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Show Making an Asparagus Bed. If you'have a suitable patch of ground about 12 feet long by 6 or S feet wide, you can grow enough asparagus on it to supply a large family during the spring. This does not mean one or two messes that cost so much they taste like money, either. It means all you want to eat of one of the most delicious and healthful vegetables. Plant a bed this year and you can cut an excellent crop next spring. Of course you could get some this year, but it is safer to let it alone for a-year a-year so that the plants may get a. good start. Well drained, mellow, sandy loam is? best for asparagus. It must be warm, rich and well drained. Heavy clay will not do. If your soil is heavy, your best plan will be to excavate5, your bed to, a depth of IS inches and fill In with loamy soil or a mixture of loam and sifid. Land that has been used for a garden gar-den is better than fresh soil. It must be spaded as deep as possible, preferably prefer-ably from 12 to IS inches. Make the soil, fine, but not necessarily as fine-as fine-as a seed bed, except right around the roots. Do this the latter part of April or the first of May. Next dig trenches or hills deep' enough to bring the crown of the-plants the-plants eight inches below the surface of the ground. Have these rows 12 to IS inches apart and set the plants 12 inches apart in the rows. Cover them with a few inches of well packed earth and theu put on stable nianura until just the tip of tho stalk is visible. Keep the patch hoed and fill the trenches In as the plnnt grows until the whole bed is level Do net put manure directly about the roots. |