rows are to be treated in the same way, and the work must be so managed that an equal distance of four and a half or five feet is left between the rows.  When the foliage dies down in autumn, a layer of fertile loam mixed with rotten manure should be spread over the surface.  In the succeeding spring remove just the top crust of soil and give a thick dressing of decayed manure alone, upon which the soil can be restored.  During the autumn of the second year the furrow must be filled with horse manure for the winter.  Remove this manure in March, and substitute good loam containing a liberal admixture of decayed manure previously incorporated with the soil.  The slight ridges that remain can then be levelled down.  By this treatment large handsome sticks of Asparagus may be cut in the third year.  To maintain the plants in a high state of efficiency, it must be clearly understood that forcing with horse manure will be necessary every subsequent year.  Blanching may be carried out by any of the usual methods, and Sea Kale pots are both convenient and effectual.  Not a weed should be visible on the beds at any time.

==Forcing== is variously practised, and the best possible system, doubtless, is to force in the beds, and thereby train the plants to their work so that they become used to it.  The growers who supply Paris with forced Asparagus produce the white sample in the beds, and the green by removal of the roots to frames.  Forcing in beds may be accomplished by means of trenches filled with fermenting material or by hot-water pipes, the beds in either case being covered with frames.  Where the demand for forced Asparagus is constant, there can be no doubt the hot-water system is the cheapest as well as the cleanest and most reliable; for a casual supply forcing in frames answers very well, but it is attended with the disadvantage that when the crop has been secured the roots are worthless.  The practice of forcing may be said to commence with the formation of the seed-bed, for if it is to be carried on in a systematic and profitable manner, every detail must be provided for in the original arrangements.  The width of the beds and of the alleys, and the disposition of the plants, will have to be carefully considered, so as to insure the best results of a costly procedure, and it will be waste of time to begin forcing until the plants have attained their fourth year.  The rough method of market growers consists in the employment of hot manure in trenches, and also on the beds, after the frames are put on.  The beds are usually four feet wide, the alleys two feet wide and twenty inches deep, and the plants not more than nine inches apart in the row, there being three or four rows of plants in the bed.  The frames are put on when forcing commences, but the lights are withheld until the shoots begin to appear.  Then the fermenting material is removed from the beds, the lights are put on, and no air is given, mats being added in cold weather,