THE nriA 



GARDEN YARD 



you do any cutting. A few stray shoots may be 

 picked off, but it is advisable to wait until the 

 plants are in their third year before cutting. 

 To cut earlier may permanently injure your 

 crop. It is also possible to injure it by con- 

 tinuing it too late each season, although every 

 stalk should be removed even if it be too poor 

 for use. The crop should be cut clean, and all 

 cutting should be over before July 4th, in the 

 middle Atlantic States. After that the tops 

 do the growing and the more they flourish the 

 better your asparagus will yield next year, for 

 it is from the foliage which springs up that the 

 roots and crown secure energy for the next 

 season's work. 



The tops should be mowed late in the fall, 

 and generally speaking it is better to burn 

 them than to aUow them to rot on the bed as 

 some growers do, because when the asparagus 

 berries are plentiful you are apt to have trouble 

 next season with seedlings; and even when this 

 is not so, it interferes with the fall tillage which 

 is so necessary. 



Just as the young plants were covered with earth 

 and manure the first year and thoroughly tilled 

 in the spring, so must spring and fall tillage be 

 carried on every year. The manure put on the 

 plants in the fall, serves not only as a winter 



