the soil in
the rows between the plants with the fingers or hand weeder for the same
purpose. This must be repeated at intervals of two or three weeks during
the summer, as the success of this plan is entirely dependent on keeping
down the weeds, which, if allowed to grow, would soon smother the
asparagus plants, that, for the first season of their growth, are weaker
than most weeds. In two or three months after starting, the asparagus
will have attained ten or twelve inches in hight, and it must now be
thinned out, so that the plants stand nine inches apart in the rows. By
fall they will be from two to three feet in hight and, if the directions
for culture have been faithfully followed, strong and vigorous.

"When the stems die down (but not before) cut them off close to the
ground, and cover the lines for five or six inches on each side with two
or three inches of rough manure. The following spring renew cultivation,
and keep down the weeds the second year exactly as was done during the
first, and so on to the spring of the fourth year, when a crop will be
produced that will well reward all the labor that has been expended.
Sometimes, if the land is particularly suitable, a marketable crop may
be secured the third year, but as a rule it will be better to wait until
the fourth year before cutting much, as this would weaken the plants. To
compensate for the loss of a year's time in thus growing asparagus from
seed, cabbage, lettuce, onions, beets, spinach or similar crops that
will be marketable before the asparagus has grown high enough to
interfere with them, may be planted between the rows of asparagus the
first year of its growth with but little injury to it."

GOOD CROPS TWO YEARS FROM SEED

In answer to the many inquiries as to how asparagus can be grown to
weigh two and three-fourths pounds per bunch of twenty-six stalks from
plants two years old from seed, as exhibited at a recent American
Institute spring exhibition, George M. Hay, of Connecticut, writes in
_American Gardening_ as follows:

"Select a piece of ground where the soil is light, but of a good depth,
and plow thoroughly. About the 1st of May mark off the rows three or
four feet apart--for myself I prefer the latter distance as giving
plenty of room for cultivation. Run a two-horse plow over the same
furrow two or three times and you will have a depth of from fourteen to
eighteen inches.

"Trenches having been all made, we come to the most impo