much better 
results in getting the roots to grow than 
from those that they had tried previously. 
This was probably due to the fact that 
locally purchased roots could be set the 
' same day as dug. 
Government and experiment station 
tests have repeatedly shown that one- 
year-old roots ultimately produce the 
greatest yields. Set forth this fact in 
your advertising and market the one-year- 
old roots if possible. You will, of course, 
have to charge more for two-year roots 
because they have taken your time and 
space, but your buyer is not getting as 
much for the money as in the first case. 
Michigan. p. L. \v. 
HANDY DISINFECTANTS. 
A Germ Age. —In this heyday of germs 
when these microscopic plants are held 
responsible for almost everything, from 
souring the milk to causing typhoid fever, 
everyone is interested in knowing how 
:o destroy them. Not all germs are bad; 
w T e couldn’t live without them, and in 
some cases we can’t live with them. 
Neither are they anything new T . Adam 
ate and drank as many as we do, though 
his family physician never reminded him 
of it, and if his family suffered less from 
them than we do it is probably because 
they slept under the fig trees and Eve 
never packed away any scarlet fever 
germs with the children’s Winter under¬ 
wear. 
Air And Sun. —The word disinfectant 
has become a household term, and almost 
everyone knows that it means something 
that destroys germs, though comparatively 
few know what our best and cheapest 
disinfectants are. The most useful and 
efficient all-round disinfectant that we 
have is the sun, and the air is his worthy 
ally. Fresh air dilutes germs as water 
dilutes filth, and the lustiest germ will 
quickly curl up its toes and die if ex¬ 
posed to the sunlight. But fresh air 
and sunlight are abundant and cheap, so, 
of course, we usually prefer to use some 
disinfectant that smells bad and can be 
bought at the drug store. Open windows 
and rolled up shades would save many 
lives, but what do we have windows and 
shades for if not to keep them down? 
Besides, if we left them up, it would let 
in the flies and fade the carpets; so 
we pamper the germs and employ the 
doctor. 
Heat Helps. —Next to the sun, our 
best and cheapest disinfectant is heat 
Fuel costs something, but heat, after all, 
is cheap. We need it in only sufficient 
degree and applied where we want it to 
destroy any germs that threaten us. As 
fresh air helps the sun, so moisture helps 
heat. For this reason, boiling water and 
steam make almost ideal disinfectants. 
They combine a temperature of 212 de¬ 
grees with moisture, and this is enough, 
though if boiling water is used to kill 
germs, remember that it must be boil¬ 
ing ; otherwise it will not have a temper¬ 
ature of 212 degrees and it will simply 
scald without killing. Most germs don’t 
mind being scalded, a bit. For clothing, 
bedding, dishes, and anything else that 
can be boiled there is no other disinfectant 
equal to heat. Put these things into a 
washboiler, place the cover on, and set 
upon the kitchen stove to boil for a 
half-hour, and the wickedest germ that 
ever leered over a foot-board will be done 
to a mush. 
Disinfectants. —Bnt we sometimes 
wish to disinfect things that we can 
neither boil, burn, nor hang upon the 
clothesline in the sun and air. So we 
need some smelly stuff from the drug 
store. Of these things, corrosive sub¬ 
limate with water is very efficient, but 
it is a poison, and the tablets into which 
it is made for convenient use are too 
frequently mistaken for medicine and 
swallowed. Carbolic acid with water is 
also a splendid disinfectant, but this too 
is a corrosive poison and a little danger¬ 
ous to have about the house. Safer than 
either of these, and about as effective, is 
chloride of lime. This may be purchased 
at the drug stores, but much of it found 
there has deteriorated and become worth¬ 
less. Good chloride of lime should give 
off irritating fumes that the face cannot 
he held near it without irritating the 
eyes. A reasonably fresh preparation of 
chloride of lime dissolved in water, one 
pound to two gallons, makes a splendid 
disinfectant for privies, sinks, drains, for 
use in bed-pans, and with such things as 
may be placed in it. The fumes will 
bleach many colored fabrics, however, and 
this sometimes limits its use. It is also 
a powerful deodorizer, and the dry pow¬ 
der may be sprinkled over the contents 
of vaults, decaying animals, and in places 
where it is desired to sweeten the air. 
But deodorizing doesn’t kill germs, it only 
hides them ; remember that. M. B. D. 
When you write advertisers mention The 
R. N.-Y. and you’ll get a quick reply and a 
“square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
NOW’S THE TIME TO 
GAIN ON SPRING 
It matters not what the outside weather is, there 
are always growing conditions under Sunlight 
Double Glass Sash. 
