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Asparagus. — A gardener writes Our Country Home as follows: 



In the season of asparagus we have little truck to market, and the teams 

 are busy at spring work; so we sell it from our milk-wagon to dealers and our 

 milk customers. The cartage is light, and the cash it brings in is very accept- 

 able just at this time. A plantation once established is good for a generation, 

 and the yearly expense of caring for it is small. Our asparagus is on warm, 

 sandy loam, near buildings and poultry-house. We may have to cut the shoots 

 2 or 3 times daily, and we must have it handy. Have never been troubled 

 with insects, which fact we attribute largely to the fowls having a free run 

 through it. Rows 5 feet apart ; roots were set 2 feet apart, and 4 inches deep 

 in the rows. We cut a week, and some seasons 10 days before growers whose 

 fields are planted 8 inches deep. We cut at the surface, not 2 or 3 inches 

 below, so all the asparagus is edible, and sells better. Stop cutting last week 

 in June. At once plow twice between each row, turning the furrows away 

 from the row into the center. Scatter a liberal dressing of stable manure in 

 these furrows, driving the team astride the row. Plow the furrows back, 

 covering the manure, and follow with shovels, rounding up all loose earth on 

 the rows, 3 or 4 inches deep. This buries any weeds that may have started, 

 gives support fo the tops as they grow, keeping them from being broken or 

 twisted by the wind. The tops and crowns must be uninjured if you would 

 have a good crop the next season. The field needs no further care until spring 

 opens, when the tops are cleared away and burned, and the earth leveled off 

 the rows with the hoe. The yield is satisfactory, and the labor less than by 

 any other method. 



Nutmeg Melons. — E. Brodee tells in the Canadian Horticulturist how the 

 famous nutmegs of Montreal are grown: One of the principal points in grow- 

 ing good melons is the saving of the seeds of good specimens. We generally 

 choose the earliest to ripen, the best flavored, the best shaped, and the heaviest 

 melon, for seed, and let them ripen thoroughly before saving the seed. The 

 seed may be sowed in hot-beds in April, taking care to choose a warm, sunny 

 time, for a couple of cold, cloudy days would cause them to damp off. The 

 hot-bed may be made with fifteen inches deep of hot manure one foot broader 

 than the frame, banking it all round the height of the frame with hot manure, 

 and putting five or six inches of earth in the frame before putting on the glass, 

 leaving it in this state for about three days till the first great heat is over, 

 raking the earth over once to kill the weeds that are started. The seed may 

 be sowed in five-inch pots buried in the earth close together, as many as the 

 frame will contain (where pots are not available sods turned upside down in the 

 beds will do as well), putting five seeds in each pot buried one inch deep. At 

 the end of three or four days they may be seen coming through the ground; 

 this is the time they recpiire the closest attention, for if they get too much heat 

 they will grow too fast and topple over, or if they get a chill they turn blue in 

 the leaf and wilt away. The hot-bed should be kept at about eighty degrees 

 heat. Melons can stand it over a hundred without injuring the plant, but it 

 makes them grow too fast and tender. About the beginning of May trenches 

 may be dug fourteen inches deep by two feet wide and as long as you have hot- 

 bed frames to occupy the land, filling them with hot manure, being careful not 

 to put in any dry straw manure, then covering it with the earth that has 

 been taken out of the trenches to the depth of eight or ten inches, then put on 

 the frame and glass, leaving it in this condition for twenty-four hours for the 



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