THE 
GARDEN YARD 208 
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 allow 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 asthe 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 
