Planting An Asparagus Bed
Adding a large asparagus bed has been in my garden plan for quite a while. I have spent the last 3 years improving the soil in one large area of the garden preparing it for asparagus. Since asparagus a long-lived perennial vegetable, you want to make sure the soil is healthy. I remember those huge asparagus beds at Monticello, they were amazing!
If you like asparagus, growing it in your home garden makes sense. Asparagus is much tastier when cooked immediately after harvesting (in fact it’s quite good when eating right in the garden). Taking the time to install an asparagus bed now will reward you years of fresh harvests. Asparagus does not enjoy having wet feet, so a well-drained bed is essential or you may end up losing your crowns to rot. If you have heavier soil you can now purchase varieties like ‘Jersey Night’ and ‘Millennium’ that have been bred to do better in those conditions.
Each crown of asparagus is supposed to produce about a half a pound of spears during the 4-6 week spring season. I’m guessing that this is under optimal conditions and most likely with synthetic fertilizers. In my organic garden with less than ideal soil, I’m guessing I’ll get about a quarter pound per crown once they’re established. Mr Chiots and I love asparagus, so eating this much will not be a problem for us. I’m actually hoping to have extra so I can pickle some to enjoy throughout the year.
I planted 25 crowns each of ‘Purple Passion’ and ‘Jersey Supreme’ two weeks ago. I have a few ‘Mary Washington’ asparagus crowns in a raised bed in the back. I planted them 3 years ago and have been harvesting a few spears from them. They don’t get full sun, so they aren’t as productive as they would in in another area of the garden. These plants will be moved to the new asparagus bed up front soon. I’ll also be seeding some ‘Precoce D’Argenteuil’ Asparagus as well (source Baker Creek).
Planting asparagus is fairly easy, although if you search for information on how to do it on-line you’ll come up with conflicting information. After reading a few different ways of doing it, I decided to plant mine a little more shallow than is recommended. I found some information from Ohio State University that said plants were more productive and lasted longer if not planted as deeply. The location of my asparagus bed also has fairly heavy clay soil beneath the soil I amended. I wanted the crowns to be above the level of clay so I planted them about four inches below the soil level. The purple asparagus is planted 6-8 inches apart and the Jersey is planted 12-18 inches apart.
I added some bone meal at planting time to help with root development and I mulched well with shredded fall leaves. After about 5 days most of the crowns were putting up thin spears. It looks like every single crown has sprouted. Fertilize your asparagus patch with a well balanced fertilizer in spring before spears emerge and with a higher nitrogen fertilizer in summer after harvest. I like to use a mix of kelp meal and fish meal in spring and well rotted chicken manure in summer/fall.
Next year I’ll be able to harvest a few spears from this new bed. Some places will tell you not to harvest any, but I have read that harvesting a few spears will help stimulate the crowns to produce more buds thus making the plants more productive in future years. The second year I’ll be able to harvest a few more spears over the course of a 4-6 week period. My real reward will come in 2014 and beyond when I will have asparagus on my table for about 6-8 weeks each spring.
I’ve been trying to add more perennial edibles to my gardens to lessen soil disruption and asparagus is one step in that plan. Read my post at Your Day on Ethel about my plans for even more perennial edibles in the garden.
Do you grow asparagus in your garden?
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I Spy With My Little Eye…
When I was tying up my tomatoes on Monday, I noticed that a few of the plants were blooming. It’s always exciting to start seeing the lovely yellow flowers on the tomato vines. So far, only a few of the plants are blooming, the rest look like they’ll be blooming in a week or two.
I also noticed that I had a few tiny tomatoes on my ‘Tess’s Land Race Currant’ tomato. These were planted because I figured a tomato this small should provide early tomatoes for salads. I may have been right, we’ll see how long these take to ripen up.
I won’t be eating a ‘Brandywine’ anytime soon, but it looks as though I’ll be eating a tiny tomato in early July!
How’s your 2011 tomato season coming along? blossoms, fruit, harvesting any ripe tomatoes yet?
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Growing Sweet Potato Slips
Last winter I found some ‘Hawaiian Sweet’ purple sweet potatoes at the farmer’s market. I purchased a few, some to eat and some to use for growing slips. I cooked a few for eating, they were good – much different in taste than a regular sweet potato. They have more of an earthy flavor than the regular sweet potato flavor.
This spring I put a few of them in water to start growing my slips. Starting your own sweet potato slips is quite easy. All you have to do is place sweet potatoes vertically in a jar of water and wait. You want the bottom of the potato in the water and the top out of the water. Ideally you want at least 2 inches of the potato out of the water. Use some of the nicest potatoes from the previous year’s crop, none that are shriveled. Place the jar in a warm spot, sweet potatoes prefer warmth since they’re tropical plants. Change the water occasionally to keep it fresh.
