If, on the contrary, a cold, heavy clay must be dealt with, every effort should be made to ameliorate it.  Work in a large quantity of sand at first, if possible; employ manures from the horse-stable, or other light and exciting fertilizers, and there will be no failure.

In regard to the use of salt, Mr. Harris writes:  “It is a popular notion that common salt is exceedingly beneficial to asparagus.  I do not know that there is any positive proof of this, but, at any rate, salt will do no harm, even if applied thick enough to kill many of our common weeds.  Salt is usually sown broadcast, at the rate of ten bushels to the acre.”

Until recently I have grown asparagus without salt.  Hereafter I shall employ it in sufficient degree to kill all weeds except the strongest.  I shall sow it every spring after the bed is dug until the ground is as white as if a flurry of snow had passed over it.  I think salt is a good manure for asparagus, and many other things.  At any rate, we secure a great advantage in keeping our beds free of weeds.

I have written thus fully of asparagus because when a man makes a bed as directed he makes it for a lifetime.  He can scarcely find another investment that will yield a larger return.  We have asparagus on our table every day, from the middle of April to July 1; and the annual care of the crop is far less than that of a cabbage-patch.  I do not advise severe cutting, however, after the middle of June, for this reason:  it is well known that the most pestiferous perennial weed can be killed utterly if never allowed to make foliage.  As foliage depends upon the root, so the root depends on foliage.  The roots of asparagus may therefore be greatly enfeebled by too severe and long-continued cutting.  Avarice always overreaches itself.

In some localities the asparagus beetle destroys whole plantations.  Thompson, the English authority, says:  “The larvae, beetles, and eggs are found from June to the end of September.  Picking off the larvae and beetles, or shaking them into receptacles, appears to be the only remedy.”

Peter Henderson, in his valuable book, “Gardening for Profit,” figures this insect and its larvae accurately, and says:  “Whenever the eggs or larvae appear, cut and burn the plants as long as any traces of the insect are seen.  This must be done if it destroys every vestige of vegetation.”  He and other authorities speak of the advantage of cooping a hen and chickens in the bed.  Most emphatically would I recommend this latter course, for I have tried it with various vegetables.  Active broods of little chickens here and there in the garden are the best of insecticides, and pay for themselves twice over in this service alone.

We will next speak of the onion, because it is so hardy that the earlier it is planted in spring the better.  Indeed, I have often, with great advantage, sown the seed on light soils the first of September, and wintered over the young plants in the open ground.  Nature evidently intended the onion for humanity in general, for she has endowed the plant with the power to flourish from the tropics to the coldest limit of the temperate zone.