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- nconvenience from as much common salt ; never- 

 theless, there are those who are miable to discover 

 the utility of salt as a manure for Asparagus. 

 The reason of this is well pointed out by Mr. 

 Beaton. It is, he says, a general ride to cut off 

 all weak shoots while the Asparagus beds are in 

 bearing, or at least up to the beginning of June. 

 Under such treatment the plants cannot be much 

 benefited by whatever dressings the beds receive 

 through the winter or spring, because all plants 

 — the Asparagus among the rest — can only collect 

 and digest their food and store away the product 

 for the next growth, while they are in a growing 

 state ; and in all herbaceous plants like the Asparagus 

 this store is laid up in the roots. Now, whatever 

 may have tended to improve Asparagus must have 

 been stored before the end of the autumn ; and salt 

 given to beds in March must go through a wonderful 

 process, along with other agents, in the course of the 

 summer, before it can be stored in the roots when the 

 growing season is over, or tell upon the crop in the 

 following May. These are simple facts, well known to 

 the gardeners of the present day, but of which many 

 of the last race of gardeners entertained strange no- 

 tions, judging from their mode of loading their As- 

 paragus-beds in winter with dungs and compost, a 

 practice which is not yet got rid of, but which, com- 

 pared with the improved system of feeding plants in 

 I 2 



