CULTURE IN DIFFERENT LOCALITIES 165 
the free action of the breeze, but the French cultivators 
never leave a young plant of asparagus to the wind’s 
mercy while they can find a stake of oak about a yard 
long. 
When staking these young plants they do not insert 
the support close to the bottom, as we are too apt to do 
in other instances, but a little distance off, so as to avoid 
the possibility of injuring the root; each stake leans over 
its plant at an angle of forty-five degrees, and when 
the shoots are big enough to touch it, or to be caught by 
the wind, they are tied to the stake. The ground in 
which this system is pursued being entirely devoted to 
asparagus, the stools are placed very much closer 
together than they are among the vines—say, at a dis- 
tance of about a yard apart. ‘The little trenches are 
about a foot wide and eight inches deep. 
The best asparagus in France is grown at Argen- 
teuiland by one system mainly. The plants—one-year 
seedlings (never older )—are planted in shallow trenches 
seven or eight inches deep, the plants a little more than 
one yard apart and the lines four feet apart. No 
manure is given at planting; no trenching or any 
preparation of the ground, beyond digging the shallow 
trench, takes place. In subsequent years a little 
manure is given over the roots in autumn; the soil, 
thrown out of the trenches and forming a ridge between 
them, is planted with a light crop in spring. In all 
subsequent years the earth is placed over the crowns 
in spring and removed in autumn. 
Under this system good results are obtained in 
various soils, the only difference being that on cold 
clay soils the planting is not quite so deep. Every 
