A Member:  Common corn land, is that fit for raising asparagus?

Mr. Record:  Yes, sir, asparagus will grow on poor ground better than many other vegetables will.

A Member:  Will it improve that land by fertilizing with top dressing?

Mr. Record:  I think so.

A Member:  The heavy land I suppose wouldn’t be good for it?

Mr. Record:  They raise good asparagus on clay land, but I don’t think it will grow as good as on sandy soil.  It is not quite so warm; it packs harder and I think more liable to grow crooked.

A Member:  I was called out to see a man’s asparagus bed.  He asked me what kind of ground I thought it must be, and I said a light soil.  This man had a heavy clay, and it rained on it, and then the sun came out very hot and the top cooked, and when the little shoots were to come up they turned back.  That ground wasn’t good for asparagus.

Mr. Record:  It should have been harrowed well after that rain.

A Member:  You see he couldn’t get in there.

A Member:  What fertilizer is good?  Is bone meal good?

Mr. Record:  Any commercial fertilizer is good, I think.  Bone meal is good.

Mr. Crawford:  Can you raise asparagus successfully in the shade or a partial shade?

Mr. Record:  Well, I wouldn’t want too much.  I have shade on both sides of mine; it is a hedge.  I notice it isn’t near so good next to the hedge as it is out in the middle of the bed, although shade on both sides protects it from the wind and makes it hotter.  The hotter it is, the faster it will grow.

Mr. Crawford:  I asked the question because I have a west line shade several years old, trees are willow and box elder.  Considerable of the ground is a loss to me, practically so, from that shade.

Mr. Record:  I don’t think it is a very good place for asparagus.

A Member:  I would like to ask if a person on clay soil could use sawdust to work in?

Mr. Record:  Horse manure with sawdust, we use a great deal of that, that is, planing mill shavings.  That is all right.  That will loosen up the ground some, but when it is turned over, of course, it will harden up again if there comes a good hard rain on it.

A Member:  How many years have you maintained a bed?

Mr. Record:  Why, it will go from twelve to fourteen years, although the place that I am on now, I know that was good for twenty-five or twenty-six.  It is practically gone now, but for twenty years it was good.  But of late years it won’t run over twelve to fifteen.

Mr. Willard:  I would like to ask something about changing an old asparagus bed to a new position.

Mr. Record:  I wouldn’t advise you to use the old roots.  You get a bed quicker by using plants that are two years old, and of course there are some plants better than others.  I bought my plants in the east.  Now they have good plants here, a good many of them, too, but I have never seen anything as good as I got for my last bed.  The best way if I was going into it, being a market gardener, would be to go to some neighbor that had a good straight bed and get my own seed.  It is very easy to save, and most anyone would give a man all he wanted and charge him nothing.  All he would do would be to gather it up.