First, no you cannot harvest this first year. Well you 'can' since no one will stop you, but you shouldn't. And go easy next year too for best results. Second the Ohio State article isn't really off-base when it comes to planting. They will grow but it is better IME to arrange them just a bit. The point is you don't have to get carried away with arranging them perfectly or follow the age old guidelines of build a hill in a 12" deep trench and carefully arrange the roots around the hill with the crown perfectly centered on top etc. OK? 6=8" trench is the recommended depth for planting rather than the old 12" deep trench. As to the refilling rather than just covering and leveling - the gradually refilling approach is more so you can see which one take and which ones don't and can easily replace if needed. Either way works fine because if one never comes up you can always replace it in that space next year. Harvesting is mostly a personal preference - snap off vs. knife and at soil level vs. just below. The below soil level/sharp knife approach is supposed to discourage asparagus beetles from laying their eggs in the cut stems. I'm of the cut with knife at soil level then cover lightly school. That way I don't hurt anything. Hope this helps. Dave

On a Horse, it wraps around the flat stock located to the rear of the tines just before it meets the hood. You might see a hole punched into the flatstock and a large pin goes through the furrower and flatstock.

Here are a couple photos of a hiller attached to my 1999 Horse Big Red. The hiller slides onto the depth gauge support and is attached with a spring clip which goes through the holes of the hiller and the hole in the support. I don't know if the setup for the Pony is the same.

Hi Dale, I have an old furrower my grandfather gave me. It looks a lot like a current model Glaser Wheel hoe, which I also have. I imagine your grandparents laid out the garden with string between two stakes and used a wheel hoe to make straight furrows. With practice, you could get the trenches to slightly slope in order to water the garden with them. That, or they were deep enough and they used enough water that it didn't matter if they were of an uneven depth.