The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots | Page 7

rudely shaken, the stems snap off at the base, and the roots lose the service of the top-growth in maturing buds for the next season. To prevent this injury is easy enough, but the precautions must be adopted in good time. A free use of light, feathery stakes, such as are employed for the support of Peas, thrust in firmly all over the bed, will insure all needful support when gales are blowing. In the absence of pea-sticks, stout stakes, placed at suitable distances and connected with lengths of thick tarred twine, will answer equally well. In sheltered gardens the protection of the young growth with litter, and of the mature growth with stakes, need not be resorted to, but in exposed situations these precautions should not be neglected.
==Manuring Permanent Beds.==--The management of Asparagus includes a careful clean-up of the beds in autumn. The plants should not be cut down until they change colour; then all the top-growth may be cleared away and the surface raked clean. Give the beds a liberal dressing of half-decayed manure, and carefully touch up the sides to make them neat and tidy. It is usual at the same time to dig and manure the alleys, but this practice we object to =in toto=, because it tends directly to the production of lean sticks where fat ones are possible; for the roots run freely in the alleys, and to dig is to destroy them. In the spring clear the beds of the autumn dressing by raking any remnant of manure into the alleys, and the beds and the alleys should then be carefully pricked over with a fork two or three inches deep only, and with great care not to wound any roots.
The application of salt requires judgment. For a time it renders the bed cold, and when followed by snow the two combine to make a freezing mixture which arrests the growth of established plants. On a newly made bed salt is unnecessary, and may prove destructive to the roots. The proper time for applying salt must be determined by the district and the character of the season; but in no case should the mineral be used until active growth has commenced, although it is not needful to wait until the growth is visible above the surface. In the southern counties a suitable opportunity may generally be found from the beginning to the middle of April. Second and third dressings may follow at intervals of three weeks, which not only stimulate the roots but keep down weeds.
==Planting Roots.==--In many gardens where there is space for two or three beds only there will be the very natural desire to secure Asparagus in a shorter time than is possible from seed, and we therefore proceed to indicate the best method of planting roots. Asparagus roots do not take kindly to removal, especially old and established plants. The mere drying of the roots by exposure to the atmosphere is distinctly injurious to them. They will travel safely a long distance when well packed, but the critical time is between the unpacking and getting them safely into their final home. Everything should be made ready for the transfer before the package is opened, and the actual task of planting should be accomplished in the shortest time possible.
A three-feet bed should be prepared by taking out the soil in such a manner as to leave two ridges for the roots. The space between ridges to be eighteen inches, and the tops of the ridges to be so far below the level of the bed that when the soil is returned, and the bed made to its normal level, the crowns will be about five inches beneath the surface. This may be understood from the following illustration of a section cut across the bed.
[Illustration]
A, A represent the alleys between the beds, and B the top of one bed. The dotted lines show the ridges on which the roots are to rest at C, C. When the bed is ready, open the package and place the Asparagus on the ridges at fifteen or eighteen inches apart, allowing about half the roots of each plant to fall down on either side of the ridge. As a rule it will be wise to have two pairs of hands engaged in the task. The soil should be filled in expeditiously, and a finishing touch be given to the bed. Very rarely will it be safe to transplant Asparagus until the end of March or beginning of April, for although established roots will pass unharmed through a very severe winter, those which have recently been removed are often killed outright by a lengthened period of cold wet weather, and especially by thawed snow followed by frost.
==Giant Asparagus.==--Some of the most critical judges of Asparagus in