Tonight... from the Asparagus Patch

 Oh you little bastards!  That's MY dinner not yours.

All aboard?

SQUISH.

THE END.

Spring Progress

The eggplants are looking luscious.  The Purple Beauty Bell peppers are doing well and I ended up with two extra spares to give away.

From the tomatoes, the Blue Beauty seeds all germinated, and I have at least one out of three from all the other varieties with old or saved seeds. The Dr. Wyche is the last to try to live, but those seeds are the oldest.  Time for new ones next year. I filled my extra seeding spaces with Barlow Jap seeds and as usual, every single one sprouted.  The last one I tried to ignore but it tried so hard to live I felt guilty and transplanted it too.  So everyone in the family can have more than one this year.  Next week these two flats are moving out to the cold frame.

In the garden on Good Friday I planted peas, carrots, and more lettuce.  I have Nasturtium and Zinnias germinating in the cold frame and the cold frame lettuce had to be moved outside to cooler climes.  The asparagus is beginning to sprout.

Next week it's time to start squash and melons on the cold frame.

Past Project Progress

In the June lull of activity, while we wait for the pea pods to unfurl and the squash to blossom, it is a good time to check up on the progress of some long term projects.  The asparagus bed which I planted in 2011 was finally productive enough to really enjoy.  The trick to establishing an asparagus bed is to not eat it all at once.  So, I picked a third to a half of the emerging shoots.  Those left to grow are now taller than my head.

Having always steamed my asparagus, I was on the lookout for a better way of preparing it.  Neighbor Shelly came back from the best produce market in town with this recipe:
    Drizzle with olive oil
    Coat with bread crumbs and grated Parmesan cheese
    Bake in a moderate oven for 15 minutes.

I used Italian seasoned bread crumbs, a Parmesan Romano blend and seasoned them with my favorite herb sea salt.  Then I baked them for 15 minutes at 350*.  It was OUTSTANDING.  I don't know if I'll even bother to buy that asparagus steamer pot I've had my eye on.

The asparagus I started with was all male Jersey Supreme and then I filled in with Mary Washington which, being female, is reseeding itself.  I'm not sure what to do with my little asparagus seedlings.  Its nice to have some to fill in and thicken up the patch around less productive crowns.

But, I'm thinking dozens stacked on top of each other is probably unwise.  Still looking for management tips there.

Speaking of things thickening up, way back in the early stages of this blog, I wrote about ordering Siberian Irises with no idea where I was going to plant them.  I settled on the well head in the lawn.  There are few things less attractive than a well casing with a bright blue faucet sitting in the middle of your back yard.  I've seen some interesting attempts to disguise them around here, but I like mine best.

Four years later those nine scrawny little plants have become a lush jungle.  In the spring when I actually use this hydrant for occasional filling of watering cans, they are short and out of the way.  By the end of May when we've begun using the rainwater storage instead, they fill in and are beginning to disguise the hydrant quite nicely.

It's hard to see the lovely colors in this photo, but the majority of them are lavender with some dark blue, pale blue and yellow as well.  Each year I keep an eye on the non lavender seed heads and make sure those seeds are well placed to increase the color variety.

And finally, the Apple Trees.  Four years ago I had trees grafted from the final remaining tree from the old apple orchard here.  This spring we took the tree tubes off and pruned them, and they are quite nice looking trees.

I was very excited to see blooms on one of the two.  But I didn't see any bees working on them.  Apple trees must be cross pollinated from a second variety.  This year the three other trees in our yard, the Yellow Transparent, the Empire, and the Macintosh all bloomed at once.  That's a pretty rare occasion.  On a nice dry day I snipped a bloom laden cross branch out of one of them, got up on a ladder, and hand pollinated each clump of blooms on the grafted tree.

I was rewarded with 6 little apples.  One from each of the flower clusters I could reach.  Success!

Now we will wait with bated breath to see if any or all of these little guys manages to hang on to maturity.  A lot can happen.  Birds, bugs, wind.  The first thing we will do is put bird netting on and hope for the best.  Four years is a long wait for an apple.

Spring is here!

I spent all of Sunday afternoon out in the garden with a sleeveless shirt! As promised, it was 10 degrees warmer in the garden!

Neighbor Mike launched the great asparagus bed building. He bought 75 crowns and has gone hog wild. He researched and dug and mixed compost with ashes and did a bang up job of constructinghis asparagus bed. All but one of my crowns have put up shoots, which are quite promising and hefty.

My Asparagus is up!



Mike's wife Shelly planted 297 onion plants. Tim was hard at work on Spring Garden Project #3, which we will be unveiling soon. Spring Garden Project #2 is also waiting in the wings. It's hard to tell which will be finished first. For a non-gardener, he sure comes up with excellent ideas.

