82 GARDENING WITH BRAINS * 



that I have for those personally conducted foster chil- 

 dren that have cost me such hours of toil and regrets. 



WASTING ENERGY ON BERRIES 



After this report was written and printed we 

 discovered a further cause for dismay. One of 

 the two little books on asparagus growing we 

 bought called our attention to the fact that 

 female plants yield only half as many edible 

 stalks as the male plants, because they use up 

 their energy in forming countless berries full of 

 little seeds. The seeds we bought must have 

 been strongly inoculated with feminism, for 

 considerably more than one-half of our plants 

 were found to be of the fair sex, their graceful, 

 feathery leaves being ornamented with millions 

 of berries. Kind friends who were visiting us 

 helped to pick off a bushel or two of these (to 

 us) useless, aggravating things, but finally we 

 gave it up in despair, deciding that all the 

 females must be ruthlessly slaughtered. 



This was easy enough so far as the old plants 

 were concerned; but what were we to put in 

 their places? It is not till the second summer, 

 when the berries appear, that an asparagus 

 plant betrays its sex. So we had to start a new 

 bed of seedlings and wait patiently for certified 

 plants of the male persuasion to put into the 

 places of the massacred females. 



To be sure, we might have bought one-year- 

 old plants from the seedsmen, thus saving a 



