TUE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
28 i 
that are to stand for a crop should, at that season, be tliinned to a 
foot apart every way in poor or middling ground, and to fifteen to 
eighteen inches apart in ground known to produce strong growth. 
If, however, the time for spring-planting be lost, the plants may 
be moved with safety from the middle of July to the end of Sep- 
tember, and dull, showery weather should be waited for ; and the 
job, when once commenced, should be completed as carefully and 
quickly as possible. 
In any and every case the soil should be deeply trenched and 
made as light and gritty as the materials available permit. If the 
situation is damp raise the beds above the level, and always select 
an open position exposed to the full sunshine, for shade is deadly to 
asparagus, although shelter not producing shade is beneficial, pro- 
moting, what is always desired, an early growth to compete in value 
with forced asparagus. Never allow the roots to be exposed to the 
air for any length of time, for they are succulent and thin-skinned, 
and soon suffer if their juices are drawn from them by evaporation. 
Hence it is not well to buy shop roots, for the length of time they 
are necessarily exposed seriously impairs their vigour to the injury 
of the purchaser. As the plantation is expected to stand for several 
years, never a foot should go on it except through sheer necessity, 
for if the ground becomes much consolidated the plant ceases to 
thrive ; hence the importance of deep digging in the first instance 
and the need for stony and gritty substances in the staple. We 
have gathered the grandest asparagus ever seen from beds twenty 
years old; therefore it may be concluded that it will pay to do the 
work well in the first instance. As to cutting, the rule is to 
begin in the third year, and that is a good rule for a poor soil; but 
cutting may begin the second year on a good soil, and it should 
cease at the end of May in early districts, and at the end of June in 
late districts. The books say the cutting may be continued into 
July, and make no allowance for climates. On our fine old garden- 
ground at Stoke Newington we begin to cut at the end of March 
and make an end of cutting at the end of May— a run of two 
months. The plants then have time to make up for losses, but it 
would seriously impair their vigour if we were to cut until the 
middle of July. Besides, asparagus becomes a drug in the market 
when peas and cauliflowers are plentiful, and if the writer may hazard 
his own private opinion, asparagus is but a lollipop, whereas peas 
and cauliflowers are like marrow and muscle to repair the waste of 
the frame in the activities of life. There is yet one point to be 
decided, and that is the relative value of white and green asparagus. 
Having discussed the question with several of the first cooks in the 
land, men who are known by their writings as well as their high 
appointments, and found them all, to a man, in favour of luhite 
asparagus, we prefer to leave the question open, for we can only 
recognize as fit for the table of a rational human being green aspa- 
ragus, and our preference for the green must be, of course, a matter 
of individual and perhaps vitiated taste. However, it is easy 
enough to produce either. If you want tough, tasteless, uneatable, 
white asparagus, put an extra six to twelve inches depth of fine 
September. 
