THE RAISING OF PLANTS 31 
soon as the soil admits of working it should be well 
pulverized and enriched with decomposed manure. On 
a small scale a spading-fork is the best implement for 
preparing soil for nursery rows of asparagus plants. 
Straight lines should be marked about fifteen inches 
apart and drills made about an inch deep when the 
sowing is done very early in the season, and one-half 
to one inch deeper when the sowing is done later. 
In these drills the seed should be dropped two or three 
inches apart. The covering may be made with a hoe, 
after which the soil should be well pressed down with 
the foot. As the seed is slow to germinate—in from 
four to six weeks, according to weather conditions 
—it is well to sow with it a few radish seeds, which 
will soon appear and mark the lines of the drills, so 
that cultivation may begin at once. Soaking the seed 
in luke-warm water for twenty-four hours before sow- 
ing will hasten its germination. 
The cultivation of the young plants consists in 
keeping the soil about them light, and free from grass 
and weeds. Most of this work can be done with a gar- 
den cultivator, ora hoe and rake or prong hoe, but 
some hand weeding is generally necessary in addition. 
Strict attention to this will save a year in time, for if 
the seed-bed has been neglected, it will take two years 
to get the plants as large as they should be in one year 
if they had been properly cared for. In consequence 
of this very frequent neglect of proper cultivation of 
the seed-bed, it is a common impression that the plants 
must be two years old before transplanting. One 
pound of seed will produce about 10,000 plants, but as 
many of these will have to be thinned out and poor 
