April, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



155 



have recently been established in the suburbs of Paris. 

 Let us visit one of these establishments and examine the 



Exterior View of an Asparagus House at St. Ouen, Near Paris 



novel method of market gardening which furnishes this 

 favorite spring vegetable all the year round. The grower's 

 first care is to obtain a stock of good plants. For this purpose 

 he selects a plot of light but rich soil as a seedbed. Here, 



Interior View of an Asparagus House at St. Ouen, near Paris, Showing the Operations of Weeding, 



Watering and Gathering the Crop 



Planting Asparagus in a Nursery House 



in October, or between the middle of February and the 

 end of March, the seed is sown in rows ten inches apart. 

 After the seedlings appear they are carefully thinned, only 

 the strong and healthy plants being left. They are 



transplanted when they are 

 one year old. A year later 

 they are dug up very care- 

 fully, to avoid breaking 

 their brittle roots, and taken 

 to the forcing establishment. 

 Here they are received 

 under a shed by women, 

 who subject them to a rigor- 

 ous process of selection, in 

 which every plant with 

 fewer than ten roots is 

 rejected. The selected 

 plants, from which the dead 

 woody stalks are removed, 

 are placed in baskets, which 

 are taken on carts to the 

 forcing house, where they 

 are henceforth to grow 

 under artificial and minutely 

 regulated conditions of tem- 

 perature and humidity. The 

 forcing houses are low struc- 

 tures with sashes inclined at 

 forty-five degrees to the 

 horizon. The alleys run 

 between rows of long iron 

 boxes placed over pipes 

 through which flows a 

 stream of hot water from a 

 boiler in the cellar. As 



