12 
This shows a gain of male over female plants of 76 per cent for the 
first period and a fraction less than 50 per cent for the whole season. 
There was a still further difference in regard to quality; the spears of 
the male roots, being earlier, larger, and finer, had also a higher market 
value. It is not safe to draw definite conclusions from this one experi- 
ment, but the experience of many growers corroborates these results. 
Male plants can be secured by selecting roots whose stalks have borne 
no seed. This can often be decided with large well-grown yearling 
plants, and when two years old, the presence or absence of seed will 
be an indication of the sex of the plant, and it might be profitable to 
use 2-year-old plants, if only male plants are selected, because of the 
probable increased yield of large early spears. 
SELECTION AND PREPARATION OF SOILS. 
Selection comes before preparation and is equally important. 
Although a bad selection may be counteracted by methods of prepara- 
tion, just as improper preparation may be corrected by means of culti- 
vation, both efforts at amelioration are extremely costly. 
Asparagus will grow on most soils, and will yield large crops upon 
stiff soils; but for the purpose of the grower for market, a light sandy 
soil of fair fertility is much to be preferred, both because of the earli- 
ness with which it produces marketable spears and the ease with which 
it is cultivated. 
A soil on which water stands after rain, or under which the standing 
subsurface water is near the surface, into which the roots are liable to 
penetrate, isto be avoided. Of course, such asoil, if otherwise suitable, 
can be made fit by a thorough system of underdrainage, since an occa- 
sional overflow, or even a submergence of the beds for several days, is 
not necessarily injurious if the drainage, either natural or artificial, 
is good. There are instances where established beds have been under 
water for a lengthy period during heavy spring rains or very high 
water and were not injured. Gdschke, in his book on Asparagus Cul- 
ture, relates two instances, one in Germany at Merseburg on the 
banks of the Saale, where for six weeks in early spring the water coy- 
ered the beds; and the other at Everly, some 75 miles east of Paris, 
where water stood many weeks during the winter upon large stretches 
of asparagus land, yet in both instances the succeeding crops were 
both early and large—better, in fact, than on land which had not been 
overflowed. Of course, the soil was light and porous, never becoming 
baked, and the natural drainage was good. 
The soil should be free of roots, stones, or any trash that will not 
readily disintegrate or that will interfere with the growth of the spears. 
Yet the writer knowsa rather stiff but naturally well-drained soil which 
produces early and fine asparagus, notwithstanding the fact that it is 
full of large gravel, some of the stones being twice the size of a man’s 
fist. 
