54 GARDENING FOR ALL. 
The narrow beds, containing two rows of plants each, 
ought to be marked out three feet six inches wide, with an 
alley eighteen inches wide between each bed. The shallow 
alleys will be formed in the first instance, by simply using 
some of the soil therefrom for covering the roots of the 
transplanted seedlings, whose roots may be spread upon the 
surface of the bed and covered as the work proceeds. Plant 
at nine inches from the side of the bed, and this will leave a 
space of twenty-four inches between each row, 
When the asparagus is established, the after culture will 
simply consist of periodical manuring, soiling, and cleaning. 
Cover the crowns of the plants each spring with three or 
four inches of fine soil from the alleys or between the rows; 
this should be done in February. Apply a dressing of salt in 
April and again at the end of June. Cut the ripe growth 
down at the end of October or early in November; break 
down into the alleys the surplus soil that was used for 
covering in spring, and apply a dressing of manure. In 
February rake off any surplus litter that remains from the 
manure that was applied in November, and return the 
pulverised soil all over the bed, or each separate row, to the 
depth of four or six inches. 
Additional manures for asparagus are blood, nitrate of 
soda, burnt seaweed, guano. and night-soil. 
Under good culture asparagus will remain strong and 
profitable from fifteen to twenty-five years. 
Many exhausted and unsatisfactory asparagus beds may 
be reclaimed and made more productive by allowing them a 
year’s rest, and by exercising more prudence and self-denial 
when cutting, and by copious applications of weak liquid 
manure during the growing season as well as by stronger 
doses during winter. Be it remembered, that if we always 
cut all the strongest shoots and leave only the weak, the beds 
so treated must surely wear out prematurely, and we have 
to choose whether we will keep beds that are prematurely old 
through ill-treatment, and nurse them into vigour again ; or 
whether we will discard them and make new beds more 
frequently ; or whether we will treat our asparagus beds with 
greater kindness and forbearance from the first. 
