CULTURAL DIRECTIONS 
219 
hoes or one-horse cultivators are employed. Care must 
be exercised in cultivating to prevent breaking, injuring 
and covering the young plants. One-horse cultivators 
are doubtless the best implements for most conditions, 
although other types of implements are employed in 
various sections. 
Cultivation should begin early in the spring and con- 
tinue as long as it is possible to get between the rows 
with horse tools in order to keep down the weeds and 
maintain soil moisture. Some hoeing may be necessary 
during the cutting season, although the proper use of the 
weeder will reduce the amount of hand labor. If the weeder 
is used during the middle of sunny days, when the plants 
are not so rigid, very few shoots will be broken or injured. 
In established fields either the disk or the cutaway 
harrow should be used to break and pulverize the sur- 
face soil in the spring as soon as the ground is dry 
enough. Manure may also be incorporated with the soil 
at this time. Following harvest, one of these tools should 
be employed after the fertilizer or the manure has been 
applied. In old fields harrowing will necessarily injure 
some of the buds, but the benefit is so great that the 
operation is justifiable. 
Ridging to a greater or less extent is practiced in 
nearly all plantations, not excepting fields producing 
green shoots. Plows, disk ridgers or other special tools 
are used to perform this work in the spring after the 
ground has been harrowed. Ridging is not usually prac- 
ticed until the spring of the third year. The ground is 
always leveled at the close of the cutting season and one- 
horse cultivators are employed as long as it is possible 
to get between the rows. In a few weeks after the last 
cutting the ground will be completely shaded and the 
weeds cannot make much progress. No tillage tool which 
will seriously break or mutilate the roots should ever be 
used in asparagus fields. 