You need these sash to begin right. They capture 
the lun’s rays and liven up and warm the hot-bed 
and cold-frame during the day and the heat then 
Stored is conserved over night by the two layers of 
glass and the dead air space between them. Mats 
or shutters are never necessary, saving half the cost 
and labor. 
The Sunlight idea has been carried into a small, 
inexpensive Greenhouse. It is made of Sunlight 
Sash, which are instantly removable for use on hot¬ 
beds or cold frames. Serving a double purpose and 
requiring little artificial heat, this greenhouse i* 
»ery inexpensive. 
Get our free Catalog. If you want Prof. 
Massey’s valuable book on hot-bed and cold-frame 
gardening, send four cents in stamps. 
Sunlight Double Glass Sash Company 
Don’t waste heating dollars 
f, K 
The heat-making value of a 
pound of coal is as fixed as is 
the number of cents in a dol¬ 
lar. Whatever heat-value 
you get from coal in room- 
comfort depends on how 
you burn it — how you extract the 
heat. You can shovel much coal into 
old-fashioned heaters, yet most of 
the heat-making, gases will pass up 
the chimney unconsumed—never get 
your money’s worth. But, you can 
have all the available heat from every 
ounce of coal distributed into the 
rooms just where and when needed, 
by using our 
The deep, large fuel-chamber of an 
IDEAL Boiler is one of the strong 
features for producing fuel savings 
— it offers best conditions for ex¬ 
tracting heat. A deep, slow fire is 
easily proven best as compared 
with the shallow firepots of old-fashioned heating methods—just as a 
big cake of ice which fills the refrigerator box gives far steadier, more 
economical results than you get from frequently throwing in a hand¬ 
ful of cracked ice. We also make wood-burning IDEAL Boilers. 
What the IDEAL Boiler starts in heating economy the AMERICAN Radiators 
finish by distributing warmth in all rooms, evenly, throughout every hour of the 
day, just sufficient for differing requirements of mild, medium 
and severe weather; or you turn the radiator off in any unused 
rooms and save the heat. Besides, there is far less house-labor, 
because no soot and ash-dirt go to the rooms, as with old-time 
devices. No lugging coal and 
ashes up and down stairs. 
IDEAL Boilers and AMERI¬ 
CAN Radiators can as easily be 
put in old as in new houses — 
farm or town. The same water 
is used over and over again—for 
years. Fire need not be rekin¬ 
dled in a whole winter season. 
Radiators 
Boilers 
A No. 1021 IDEAL Boiler and 262 ft. of 
38 in. AMERICAN Radiators, costing 
owner $165, were used to heat this 
cottage. At this price the goods can be 
bought of any reputable, competent Fit¬ 
ter. This did not include cost oi labor, 
pipe, valves, freight, etc., which are 
extra, and vary according to climatic 
and other conditions. 
If you are weary of ever-lasting black¬ 
ening, repairing and coaxing, discard 
at once the old way and put in an 
IDEAL-AMERICAN outfit at this 
season, when you get best attention 
and most favorable prices. Send for 
free booklet—“Ideal Heating ” which 
explains how to get full returns from 
every heating coal bill. 
One charging of coal 
in an IDEAL Boiler 
easily lasts through 
the longest zero night. 
There can be no fuel 
waste. 
Showrooms in all 
large cities 
A MERI CANR ADIATOR COMPANY 
Write to Dept. F9* 
Chicago 
Use the Available 
Kind of Fertilizer 
For many crops all the available plant food 
that is needed is one grain to each pound of soil. 
When such a small quantity of food must do 
all the work for your crop, it is exceedingly 
important that what you put into the soil in the 
form of fertilizer shall be available —that it shall 
have not only the right quantity, but the right 
quality and right crop value. 
It has cost us forty years of experience to 
know how to mix the right kinds and the right 
quantities of ingredients for fertilizer. 
Bowker’s Fertilizers 
accomplish also the more difficult task of getting the right 
blending, the right solubility into a mixture which will 
run readily and freely from the farmer’s planter, and 
which will remain dry and drillable as well as efficient 
until used in the field. We make a brand to fit every 
crop need. 
Write and tell us what your crops are, and we will 
send you our illustrated catalogue. 
RHWI^FD FERTILIZER COMPANY 
V-r W 43 Chatham Street, Boston, Mass. 
60 Trinity Place, New York. P. O. Box 805, Buffalo, N. Y. 
