To prevent this injury is easy enough, but the precautions must be
adopted in good time. A free use of light, feathery stakes, such as are
employed for the support of Peas, thrust in firmly all over the bed,
will insure all needful support when gales are blowing. In the absence
of pea-sticks, stout stakes, placed at suitable distances and connected
with lengths of thick tarred twine, will answer equally well. In
sheltered gardens the protection of the young growth with litter, and of
the mature growth with stakes, need not be resorted to, but in exposed
situations these precautions should not be neglected.

==Manuring Permanent Beds.==--The management of Asparagus includes a
careful clean-up of the beds in autumn. The plants should not be cut
down until they change colour; then all the top-growth may be cleared
away and the surface raked clean. Give the beds a liberal dressing of
half-decayed manure, and carefully touch up the sides to make them neat
and tidy. It is usual at the same time to dig and manure the alleys, but
this practice we object to =in toto=, because it tends directly to the
production of lean sticks where fat ones are possible; for the roots run
freely in the alleys, and to dig is to destroy them. In the spring clear
the beds of the autumn dressing by raking any remnant of manure into the
alleys, and the beds and the alleys should then be carefully pricked
over with a fork two or three inches deep only, and with great care not
to wound any roots.

The application of salt requires judgment. For a time it renders the bed
cold, and when followed by snow the two combine to make a freezing
mixture which arrests the growth of established plants. On a newly made
bed salt is unnecessary, and may prove destructive to the roots. The
proper time for applying salt must be determined by the district and the
character of the season; but in no case should the mineral be used until