70 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
operation is, to lift the young green plants carefully, taking care to injure the 
roots as little as possible, they are then to be planted exactly over the charcoal, 
about 7 inches apart, the soil to be carefully pressed about their roots, to 
make them firm in the soil; they should then receive a good soaking of water, 
and if the weather is hot and dry they should be watered daily for a week or 
ten days; by this time they will have got root-hold, and will not require but 
little more attention, unless the weather is very hot and dry, such being the 
• case, they will require watering occasionally. 
The next important operation takes place at the end of October, when the 
beds should be well covered over with manure, to prevent the young plants 
suffering any injury from frost. The manure should be afterwards sprinkled 
over with salt, this helps to keep out the frost, and kills many insects and 
weeds which are brought on the ground in the manure. During the following 
summer the plants will make rapid growth; there should then be some means 
taken to prevent the plants from suffering injury by being blown and twisted 
about by the winds; this is done by placing a stake, at intervals, along each 
side of the rows ; a piece of string is then strained along the stakes. This 
is a most important thing to be attended to, for when one or more of the 
shoots are twisted and broken off, the plant is considerably weakened by pushing 
up other shoots, to take the place of those that have received injury. The 
plant is thus, to a very large extent, prevented from developing the young 
pseudo-shoots at the base or crown. It thus often happens that the second 
set of shoots, which the plant has thrown up to replace the broken ones, are 
cut down by the early autumn frosts; the plant by that means receives a check 
which it does not recover till the following year; and without the top or head 
of the plant, which is the conductor of all the atmospheric agencies during 
its natural season of growth, the plant cannot be performing its natural 
functions of storing strength for vigorous growth on the following year. 
Want of attention to this particular point is the cause of so many blind and 
dead plants being found, when the roots are dug up for forcing and other 
purposes. 
Having mentioned the time for sowing the seed, and described my mode 
of preparing and planting the beds, I will now explain the advantages to be 
gained by adopting this system of cultivating Asparagus, and the disadvantages 
to be encountered under the old system. 
The original modus operandi , was to prepare the beds in a similar manner 
to the one I have already described above, as far as the preparing of the beds 
was concerned. After the seed had been sown, the plants were allowed to 
remain in the seed-beds for one, and sometimes two years, at whatever time 
it was determined to plant them on the permanent beds, whether at one or two 
years old. The plants were generally planted about the third week in March, or 
first week in April, according to the state of the weather, after the plant had 
commenced growing; and I have often seen them planted, when they had 
shoots on them 3 or 4 inches long; the operation, therefore, could not be per¬ 
formed without injuring the shoots more or less, according to the amount of 
care taken by the person planting them. After the operation of planting was 
finished, supposing them to have been planted in the first week of April, it 
would be the middle or end of July before they had well established themselves 
in their new quarters, they would then begin throwing up young shoots, and 
would continue doing so more or less, till, perhaps, the middle or end of October. 
If it should chance to be a mild autumn, when the tops would all be cut down 
by frost, there would be, perhaps, one or two young shoots, the last the plants 
have thrown up just at that time peeping through the soil. These become 
frost-bitten, which causes their speedy decay, and as they rot down to the 
