island where, in gales, the sea breaks over the roots.  In this country also it has escaped cultivation, and is establishing itself along our coasts, The truth is that it is a plant endowed with a remarkable power of adaptation to all soils and climates, and does not need the extravagant petting often given it.  On different portions of my place chance seeds have fallen, and annually produce almost as fine heads as are cut from the garden.  Nature therefore teaches what experience verifies—­that asparagus is one of the most easily grown and inexpensive vegetables of the garden.  From two small beds we have raised during the past eight years twice as much as we could use, and at the cost of very little trouble either in planting or cultivation.

In my effort to show, from the hardy nature of the asparagus plant, that extravagant preparation is unnecessary, let no one conclude that I am opposed to a good, thorough preparation that accords with common-sense.  It is not for one year’s crop that you are preparing, but for a vegetable that should be productive on the same ground thirty or forty years.  What I said of strawberries applies here.  A fair yield of fruit may be expected from plants set out on ordinary corn-ground, but more than double the crop would be secured from ground generously prepared.

When I first came to Cornwall, about twelve years ago, I determined to have an asparagus bed as soon as possible.  I selected a plot eighty feet long by thirty wide, of sandy loam, sloping to the southwest.  It had been used as a garden before, but was greatly impoverished.  I gave it a good top-dressing of barnyard manure in the autumn, and plowed it deeply; another top-dressing of fine yard manure and a deep forking in the early spring.  Then, raking the surface smooth, I set a line along its length on one side.  A man took a spade, sunk its length in the soil, and pushed it forward strongly.  This action made an almost perpendicular wedge-shaped aperture just back of the spade.  The asparagus plant, with its roots spread out fan-shape, was sunk in this opening to a depth that left the crown of the plant between three and four inches below the surface.  Then the spade was drawn out, and the soil left to fall over the crown of the plant.  Rapidly repeating this simple process, the whole plot was soon set out.  The entire bed was then raked smooth.  The rows were three feet apart, and plants one foot apart in the row.  A similar plot could scarcely have been planted with potatoes more quickly or at less expense, and a good crop of potatoes could not have been raised on that poor land with less preparation.  A few years later I made another and smaller bed in the same way.  The results have been entirely satisfactory.  I secured my object, and had plenty of asparagus at slight cost, and have also sold and given away large quantities.  A bit of experience is often worth much more than theory.

At the same time it is proper that some suggestions should follow this brief record.  The asparagus bed should be in well-drained soil; for while the plant will grow on wet land, it will start late, and our aim is to have it early.