5/9/21  Subject:  The Next Step

     So where do we start?  What's the next step?  Crap ... what's the first step?  That was a big question, considering the monumental nature of the task in front of us.  My wife and I decided that it be best to start with what needed the attention the most.  Now that sounds pretty simple, at first glance, but there were a lot of things that really needed attention.

     We’ve always had a garden that mixed both perennial garden plants as well as annual plants.  The annuals didn’t really matter yet, because we hadn’t planted anything.  So at least that narrowed down the number of beds that could possibly be in the running for needing the attention first.

     The Concord Grapes and Golden Muscadines both needed to be trimmed back to the trellis.  The Elephant Garlic needed to be cleared out.  The Scallions were probably in there somewhere.  There was a planting of Oregano that would need to be cared for.  The Raspberries hadn’t seen any care in several seasons.  A bed of Bamboo that I was growing to establish a bunch of it else ware on the property had grown at least fifteen feet out of the bed.  A couple beds of Kiwi Grapes would need to be looked at, especially after that late freeze just to see if they were still alive.

     We decided to dig out the bed of Asparagus first.  The reasons for this is that Asparagus is probably the first summer plant that comes out of the soil in the spring.  I didn’t know if any of it was still alive in there, but it was worth a shot to work up that bed first.  So there I was, armed with my gloves to protect my hands, a feed sack to keep most of the mud off of my knees, and a Thermacell to keep away the mosquitos, and I started getting the weeds out of the Asparagus bed.  Actually, I was astonished when I found how much of it was still producing, even after all this time.  I'm pretty sure that I even wasted a few as I was doing the deed, and they ended up in the pile of weeds and waste material going to the critters.

  

       A few seasons ago, this was a well-established bed, so we got really lucky with this one.  It looks like it is still able to keep us in fresh spears already.  Asparagus is one of those garden plants that will produce over the course of your whole life.  I think that each plant has about a thirty-year life span, and it takes several years to even start producing.  Kind of like a fruit tree.  Normally, if you want to establish a new bed of Asparagus, you would be doing yourself a massive favor by buying five-year old root stock to start with.  That way you can start getting some snackables during the second season.

     If you start it from seed, a plant will be a wispy little fern that looks a lot like Dill, but it grows a larger root over time and begins to make some pretty massive plants.  By massive, I'm talking about a tall fern that gets at least eight feet tall and can spread over a four foot wide area.  I think some of these plants came up from whatever seeds dropped at the end of the summer either last year, or maybe the year before.  Here’s what they look like if they start from seed.

      A mature Asparagus plant is really something to see, if you’ve never seen one before.  Where you can buy a bunch of “kind of” fresh Asparagus in a grocery store, usually they are soft and pliable and almost rubbery in texture.  They are rarely even offered in stores around where I live that are much bigger than a pencil in diameter.  If you have a well-established planting of Asparagus, some of those puppies come up out of the ground as big around as a quarter.  They’re never rubbery either.  They snap, and are crisp when you bite them.

     Fresh Asparagus has a flavor that is similar to both fresh green peas and fresh green peanuts that haven’t been cured yet.  Ours hardly ever used to make it to the house.  It was always like one of those things that was a snack as you worked in the garden.  They were a treat, they were a reward, and it was first come - first served.

     To harvest an Asparagus spear, about the best way is to cut it at about a half inch below the surface of the ground when it gets about eight inches high.  You can use a knife or a pair of scissors, and just snip it right off.  What this does, is to cause the plant to say, “Hey … somebody stole my baby.”  It makes the plant get anxious about reproducing and it will immediately go into growth mode to get another spear out of the ground as fast as possible.

     The spears themselves are good to eat across their entire length, just wash them first.  If you forgot to check them, or got too busy to cut them one day, they might be taller than you would like, but still cut it off at the same place.  Sometimes the longer stems will get tougher as they get taller, but this is easy to get past.

     Lay the spear on a plate or cutting surface and, starting at the base, begin to gently push a knife against it.  Work your way up the stem about a quarter of an inch at a time until the knife snaps through.  It's good from that point to the top of the spear.  The part that didn’t cut easily becomes fibrous and pithy in your mouth.  It might still have the same nutritional matrix, but a mouth full of fibers isn’t a very good feeling.  It’s like trying to eat string-beans that haven’t had the strings pulled off.

     We’ve taken all of the stalks in this bed down to the ground to make the bed start over again.  I ended up with enough edible Asparagus to add to my breakfast eggs for the next week … yum.  By allowing the sunshine to reach the soil now, we hope to have a bunch more to eat pretty soon.  Asparagus loves the sunshine.  I’ll keep you posted on how it produces in the coming weeks.

     After cutting all of the stalks, I took a hand-held cultivator and removed all the weed roots at the surface level, down to about two inches.  The root crowns of Asparagus are usually about four inches deep, so what this does is allows the plant to easily break through the fresh ground to put those tasty spears in the sunlight again, without having to compete with other plants for the space.

     After cultivating the surface, a layer of our own fresh compost helps to rejuvenate the bed by adding nutrients and fertilizer that will leach down to the root crown every time the bed is watered.  This also helps to keep any weeds from getting a good start because any seeds that are active down in the soil will get a blast of fertilizer and shoot up without giving them a chance to establish a good root system.  Spindly fast-growing weeds are easy-to-pull weeds.

 

     The only pest that I’ve ever noticed on the Asparagus is the Green-Horned Tomato Worm.  They don’t do nearly as much damage to Asparagus as they can to a tomato plant.  They are easy to see on the thin stalks too.  Since they only seem to go after adult plants, your tasty spears are never affected.  You’ll only see them at the end of the season as you allow a few stalks to grow to give the plant a chance to go through its entire growth cycle.  This seems to keep them happy and producing.

     One note about Asparagus … there are certain people that have a mild allergic reaction to fresh and uncooked Asparagus.  I’ve never met any of them, but the Internet says they’re out there.  The cooking process is believed to eliminate many of the side effects.  I tend to eat fresh Asparagus, cooked Asparagus, and even eat the tiny red seed balls that grow on the ferns at the end of the season.  They are about the size of a pencil erasure and have the same flavor as the spears.  The only side effect I notice is my pee gets really strong smelling.  That's not a big deal, because I usually don't leave my pee around for others to have to smell it anyway.

     Ok … what’s next in getting this garden going again?  Maybe I’ll clean out the Garlic Chives.

… Duane