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The use of a light dressing of fish manure several times during the 
season is recommended, as this fertilizer is excellent and cheap. 
The application of liquid manure during the early growing season 1s 
of undoubted benefit, and the addition of potash and phosphoric acid 
to the stable manure will make the latter much more valuable and 
bring its proportions nearer to those of a complete fertilizer. 
When potash salts (kainit or muriate) are used, the application of 
salt will be superfluous, even if it is ever necessary. On clayey soils 
salt is always dangerous, causing the soils to run badly and become 
pasty, while its benefits, except as a weed destroyer, are of a doubtful 
character. 
The time of applying manure on beds, and the position where it should 
be placed, are of some importance. In the use of stable manure, both 
writers upon the subject and growers actually engaged in producing 
asparagus for the market almost unanimously state that ‘‘in the autumn, 
after the stalks have matured and have been cut, manure should be 
applied on top of the rows.” Some give the caution not to put it just 
over the crowns, lest the shoots next spring be injured by contact 
with it. 
This plan of top dressing beds during the autumn or early winter is 
gradually giving way to the more rational mode of top dressing in the 
spring and summer. It was believed that autumn dressing strength- 
ened the roots and enabled them to throw up stronger shoots during 
the following spring. ‘This is a mistake. 
It is during the growth of the stalks after the cutting season is over 
that the crowns form the buds from which the spears of next season 
spring, and it is probable that it is principally during this period that 
the roots assimilate and store up the material which produce these 
spears. ‘This being true, the plant food added to the soil and becoming 
available after the cessation of vegetation in the autumn can have little, 
if any, effect upon the spears which are cut for market the following 
spring; it first becomes of use to the plant after the crop has been cut 
and the stalks are allowed to grow. Thus the manuring of the autumn 
of 1897 will not benefit the grower until the spring of 1899. In the 
use of hot, or fresh, manure it may be that the winter season is none too 
long to permit the fertilizing elements to become available and well 
distributed throughout the soil, but if well-rotted manure is used there 
is danger of the fertility being leached out of the soils by the rains and 
melted snows of winter. 
The writer suggests feeding when the roots can absorb the manure 
instead of placing a large quantity of it over them after the growing 
season, when the plant is at rest. ‘Those growers who apply a liberal 
dressing of stable manure or fertilizer immediately after the cutting 
season supply the required nourishment to the plants at the time they 
most need it and can most profitably utilize it in the production of 
spears. Manure thus applied will also act as a mulch, preventing the 
