86 GARDENING WITH BRAINS 



gladly give of their other vegetables, or their 

 fruits or berries, to esteemed neighbors, balk 

 when it comes to asparagus. That's too good 

 to share with others! 



Surely, if you have room, and plenty of water 

 for sprinkling, you will want to raise a vegetable 

 so superlatively good that it destroys, in the 

 best of us, the altruism which has been such a 

 slow and wonderful product of civilization! 

 Make up your mind to have an asparagus patch, 

 and if, in starting it, you will bear in mind five 

 things, you cannot fail: 



1. Make the soil very rich at the start; and 

 every spring, after you stop cutting the stalks 

 for the table, dump a liberal supply of hen, sheep, 

 or cow manure, besides wood ashes, bone meal, 

 nitrate of soda, etc., on the surface. The rain 

 or your automatic sprinkler will do the rest. 

 Scrape or pull out weeds whenever they are an 

 inch high, but do not hoe deeper than one inch. 

 Spare the roots near the surface; there are 

 millions of them. 



2. Get your seeds from a reputable firm. 

 There are many good varieties. Why not be 

 patriotic and try the best American, which is 

 Burbank's, besides the best French, known as 

 Argenteuil, and Barr's Mammoth, which is the 

 best English? 



3. Plant the seeds at least six inches apart 

 lest a shower wash two seeds so close together 

 that you leave them as one, with strangling 



