seeds will answer.  Do not employ asparagus-tops, which contain seed.  Of course we want this vegetable, but not in the strawberry bed.  Like some persons out of their proper sphere, asparagus may easily become a nuisance; and it will dispossess other growths of their rights and places as serenely as a Knight of Labor.  The proper balance must be kept in the garden as well as in society; and therefore it is important to cover our plants with something that will not speedily become a usurper.  Let it be a settled point, then, that the narrow rows must be covered thoroughly out of sight with some light material which will not rest with smothering weight on the plants or leave among them injurious seeds.  Light stable-manure is often objected to for the reason that employing it is like sowing the ground with grass-seed.  If the plants had been allowed to grow in matted beds, I would not use this material for a winter covering, unless it had been allowed to heat sufficiently to destroy the grass and clover seed contained in it.  I have seen matted beds protected with stable-manure that were fit to mow by June, the plants and fruit having been over run with grass.  No such result need follow if the plants are cultivated in a single line, for then the manure can be raked off in early spring—­first of April in our latitude—­and the ground cultivated.  There is a great advantage in employing light manure if the system I advocate is followed, for the melting snows and rains carry the richness of the fertilizer to the roots, and winter protection serves a double purpose.

We will now consider the proper management for the second year, when a full crop should be yielded.  I know that many authorities frown upon cultivation during the second spring, before plants bear their fruit.  I can not agree with this view, except in regard to very light soils, and look upon it as a relic of the old theory that sandy land was the best for strawberries.  Take the soil under consideration, a sandy loam, for instance.  After the frost is out, the earth settled, and the winter covering raked off, the soil under the spring sun grows hard, and by June is almost as solid as a roadbed.  Every one knows that land in such condition suffers tenfold more severely from drought than if it were light and mellow from cultivation.  Perennial weeds that sprouted late in the fall or early spring get a start, and by fruiting-time are rampant.  I do advocate early spring cultivation, and by it I almost double my crop, while at the same time maintaining a mastery over the weeds.

As soon as the severe frosts are over, in April, I rake the coarsest of the stable-manure from the plants, leaving the finer and decayed portions as a fertilizer.  Then, when the ground is dry enough to work, I have a man weed out the rows, and if there are vacant spaces, fill in the rows with young plants.  The man then forks the ground lightly between the rows, and stirs the surface merely among the plants.  Thus all