No. 2.--Growth passable, but later than No. 1. The heads made their first appearance on April 6th, 10th, and 11th. Many of them were very small; fifty of them barely made half a bundle, and only weighed three and three-quarter pounds.
No. 3.--Growth but poor, and somewhat late. The heads made their appearance on April 4th, 6th, 9th, and 11th; one did not show till the 22d. Fifty heads barely formed half a bundle and only weighed two and one-half pounds.
To sum up, it is clear that the plants of a year old in their fourth season--that is to say, after having been planted out for three years--gave a bundle weighing seven pounds, while those of two years old only gave three and three-quarter pounds, and those of three years old only two and one-half pounds; in other words, taking round numbers, the plantation made with the one-year-old plants produced double the crop of the two-year-old plants and treble that of the three-year-old plants. The reader may easily draw his conclusions from the preceding facts.
Equally important is a careful selection of the individual plants to be set out. A crown with four or five strong, well-developed buds is far better than one with a dozen or more of weak and sickly ones, as the latter will always produce thin and poor spears of poor quality. It is therefore highly to be recommended to select only plants with not over six buds and discard all others. The roots should be strong and of uniform thickness, succulent and not too fibrous. Dry or withered roots have to be cut off, and plants with many bruised or otherwise damaged roots should be rejected entirely. The best roots are the cheapest.
It has long been observed that all of the asparagus plants in a bed do not produce seeds, owing to the fact that the male and female flowers in asparagus are nearly always borne on separate plants. Seed bearing is an exhaustive process, and, as might be supposed, those plants that have produced seed have less vigor than those that have not. In order to determine the difference in vigor between the seed bearing and non-seed bearing plants, Prof. William J. Green, horticulturist of the Ohio Experiment Station, staked off fifty of each in a plantation of half an acre. When the cuttings were made the shoots taken from male and female plants were kept separate, and the weight of each recorded in Bulletin No. 9, Volume III., of the Ohio Station, as follows: