"S? GENDERS AND ASPARAGUS 83 



year; but we would not have known the sex 

 of these yearlings, either, and half of them 

 would have had to be pulled out again. The 

 seedsmen also offer two-year-old and three-year- 

 old plants; but none of the catalogues I have 

 ever seen speaks of the sex of the plants offered 

 for sale, although purchasers, if enlightened on 

 this matter, would gladly pay a fancy price for 

 guaranteed male plants. But wait a minute! 

 Let us use our brains *'real hard." 



Buyers still further enlightened will abso- 

 lutely refuse to order two-year- or three-year- 

 old plants of either sex, for it is one of the most 

 singular things about this very singular vege- 

 table that, while it is easily transplanted at any 

 age, the younger the plants are when trans- 

 planted the larger the crops will be in future 

 years. This fact was established by a famous 

 French specialist, M. Godefroid-Leboeuf, whose 

 careful experiments showed that a plantation 

 made with plants a year old produced double 

 that of the one where two-year-old plants were 

 used, and nearly treble that made with plants 

 three years old! 



So there you are! After all, it seems best to 

 raise your own asparagus from seed, which 

 method is more and more coming to the fore. 

 If you are interested in all the details of aspara- 

 gus culture you may get for a small sum a special 

 booklet by Hexamer and another by Barnes 

 and Robinson. But you will not need these if 



