Asparagus alley
Remember
last year's tomato
alley? We
lined most of these juicy morsels up against the fence between the mule
garden and the chicken pasture since that's the sunniest spot in our
vegetable garden. This year, we're rotating the tomatoes into the
forest garden and renaming that long row "asparagus alley".
We currently have about
thirty asparagus plants that are just starting to be old enough to pick
heavily, but the beds produce late because I sited them in the part of
the garden that's shaded by the hill all winter, keeping the soil
cold. On the one hand, planting the asparagus on the shady side
of the garden makes sense since the perennials can handle less than
full sun in the summer. But on the other hand, it means we didn't
get our first real flush of large spears until Friday --- pretty late
considering how warm our spring has been.
I had planned to expand the
planting anyway because thirty asparagus plants isn't really enough for
two people hungry from a long winter with only leafy greens as our
fresh produce option. One of our "all-male"
asparagus plants
turned out to be a female, so I collected its fruits last fall,
fermented out the seeds, and dried them for spring planting.
Planting asparagus from
seed might be a bit slower than buying roots, but it's vastly cheaper
(free if you save your own seeds). And many folks believe that
you lose a year when setting out roots due to transplant shock,
resulting in full production at the same time from seeds or transplants.
I'm looking forward to even
earlier (and more abundant) asparagus in four or five years. I
think the ferny fronds will look nice along the chicken pasture fence
too, and will give our flock a bit of summer shade. Maybe the
chickens will even munch on passing asparagus
beetles?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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We've had some seedlings sprout around our parent plants and I've been digging them up and putting them into pots until I decide what to do with them
I was thinking about planting them in between our grape plants on the furtherest south row to get lots of sun but utilize that space below the vines. We have Rhubarb growing between the grapes this year to see if they can survive our hot summers in the shade of the vines.
John --- Glad to hear they're germinating! Asparagus seeds take forever to sprout sometimes. The first year we started asparagus seeds, I actually gave up on them and dumped out the contents of the flats in the yard. Imagine my surprise to find "wild" asparagus seedlings there a couple of months later. (I transplanted them back into the garden.)
I suspect you'll enjoy fresh asparagus. It's much tastier than storebought. (Canned isn't even in the same ballpark.)
Brian --- I've got a couple of grapes at the end of asparagus alley, and was actually pondering putting an asparagus between each one. But we have so much problem with damp that I think I want to keep the air circulating around the grapes as much as possible, so I held off. Rhubarb sounds like it might be a bit better behaved amid grapes --- I'll be curious to hear how your polyculture does.