Ig GENDERS AND ASPARAGUS 85 



paragraph, is that plants started in February in 

 the greenhouse and transplanted to the garden 

 in May "reach as good size in one year as the 

 nursery-grown plants usually do in three years." 



Few people, as I have said, have asparagus 

 beds, chiefly, it is assumed, because it takes 

 three years to get results. But there are other 

 reasons. Some of these reasons the reader of 

 these pages now knows. There are others still. 

 Is it a wonder that so many asparagus beds, on 

 which no one has bestowed his best brain power, 

 are plowed down as useless at a time when they 

 should be at their best? An asparagus bed, 

 richly fed from year to year, should last at 

 least a quarter of a century. 



Is it a wonder that asparagus is expensive? 

 Yet, so alluring is its flavor, so irresistible its 

 appeal to the appetite, that people eagerly pay 

 fancy prices for bunches of desiccated stalks 

 that have been shipped three thousand miles 

 and then left criminally exposed to the glare of 

 the drying, juice-sucking sun several days longer 

 by the stupid comer grocers. If such a bunch is 

 worth fifty cents, then asparagus eaten an hour 

 after it is cut, and retaining all its juices and 

 ravishing flavor, is worth five dollars. 



MAKES us HORRIBLY SELFISH 



The only objection I can see to that kind of 

 asparagus is that it makes the men and women 

 who raise it horribly selfish. Even those who 



