PERMANENT BEDS 25 



follow this practice, but for one reason or another they 

 scarcely ever do. For one thing, most people try to 

 snatch a crop of some kind while the asparagus is 

 growing, thus treating the latter more as a secondary 

 crop. As a result, the plants are stunted and the crop 

 generally hindered. A writer in a recent issue of a 

 prominent agricultural journal said that " the objection 

 to using plants is that they suffer in being transplanted." 

 I never yet found plants to suffer by the process if 

 ordinary care be observed. 



To the French, who plant their asparagus at such a 

 great distance apart, the seed bed as a permanency would 

 be out of the question, and is not entertained by them. 

 Personally, I ignore this seed bed plan altogether. The 

 writer whom I have just quoted also says that the 

 plants used should be one year old. With this I quite 

 agree. Later on he says, " The most convenient size 

 for beds is three rows wide, with the rows nine inches 

 apart and one foot from plant to plant and any length 

 that may be desired. The beds may be planted either 

 by seeding or by planting one-year-old plants in the 

 manner before directed, but three rows together instead 

 of one" (this refers to field culture for which in a 

 previous chapter he gives a distance of three and a 

 half feet from row to row, and nine inches from 

 plant to plant). When I read this, I wondered where 

 would be my one-year-old plants if only allowed 

 a distance of nine inches from row to row and a 

 foot from plant to plant. They would touch each 

 other at the commencement if the roots were properly 

 spread out. Of course no worthy results could be 

 obtained under such conditions. I know that a good 

 many people simply plant with no definite views. Such 

 a case came under my notice not more than a year ago. 

 A gardener had planted a good many hundreds of plants 

 in a fairly good position, but the work had evidently 



