The Vegetable Department is, to many of our readers, exceedingly interesting, and should 
T3e to all ; for while we have no sympathy with those who say they see more beauty in a 
Cabbage or hill of Potatoes than in the finest flower that ever grew," we do most heartily agree 
with those who take pride and pleasure in the culture of choice vegetables, and their improve- 
ment, and who are ready to say, with Diocletian, " were you to come to my garden, and see 
the vegetables I raise with my own hands, you would no longer talk to me of empire." As mucli 
skill is required to produce an improved vegetable as a new and valuable flower, and perhaps as 
much as is needed to govern a nation ; and the pleasure of success, we doubt not, is quite as 
great. The improvement in our vegetables for the past score of years has been great; indeed, 
we notice desirable progress almost every season, and more particularly in the purity of the seeds. 
To keep varieties pure, and true to name, requires a constant struggle, about which the nur- 
serymen and florist who propagate by budding and grafting, and by cuttings and divisions of 
roots, know nothing, and of which gardeners usually have but little appreciation. 
ASPARAGUS. 
This now popular vegetable is so well known that most persons who have had experience in 
vegetable gardening are pretty well acquainted with its habits. The Asparagus is a salt water 
plant, indigenous to various parts of the coast of Europe and Asia, 
growing in salt water marshes. It has escaped from our gardens, and 
is now found in some places on the American coast, and is sometimes 
observed in meadows. The plant is perennial, and grows some five 
feet in height, with a branching stem, fine cylindrical leaves, small 
greenish flowers, and red berries containing black seed. The seed 
may be sown either in the spring or autumn, in drills, about one inch 
deep, and the rows wide enough apart to admit of hoeing — about a 
foot. An ounce of seed is sufficient for a drill thirty feet in length. 
Keep the soil mellow and free 
from weeds during the summer, 
and in the fall or succeeding spring the plants may be set 
out in beds, about a foot apart each way. The beds should 
be narrow, so as to permit of cutting to the center without 
stepping upon them. The plants may remain in the seed- 
bed until two years old^ if desired. Before winter, cover 
the transplanted beds with about four inches of manure. 
A good many varieties are advertised, with but little dif- 
ference. As Asparagus plants are all grown from seed, it 
will be seen that there is great opportunity for variation. 
Salt is an excellent manure for Asparagus, and an efficient assistant to the cultivator, keeping 
down the weeds with very little labor. When grown in large quantities for market, Asparagus 
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