Asparagus Affirmations

No matter how lousy of a gardener I prove to be in one season, my asparagus inspires me anew with each Spring.

It's the magical third year--the year the asparagus crowns should really be putting up some beefy shoots, and they're not disappointing!

I stepped into my ghastly garden, whose most prosperous output has been rich soil from the compost pile, and felt the dry, brittle branches crunching under my boots from last year's summer weed crop. I was sporting my clean overalls for the first time this season, and I came with the hoe at the ready.

Any sign of those sunchokes popping up yet; an investment last year which should be spreading like mad, getting ready to provide me with my perennial crop of potato-like tubers? Nope. Don't see any sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) popping up. Hope they made it! It's still early, I tell myself.

There's the huge, no, enormous compost pile that's about 10% of the garden. It's now about three feet high by four feet square. Amazing how your kitchen scraps pile up like that (literally)...yet it has never been smelly, and there's always just a little bit of visible food on it, nothing too gross. I wonder again if my neighbors hate it. I'm looking forward to spreading it today, seeing what wonderful chemistry and digestive worm action has gone on over the winter months, under the insulation of the snow. Not yet, though, but soon I'll dig in there.

Crunch, crunch, crunch over more weeds that once soared 3 feet tall and now are dry and brittle. I'll look forward to cremating them in the brush pile roast I'll have in a bout a week!

Crunch, crunch...over to the asparagus patch. The beloved asparagus patch. The vegetable that keeps on giving, and keeps on forgiving as well. I recall when the crowns first came in the mail two years ago. They came bearing strict instructions on keeping them refrigerated until ready to plant, and keeping them moist. They were lovingly packaged to give them a safe journey. I neglected them sorely. They sat outside in freezing temps (in the box) for a while before they came inside, then it was several more days before they hit the fridge, then by the time I planted them, they looked so....bare. So bare root, as they should, but it was very difficult to imagine them ever really producing much edible food.

That first summer, they did shoot up a few little stalks. I had planted 20 crowns, and by the end of the season, I saw action in just about all of them. It was a miracle. They actually made me feel like I could be a successful gardener.

Of course, I left them undisturbed, faithfully weeding them often; they seemed so delicate.

The next year, it was absolutely amazing how many little green pencils were shooting out of the ground. Each crown was sending up about 10 stalks! They were puny, though. Really stringy, wiry things. I did cut just a couple so I could say that I finally ate some of them, after all this planning! But for the most part, they were left alone to grow stronger and mature more. (These were like the teenage years of my asparagus patch!) I weeded a little bit, but not tons. I had some vetch growing through the patch, which I let go, as it fixes nitrogen, and looked sort of pretty with its purple flowers. The vetch also grew in a vine-like fashion, and helped hold the asparagus up, as it grew quite tall (about 2.5 feet), and heavy when its seeds began to mature. As the patch started looking out of control, I tied it up with some string, and it looked like a pretty little picture. I looked like I knew what I was doing!

Now back to today--the weather has been so cold, and my schedule so packed, I hadn't made it out there to cut back last year's stalks...was I too late? I couldn't see any new asparagus growing from a distance, but the old, dry, reedy stalks were hard to see through. I take a closer look...oh, yes, there's some! And there's some more! And Oh, look at that one! It's so big! The asparagus was popping out of the ground again, despite my clumsy, inconsistent efforts, and I felt like....a gardener. I felt that I could do it, once again. I didn't kill the easiest plant to grow...it was a start.

I spent the next hour on my hands and knees and bottom carefully removing the old stalks, clearing away any thatch and leaves that had accumulated, and clearing out some of the early weeds...I never grew tired of the joy I felt when I cleared away a little more grass, or clover, or other random weed, to see a tiny little purple or green head making its way through the soil. All 20 original crowns are producing many shoots each, and the 231st baby asparagus I found today was just as loved and revered as the first I laid my eyes on. A mother indeed cannot favor one child over another!

It will be a plentiful year for the asparagus; I'll be canning lots of asparagus soup, and enjoying grilled asparagus for many nights, and peeing asparagus (you know what I'm talking about!), and each mouthful will further affirm that I am well on my way to providing my own food, and relearning that knowledge that has been lost the past couple of generations for most of us.

Now come on, sunchokes!