Asparagus! I just love asparagus! If I were to put aside for a minute all of the grand plans to be self sufficient, learn how to grow our own food, and teach Michael valuable life skills, I would have to admit that the thought of growing a bounty of asparagus was pretty persuasive in its own right. There is no vegetable that I love half as much as asparagus, and I could probably eat it every day. Steamed asparagus. Grilled asparagus. Baked asparagus with parmessan cheese. Asparagus soup. Hot asparagus. Chilled asparagus. All good!
So when we decided to start a mini-farm in Cottage Grove, there was no question of whether or not we would grow asparagus. We would. It was just a question of "when" and "how much".
Well, we at least know that the "when" starts now, and that the "how much" has a lower bound of 50 crowns of asparagus. Note the careful phrasing of "starts now" and "lower bound". Some books say that 50 crowns is a lot of asparagus and plenty for a family of three. But one book I have suggests that serious asparagus lovers might want THREE times that much..... And who am I to argue with more asparagus. So we are at least certain that we have completed our first planting of asparagus.
We have Denise, Alan, Maria, and Daniel to thank for our first planting of asparagus. Our 50 asparagus crowns were a gift from Denise's family at Christmas 2009, and they were waiting on us to prepare the beds and be ready to plant them before Denise had them shipped out to us. We just couldn't get it together in Spring 2010 to plant them as we were busy improving our soil at the time. And we were just hopelessly too busy regardless. But this year we were ready. Or thought we could be. It turned out that we weren't nearly as ready as we thought, and it was a major marathon to get the beds ready to plant the crowns once they arrived. Not only were there many truckloads of beautiful rough-sawn cedar lumber to pick up, but monstrous quantities of soil and compost to have delivered. And even then, once all of the materials were onsite and the beds sturdily constructed, but then we had to move huge quantities of soil and compost to fill the beds. 6' x 10' x 18" beds take a lot of soil to fill up! And the tractor was no use since the ground was way too wet -- please do not ask me to tell any embarassing sunken tractor stories. So it was real work to get these beds going.
The trick with asparagus, if newbies such as us are at all allowed to claim knowledge of such things, is to recognize up front that you are planting something that you want to thrive for 20 years or more. When you plant asparagus you need to really prepare the bed well with lots and lots of organic matter and nutrients to last for many years, even if you plan to add compost and other organic matter every year.
Given the rainy weather here, many plants do better here in raised beds than planted directly in the ground. So we built four large raised beds that are 6' x 10' and 18" tall. Asparagus crowns are planted in trenches that you dig in the soil, and people dig those trenches anywhere from 6" to 18" or more deep. So we built our raised beds tall so that we could dig the trenches as deep as we wanted. And 6' is normally way too wide for a raised bed -- at least if you want to be able to reach to the center of it -- but it seemed like the right width for asparagus. Asparagus rows need to be at least one foot from the edge of the bed and four feet from the next row, so this was the only width that would allow two rows of asparagus per bed. And we needed room for at least 50 crowns of asparagus.
So, why is this post entitled "Getting Ready for AsparagusFest 2013"? It's best not to harvest any asparagus for the first two years in order to allow the plants to get well-established. So the first asparagus we will eat from our own plants will be in 2013. It's a long time to wait, but hopefully it will be worth it.