Once the vines are about five inches long pick them off and put them in water. One potato will produce a lot of slips. You can keep pinching them off and more should form. They’ll sprout roots quickly and you can plant them in the garden when the soil warms. Around here that means around the first of July. There’s no need to hurry to get them in the soil early as they’ll languish if the temperatures are too cool, especially at night. Ideally you want to start your slips about 12 weeks before planting outside.
I didn’t think these potatoes were ever going produce slips, they sat in their jar of water for about 6 weeks. Just about the time I was going to compost them I noticed a few little buds forming. I have since read that purple sweet potatoes take much longer to sprout. I’ll be planting these along with a few other heirloom varieties that I purchase from Sand Hill Preservation. Let’s hope we can keep the voles out of them this year!
Do you grow sweet potatoes in your garden? What variety does well for you?
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Garlic Scapes
I’ve been keeping an eye on my garlic watching for the scapes to appear. It’s amazing how one day you check and there’s nothing, then the next they’re curling out of the middle of the plant. Not all garlic produces scapes, from what I read only the hard neck varieties do, so don’t be worried if yours doesn’t.
I have read that harvesting the scapes will produce larger bulbs, this has been my experience. The first year I grew garlic I harvested some scapes and left some. The bulbs were much larger on the plants I had harvested scapes from. It makes sense as the plant doesn’t expend energy into the production of the flower instead using it to grow a large bulb.
Garlic scapes are quite delicious, they don’t have the assertive garlic flavor of the bulbs so you can eat them as a side dish or use them in other dishes. They’re quite good sauteed or grilled. If you’ve never had them before treat them like you would asparagus. My favorite way to enjoy them is in stir fry. This week it was ginger venison stir fry with those golden peas (I’ll share my recipe next week). I’m thinking this coming week I may make pasta carbonara with garlic scapes.
Do you grow garlic? Do you harvest scapes?
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Edible Garden Update
Last Friday I was able to head over to my mom’s and work in the garden that we share. With all the rain we’ve been having and being super busy I haven’t been able to get over much in the last month. I planted the tomatoes and peppers that I started from seed. I also reseeded the beets that got washed away in the huge rain storm. Beet varieties we’re growing:
‘Detroit Dark Red’ Beet – 55 days. The most popular, old standard, all-purpose, red beet with uniform and smooth, blood-red flesh that is sweet and tasty. 14-inch tops make good greens. Heirloom variety introduced in 1892 (source: Bake Creek) These are my mom’s favorite, they make a mean pickled beet!
‘Formonova’ or Cylinder Beet – 55 days. A wonderful Heirloom from Denmark, this one is famous for slicing with its long, cylindrical roots. Produces much more uniform slices than round beets.This tender and sweet variety is also known as “Butter Slicer” because of its wonderful texture. (source: Baker Creek)
‘Golden’ Beet – 55 days. This variety dates back to the 1820’s or before. The beets are a rich, golden-yellow and very sweet. A beautiful beet that won’t bleed like red beets. The greens are also very tasty. A favorite of many. (source: Renee’s Garden)
This year we expanded the garden and added a new gate. It sure is nice to have a proper gate! Right inside the gate we put bean towers that will have morning glories growing on them. Along the front edge of the garden we’re planting flowers to attract beneficial insects and to add some beauty.
Yesterday we were back over to take my dad to the airport and I was able to finally get the popcorn planted, just before a big rainstorm hit (hence the overcast skies in these photos). I’ve grown ‘Strawberry’ Popcorn in the past and it was really great, but this I decided to grow:
‘Pennsylvania Butter’ Popcorn – 102 days. Flavor is superior to commercial popcorn. [Pre-1885 heirloom popcorn maintained by the Pennsylvania Dutch. Introduced in 1988 by SESE.] Produces white-kerneled ears, averaging 2 per 8 foot stalk. Ears contain 26 to 28 rows of kernels, length ranges from 4 to 6 (source: Southern Exposure)
I have just enough space for my sweet corn, which will go in a little later than usual because we’re planning around vacation times. We don’t usually grow sweet corn, but this year I decided to give it a try. A row of sunflowers will go in between the two kinds of corn as well.
Everything was looking good yesterday. The potatoes and peas that we planted a few months ago are blooming (you can see what varieties and the garden plan here). The broccoli and cauliflower that were planted a couple weeks ago are growing beautifully and the onions are also sizing up nicely.
Just as I finished taking these photos the rain moved in and watered the garden nicely. So far it looks like the 2011 gardening season will be a productive one, filling our plates and pantries with delicious homegrown food.
How’s your garden doing? Anything doing worse/better than usual? What have you been planting this week?
