Mr. Baldwin:  After the bed gets to be a few years old the grass and weeds commence to come up.  After you get through cutting, it is pretty hard work to get in there and clean them out.  Do you find it the best way to hoe them after you get through cutting?

Mr. Record:  I will tell you.  I cultivate right over the tops of the rows and keep on cultivating until the asparagus comes up and begins to sprout.  By the time the weeds come up the second time, it is time to quit cutting.

Mr. Baldwin:  How deep do you put the plant below the surface in transplanting?

Mr. Record:  From twelve to fourteen inches.  In the east they are growing asparagus, and they set out their plants, and they fill in and wait until the asparagus comes up and then they fill with rotted manure and never fertilize any more, but here there are very few that do that.  I never did, but I find in putting on manure broadcast a year afterwards the shoots were very crooked.  I did that one year only.  After I put it on I thought I would have something good, and I didn’t have anything.  As soon as it comes up it starts to get crooked.

Mr. Baldwin:  You mean to say that putting manure on top makes the asparagus crooked?

Mr. Record:  That was my experience.

Mr. Baldwin:  I have always practiced that.  I think what makes it crooked is cultivating the top and cutting the crowns off.

A Member:  When the weeds come in we disk it.

Mr. Record:  I never like to disk it.  If your bed is very old you are liable to cut some of your crowns rather than to keep the weeds out.

A Member:  Your manure would be all gone then?

Mr. Record:  I know there was a man right adjoining me who had an asparagus bed, and he used a lot of rotten manure the summer before, and he got very little asparagus that was marketable.  I asked him what the trouble was, and he said he didn’t know.  This year he had a good crop.  I can’t say it was the manure that did that, only it looks that way.

A Member:  How would you start a new planting?

Mr. Record:  I would plow my ground thoroughly and get it in good shape.

A Member:  Wouldn’t fertilize the first season?

Mr. Record:  I would.  I would fertilize my asparagus ground two years.

A Member:  I mean in preparing your patch for the new planting?

Mr. Record:  I would first plow and harrow and then fertilize.  Plow both ways from fourteen to sixteen inches deep and with a fine cultivator loosen up the bottom of furrow and put in the plants and cover with a little earth.  Then with the horse keep filling in the furrow.  I saw this summer several men with hoes working.  That is all right, but it takes a long time, especially with the proposition we are up against about hired help.  I can do it just as well with the horse and four times as fast.  The second year you can harrow it any way you want to.