ey of Montmorency and at Argenteuil, and it is cultivated
extensively for market in many other places. About Argenteuil several
thousand persons are employed in the culture of asparagus.

It is grown to a large extent among the grape-vines as well as alone.
The vine under field culture is cut down to near the old stool every
year, and allowed to make a few growths which are tied erect to a stake.
One plant is put in each open spot, and given every chance of forming a
large specimen, and this it generally does. The growing of asparagus
among the vines is a very usual mode, and a vast space is thus covered
with it about here.

It is also grown in other and special ways. Perhaps the simplest and
most worthy of adoption is to grow it in shallow trenches. These are
usually about four feet apart. The soil generally is a rather stiff
sandy loam with calcareous matter in some parts, but the soil has not
all to do with the peculiar excellence of the vegetable. It is the
careful attention to the wants of the plant which produce such good
results. Here, for instance, is a young plantation planted in March; and
from the little ridges of soil between the trenches have just been dug a
crop of small early potatoes. In England the asparagus would be left to
the free action of the breeze, but the French cultivators never leave a
young plant of asparagus to the wind's mercy while they can find a stake
of oak about a yard long.

When staking these young plants they do not insert the support close to
the bottom, as we are too apt to do in other instances, but a little
distance off, so as to avoid the possibility of injuring the root; each
stake leans over its plant at an angle of forty-five degrees, and when
the shoots are big enough to touch it, or to be caught by the wind, they
are tied to the stake. The ground in which this system is pursued being
entirely devoted to asparagus, the stools are placed very much closer
together than they are among the vines--say, at a distance of about a
yard apart. The little trenches are about a foot wide and eight inches
deep.

The best asparagus in France is grown at Argenteuil and by one system
mainly. The plants--one-year seedlings (never older)--are planted in
shallow trenches seven or eight inches deep, the plants a little more
than one yard apart and the lines four feet apart. No manure is given at
planting; no trenching or any preparation of the ground, beyond digging
the shallow trench, take