IV.] THE AMERICAN GARDENER. 141 



Through this earth the hop-shoots will sta.t in the 

 spring. You will want but eight of them to go up 

 your four poles ; and the rest, when three inches 

 long, you may cut, and eat as asparagus ; cook 

 them in the same manner, and you will find them a 

 very delightful vegetable. This year you put poles 

 20 feet long to your hops. Proceed the same as 

 before, only make the hills larger ; and this year 

 you will have plenty of hops to gather for use. 

 The next, and every succeeding year, you may put 

 poles 40 or 50 feet long ; but they must not be too 

 large at bottom. Be sure to open the ground every 

 fall, and to cut all off close down to the crown of 

 the plants, which, when pared off with a sharp 

 knife, will look like a piece of cork. In England, 

 where there are more hops used than in all the rest 

 of the world, it requires four or five years to bring 

 a hop hill to perfection. Even then, a pole from 

 15 to 20 feet long is generally long enough ; and 

 the crop of thirty hills is, upon an average, not 

 more than equal to that of one hill in the hop-plan- 

 tations on the Susquehannah ; notwithstanding that, 

 on the Susquehannah, they merely plough the 

 ground in spring ; never open the crowns and pare 

 them down, leave the loose creeping vines together 

 with the weeds and grass to be eaten, in summer, by 

 sheep, which also eat the leaves of the mounting 

 vines as far as they, by putting their fore feet against 

 the poles, can reach up ; and yet, in England, the 

 Hop-lands are called hop-gardens, and are culti- 

 vated and kept in a garden state. But, hops are to 

 be preserved. They are fit to gather, when you 

 see, upon opening the leaves of the hop, a good 

 deal of yellow dust, and when the seeds, which you 

 will find at the sockets of the leaves of the hop, 

 begin to be plump. Gather them nk'ely, and let no 



