PRACTICAL PAPERS —MARKET GARDENING . 415 
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will produce an almost marvelous crop, and the heads will be of 
a very good quality, still, I think it can hardly be said to be a 
profitable crop for general cultivation. 
A few words with regard to an asparagus bed. Your garden 
will never be a complete one without a good bed of asparagus. 
The objections to it are, that it is a very expensive crop to get 
started, and that it takes four or five years from the first sowing of 
the seed, before you can realize a full crop. But if you have a 
large element of eastern people among your customers, you will 
find it among your most profitable crops, and after it once gets to 
bearing, it is not an expensive one to care for, but yields its an¬ 
nual crop with an almost absolute certainty, and that too, at a 
time in the spring when your expenses are very heavy, and you 
have little coming in to meet them. 
The new variety named Conover’s Collossal, seems really to be 
an improvement upon the old kinds. The seed should be sown 
in a bed prepared the same as for onions, and sown early in the 
spring. Let it grow here the first season. When the plants are 
one year old, prepare your permanent bed, and be sure that you 
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make it very rich. I would not put out a bed of an acre with 
less than 75 loads of good manure, and if 100 are put on all the 
better. Make the rows three feet apart. I take a shovel plow 
and make the furrows about five inches deep, then put the plants 
in the furrows one to every 16 or 18 inches, spread out their roots . 
in as near their natural position as possible; fill the furrow and 
pack down the earth somewhat over the plants, if your soil is a 
light one, level off your bed nicely, and your bed is made. This 
should be done early in the spring, and in about a month, the 
plants will begin to show themselves above the ground, which 
should be kept perfectly clean during the season. Early the next 
spring cut off all the old tops close to the ground, and put another 
coat of manure over it and dig it under, though you must be very 
careful not to dig deep enough to injure the roots of the plants, 
which by this time have filled nearly the whole ground after 
you get, say four inches deep. After your manure is dug under, 
rake off your bed nicely, or if you will improve it still more, be¬ 
fore raking, sow on it the best quality of superphosphate that you 
can get, at the rate of say 500 pounds per acre, before you rake it. 