Shelly's 297 Onion Plants

So while all this stuff was going on, what did I do? I added compost to one of the beds. Planted sunflowers, planted catnip seeds around the catnip plants, planted more borage, chased the cats out of the carrots, planted zinnias, planted a flat of Amaranth, chased the cats out of the catnip, snapped buds off of the horse radish and rhubarb, got the garden benches and tables set up, dragged the drunken cats out of the catnip and repaired the collateral damage to the pansies and peas, asked Tim to figure out a way to fence the catnip, sent the cats to the house, edged and mulched around the linden trees, made drinks for everyone... sat in the sun.

Ahhh... Spring!

My Rhubarb is blooming. I hate to snap it off!

Asparagus Bed

This weekend I put in my second asparagus bed. The first one has been abandoned to lawn, sadly, in year 3 when I would just be seeing some decent sized spears. The new asparagus bed is on the slope between the garden shed and the garden with the other "perennial" foods such as rhubarb, strawberries and horse radish. There is a clump of horse radish on each end of the asparagus row. Well, actually there was a clump on one end, and the first thing I needed to do was get a second clump started. The big clump of horse radish is on the back corner of the house. This batch I salvaged out of what was the chicken yard, and is now lawn. Since then, Tim has tried to get me to get rid of that clump, and I keep digging it up and transplanting it. But, in typical horse radish fashion, it only comes back bigger and thriftier. It likes the corner of the house. Sunday I examined the new shoots, and found two or three off to the side. I began digging, got two small roots, and then hit on a 3/4" root that seemed to disappear under the house. I dug about 20" out before I gave up and broke it off.

Because I don't want this thing heading off in new directions already, I broke that in half, put some in the fridge for later, and planted the more manageable remaining foot long root at the end of where I want the asparagus row to be. I got out a string line, drove a spike in the existing clump, measured from the edge, and drove a spike in the second clump. Then I began raking the thick mulch away from my new row.

They say you should make a ridge down the middle of your "trench" so you can set the crown on the top of the ridge and arrange the roots down the sides, encouraging them to grow down deeper. I did this, then spread a cup or so of bone meal down my trench.

The asparagus crowns had been soaking in water for a day, and were ready to plant. I laid out a tape measure, and spaced them along my trench about 18" apart.

Then I placed each one on top of my ridge, arranging the roots.

Each crown should be covered about 2" to 3" initially, with more soil or mulch being added throughout the season. Interestingly enough, I've read that the depth of the crown is what determines the thickness of the shoots. The more shallow crowns produce the thinner shoots, and the deeper crowns produce the thicker shoots.

While I was diddling around in the asparagus bed, Mike and Tim were scraping and regrading Mike's driveway. There was quite a buildup if gravel, dirt and moss which required the box scraper to remove, and the bucket to redistribute and level.

Then Mike got the priveledge of using Tim's "Two Ton Rock Crusher". Actually, it's only one and a half tons. But I affectionately call it Two Ton. When you roll it down the road, any gravel in it's way explodes into smithereens. Tim fabricated Two Ton in response to being gravely disappointed in all commercially available lawn rollers. He bought one a couple of years ago, and after using it once or twice, returned it's mangled fragments to the dealership in disgust. He then set about building a more usefull version. But you have to be careful. If the lawn is too wet, it will crumple it up like a a throw rug.

Only Mike and Tim could turn driveway rolling into recreation. They look like they're having a good time don't they?

It's Alive!

Spring is always a suspenseful time as I go around the yard looking to see what did or didn't survive the winter.

First, it looks like we've lost a few perennials. Only one of a matched set of lupines emerged. One of the guara, which tried to die last year has yet to show any signs of life, while the other two clumps are fine. I'm reserving judgement on everything else. It's a bit early to pronounce the baloon flowers dead, but the bleeding hearts really should all be up by now. I have a list, and I keep making the rounds every couple of days. I've already stopped by the nursery, but have contained myself. I did buy some pansies.

The trees seem to be OK. The row of lindens we planted last year are ready to leaf out. The mulberry trees which an early snow nearly laid flat are leafing out. We staked the one that suffered the worst, and I stop by nightly to give it words of encouragement. And my apple trees are doing great! These are the ones from Big Horse Creek. Last March I was out salvaging some scions from the dying tree in the edge of our yard. I sent them of to BHC, and in November they sent me two grafted saplings. We planted them, put tree tubes around them and hoped they would survive the winter. Last week they rewarded our expectations by leafing out heartily. This is what they look like down the tube.

And lastly, my asparagus is finally up! This is year three for the bed. It is in a less than ideal spot, and has been rather poorly treated. Last year, the sprouts were about the diameter of a pencil lead. This year they are almost normal sized. There were two stalks up at once giving me... a third of one serving. I hesitated to pick them, but I found some more stalks poking through , so I went ahead and picked them. It doesn't take much work to prepare two asparagus stalks! But that was the best asparagus I've ever had. I am planning another asparagus bed in another location, which I hope will be more productive.