When I was a child, one of the regular rituals of spring was the search for asparagus. Balmy days in May would find us peering among the weeds along the fence rows at the edge of the garden, pasture, or road, looking for those elusive little green spears.
A thick patch of house lilies grew at the edge of my grandmother’s yard, and for years, asparagus had grown among them, so a visit to her could be counted on to produce a half dozen sprouts.
We managed to have two or three “messes” each spring by diligent effort. It was always creamed and served on toast to make it stretch further.
Asparagus Cultivation
It never occurred to us to cultivate this tasty perennial vegetable. We’d stare longingly at the pictures in the catalog just as we did at the mouth-watering pictures of cultivated blueberries and raspberries and nut trees, but cultivating asparagus, like the berries and nuts, seemed so expensive and time-consuming that we resigned ourselves to gathering these delicacies from the wild.
Then, for one year, a package of asparagus seed was included in the Mother’s Garden seed order. We snickered. Have you ever heard of planting something you couldn’t expect to taste for three years?
Planting and Early Care
Undaunted by our skepticism, Mother broadcast the seed in a rich corner of the orchard where she always planted her first crop of spring onions.
The onions were already showing their tips when she scattered the seed and by the time the last onion was used, numerous small finely-cut plants gave clear evidence that the asparagus was going to grow.
She staked out another spot for her early onions and gave this bed over to asparagus.
Care and Maintenance
In late fall, when the garden was manured, she saw to it that a wheelbarrow full was forked over her new asparagus bed.
The next spring, the largest shoots that broke through the ground were barely a quarter-inch in diameter, but Mother kept the weeds pulled, and by fall, they had grown two feet tall.
After frost came, the bed was manured heavily, as it was each succeeding year. Mother guarded her patch carefully the following spring when we went asparagus hunting, for the stalks were now about the size of a pencil, some a little larger, and they tempted the lazy hunter.
Yield and Cost
In the third year, just as the packet had predicted, the spears were fat and juicy, and we feasted on our favorite vegetable several times.
In later years, that little patch yielded all the asparagus we could eat, and there was always some left over for the freezer we had acquired.
An asparagus planting is quicker when started from year-old roots, and the roots are quite inexpensive when you consider the fact that a well-cared-for planting will last 20 years.
But if you’re patient as Mother was, it’s easy to start from seed, and a 35-cent packet will produce enough asparagus to feed the hungriest family.
It needs rich soil in the beginning and yields larger and more tender stalks in greater profusion if given a two- or three-inch manure mulch every year.
44659 by Patricia H. Morris