SEED GROWING 27 
washing has to be repeated three or four times. It is 
then spread on boards or trays to dry in the sun 
and wind. After the first day it should be removed 
from the sun, but exposed to the air in a dry loft, 
spread thin for ten days or more. When thoroughly 
dried the seed is stored in linen or paper bags until 
needed. 
When cheapness of the seed is the main considera- 
tion such promiscuous harvesting may be permissible, 
but when only the best is desired careful selection and 
preparation becomes necessary. Even if the parent 
plants are of choice types, not all the seeds from them 
are equally good. ‘The seed, for instance, which has 
been gathered from a stool which has flowered side by 
side with an inferior kind, and at the same time, may 
be worthless, because it has been fertilized badly. 
Then the last heads generally yield nothing but doubt- 
ful seed which seldom reproduces the proper type. The 
seeds which grow at the end of the shoots also, as well 
as those produced by the upper and lower extremities 
of the stem, have the same defect. 
In order to insure the production of the very best 
asparagus seed a sufficient number of pistillate or seed- 
bearing plants, which produce the strongest and best 
spears, should be selected and marked so that they may 
be distinguished the following spring when the shoots 
appear. ‘hese clumps should be close together and 
near some staminate or male plants which have to be 
marked likewise, as without their presence fertile seed 
can not be produced. The number of the male to the 
female plants should be about one to four orfive. The 
following spring all the sprouts of the selected male 
