periment Station, Prof. J. C.
Whitten found that it is much better to plant the seeds in six inches of
rich, sandy soil in the greenhouse or hotbed, in February or early
March, than to wait two or three months for outdoor planting. Professor
Whitten advises to "sow liberally, for seven-eighths of the seedlings
should be discarded. When the seedlings are three inches high, select
those which have the thickest, fleshiest, and most numerous stems, and
pot them. They vary more than almost any other vegetable. Many that
appear large and vigorous will have broad, flat, twisted, or corrugated
stems. Discard them. Beware, also, of those that put out leaves close to
the soil. These will all make tough, stringy, undesirable plants. The
best plants are those which are cylindrical, smooth, and free from
ridges. They shoot up rapidly, and attain a hight of two inches before
leaves are put out. They look much like smooth needles. This matter of
selecting the best plants for potting, and subsequent planting out, is
of the greatest importance in asparagus culture.

"These young plants should first be put in small pots and moved into
larger ones as soon as they are well rooted. They may need to be shifted
twice before they are planted out-of-doors, which should be done when
danger of frost is over. Started in this way they continue to grow from
the time they are planted out and reach very large size the first
season. In the case of nursery-grown plants, where seeds are sown
directly out-of-doors, the young seedlings start very slowly, are very
tender during their early growth, and if the weather is unfavorable they
hardly become well established before autumn."

[Illustration: FIG. 13--ONE-YEAR-OLD POT-GROWN ASPARAGUS PLANT]

Fig. 13 shows a one-year-old plant started in February in the greenhouse
and transplanted to the field the first of May. Plants grown in this way
reach as good size in one year as the nursery-grown plants usually do in
three years.

VI

SELECTION OF PLANTS

That strong, healthy, one-year-old plants are in every way to be
preferred to two or three year old ones has been demonstrated by many
carefully conducted experiments, and is now universally recognized by
intelligent and observant asparagus growers. The most noteworthy and
accurate experiments in this line were made by the famous French
asparagus specialist M. Godefroy-Leboeuf, who planted twelve stools of
one, two, and three years old respectivel