How and What to Grow in a Kitchen Garden of One Acre (10th Ed)/Asparagus
ASPARAGUS.
This is the earliest vegetable to be ready for use in the spring, excepting those that have been forwarded under glass. While it is quite hardy and withstands much ill treatment, nothing will better repay careful culture and generous feeding. One row across the kitchen garden would make a liberal supply for an average family. The seed should be sown where the row is to stand, and the young plants thinned out until they stand one foot apart in the row. This should be done as soon as they are three or four inches high and well started; if left longer it will be a very troublesome job. These young plants should have every encouragement of manure and cultivation, to make as strong a growth as possible; the stronger and faster they grow the better will be the size and quality of the shoots when old enough to cut. No shoots should be cut until the third spring after sowing, and then should not be cut too long the first season. The fourth and succeeding seasons it may be cut from the time the first shoots appear until the first peas and lettuce are ready to take its place on the table. Then it should be well worked and allowed to attain its full growth, that strength may be stored in the crowns to furnish the shoots for the next season’s cutting. As soon as the tops begin to yellow, and the berries to ripen in the fall, it should be mowed off close to the ground and the tops burnt, taking care that all the seeds are consumed; if left on the plants all winter the seed becomes scattered, and, owing to its capacity for sending up shoots, it is a very difficult weed to exterminate. If you do not wish the labor of sowing the seed and tending the young plants, a year can be gained by purchasing the plants. The one-year old plants are preferable unless the older ones have been transplanted each year, as they are gross feeders, and become stunted if allowed to crowd each other while young. To produce the large, fat shoots, it is necessary that the seed shall have been saved from the strongest shoots obtainable, and the plants fed constantly. The best way is to cover the crowns, after the ground is frozen in the fall, with as much manure as can be spared, and work it down. to the roots in the spring as soon as it can be forked in; or, if there are several rows, the manure could be placed on them thickly and the soil ridged over it for the winter by throwing up a couple of shallow fur rows with the plow; this to be worked down with a sharp harrow in the spring. As soon as it is dry enough in the spring, the soil and manure of the bed should be lightly forked over with a manure fork and the surface raked fine; the reason for using the stable fork is that the tines are slightly curved, and if the handle is held in a nearly horizontal position the bed can be dug down to the roots, and the fork will slide right over the tops of the crowns without injuring them. Where more than one row is desired they should be planted about three feet apart, to admit of cultivation and free access to the beds for cutting. An advantage in sowing the seed is that the crowns are naturally established at a proper depth. In planting the crowns obtained from the nurseryman they should be set at a depth of three or four inches at the most; not one foot under the surface, as is the common practice of truckers. Market gardeners cut the shoots as soon as the tips appear above the surface, so that their shoots are blanched for their whole length; but they do this at the expense of the table quality, as only the tips are edible in this way, and oven these taste very much like old hay to any one who has been accustomed to the richness and delicate flavor of shoots cut at the surface when they are from three to four inches in height; this method has also the advantage of not destroying the young shoots just coming up, as the stalks are only cut an inch or so underground, and the knife only reaches the one intended to be cut. If the appearance of the blanched asparagus is desired, it can be much better obtained (that is, with less sacrifice of quality) by placing four or five inches of hay, straw or other litter over the crowns, which can be pushed away from the stalk when cutting and easily replaced. There is another strong reason for not following the deep planting, as usually practiced, and that is, in having your crowns so much nearer the surface they feel the warming and growing influence of the sun sooner in the season, and you are able to have your asparagus for cutting a full week earlier than your neighbor who plants deep.
VARIETIES OF ASPARAGUS.
As mentioned above, this succulent is capable of great improvement by careful selection of seed from the best stalks. The old Purple Top variety is no longer grown, its place having been taken by the larger shoots and better quality of the variety known as Conover’s Colossal. This latter, however, has been propagated so extensively and with so little care that it is now almost impossible to obtain seed or plants that will produce the splendid shoots of the original stock. Of the new varieties Barr’s Mammoth seems to be the most promising, and as grown in some fields in the vicinity of Philadelphia produces shoots which will average nearly an inch in diameter.