Asparagus: The Mysteries Unveiled
by Robin Ford Wallace
Reader, I have
come to tell you the secrets of Nature.
No, Reader, not that
secret of Nature, though since we are on the subject, I may as well tell you
what my niece Katy said when her mother explained to her, at age 10, the
monthly magic of womanhood: “This is a
joke, right?”
She had a
point. This whole business of existence
as self-aware biomass is a serious thigh-slapper. The yuks I have gotten from the digestive tract alone! Throw in the reproductive system and it is a
wonder anybody gets any work done at all.
But were we not
discussing asparagus?
Yes, Reader,
asparagus is the mystery I came to reveal.
I had never considered it a particularly enigmatic vegetable until I
decided to grow it. It was then I
realized I had never seen it growing and in fact had no idea what part of the
plant it is that is eaten. It is not a
fruit like tomatoes, a root like turnips, nor leaves like lettuce. Just what was asparagus, and what did it
look like when it was growing?
Answer 1, as I
soon learned, is that the edible part of asparagus is the young shoot that
rockets up from the roots as the plant’s first growth; but it does so with such
rapidity that there is no Answer 2. One
does not see asparagus growing, though one is sometimes tempted to stay up all
night with a flashlight, and try.
One simply leaves the asparagus row an undisturbed
expanse of dirt in the evening, then returns the next morning to find tall
spears looming above the earth. My city
friend Joe, in fact, touring the garden one spring, accused me of buying the
stalks at the grocery store and deploying them in the dirt, in order to mess
with his head.
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| Asparagus row before harvest |
After harvest, the asparagus row once again appears
vacant – until, next night, the miracle recurs. It is possible a fairy is involved.
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| After |
Situating Your Asparagus Bed
If you would like
to plant asparagus, the first point to consider is: Where? Asparagus grows in
all climates except the wet coastal tropics – it requires at least a little winter
– and it prefers light, well-drained soil.
But for the home
gardener, the most important consideration is that the asparagus bed must
withstand the sands of time. Once
planted, it stays put, rewarding you spring after spring for decades to come
with delicious green harvests. So
choose a location where your asparagus may thrive undisturbed as you lose your
teeth, hair, faculties –
And remember it
prefers full sun.
Anyway, in choosing your
location, you may use me as a cautionary tale:
I put my asparagus row about five feet inside the vegetable patch. So now, each spring, if my neighbor offers
to till the garden for me, he must do so in two sessions, one below the
asparagus and one above, while I patrol the staked-out row grimly, defending it
with my life.
How much room you
give to asparagus should depend on how much you like it. I love it and in theory could eat it every
day. In practice, I find that with my
20-foot row I can do so about twice a week during the season, sharing it
grudgingly with guests and family members but never freezing it or, God forbid,
giving any away.
The rule of thumb
for most vegetables is to take a piece of paper, add up how many plants you’ll
need and multiply out how much room each will require; then you use the paper
to wrap fish and plant one quarter that amount. Asparagus is the exception to the rule. If you like it, plant as much as you have room for.
Selecting a Variety
One can go
cross-eyed choosing what asparagus variety to grow, what with plant catalogs
hyping “new vigorous all-male hybrids,” as opposed to the time-honored but
patently female-sounding heirloom, Mary Washington.
All-male? It is true that one might infer a certain
masculinity from the manly skyward thrust of the firm, smooth shafts; but I
looked up it up and went a little strabismal myself learning about dioecious
and monoecious plants, which is to say those that have genders and those that
do not. In the end I elected to leave
plant sexuality a moot point (at least until that nocturnal vigil with the flashlight),
and stuck with Mary Washington.
The disadvantage
to female plants, apparently, is that they waste time and energy producing
seed, and you may want to consider that.
I have, on the other hand, enjoyed the bright red berries my asparagus produces late in the season, and the pleasant surprise of finding
wild asparagus growing along the driveway as Mary increases her family.
Planting
You may start
asparagus from seed – it’s cheaper – but that lengthens the wait until first
harvest, so most gardeners begin with first-year crowns. These are hairy, tarantula-looking root
balls from year-old plants, available in most garden centers.
Plant crowns or
seeds any time after the soil has warmed – you will not be harvesting this year
in any case. Seeds should be planted
sparsely, about ¼ inch deep, then the seedlings thinned to 15 inches
apart. As for crowns, place them 15
inches apart in a furrow five to six inches deep. You can go mad deliberating which end is top; in fact, the root
ball will send forth its tentacles no matter which way you put them.
Now: Sit and Wait
Both seeds and
crowns can take their sweet time to produce plants. Depending upon weather conditions, soil temperature and how you
are holding your mouth, it may take between two weeks and two months before you
see any action.
But wait long
enough and your crowns will – finally! – send up the familiar solid green
shafts that, left alone, leaf out into dainty, ferny-looking fronds. If you have started with seeds, your
seedlings will look fernlike from the beginning. Interesting point: The
so-called “asparagus fern” is in fact a true variety of asparagus developed by
florists for its pretty foliage.
Even after you
have plants, the fat lady has not sung:
you are still looking at a year or two before you can trot out the
butter and the lemon and get down to business.
There is some argument in the gardening world about how long
asparagus needs to establish its root system – here is where I remind you that
most of what we know about horticulture, and possibly the universe, is lies and
male answer syndrome – but most growers agree that with crowns you must wait at
least one year, two if you can hold your horses that long, before you begin
harvesting; and that growing from seed you should add another year to that.
But Reader, do not
repine! Remember that asparagus
throughout the millennia has been rich-people food, and that throughout the
millennia rich people have been the ones patient enough to realize the benefits
of compound interest.
Harvesting Asparagus
Unless
you just like to thrash about in the dirt hand-pulling weeds, you should keep
your asparagus mulched in with a thick layer of rotting hay. According to the Ruth Stout deep-mulch
method made famous by Rodale, in fact, the hay is never removed – it does,
after all, keep the soil moist and nourished without chemical fertilizers – and
the asparagus spears are simply allowed to push their way up through it in the
spring.
But our compound interest analogy notwithstanding, springtime is not a season designed to nurture
patience in us winter-crazed gardeners, and I personally find it more expedient
to pull the mulch back in March and allow the soil to warm up more
quickly. Then, miraculously, usually in
April, though never as soon as one wishes, one goes out in the morning to find a
lonely stalk, possibly two, thrusting upward through the dirt.
Harvest
the stalks by snapping or cutting them at or near the ground line. Do it as soon as they are eating size, say
five or so inches, which generally means the first morning you see them, or
perhaps the second. Do not make
the common mistake of waiting until there are “enough to eat.” Gardeners who do this are waiting still, no
matter how long their asparagus rows!
Cutting
the stalks stimulates the roots to send up more. And if you don’t cut them, they will grow tall and begin leafing
out into summer mode.
Rather,
what you must do is put the harvested stalks in a Zip-Loc bag and tuck them
into the crisper drawer. The next
morning you will have several more stalks to keep them company, and as the
season revs up you will find the bag filling up more and more quickly.
Saying Goodbye
Though
some experiments are now in progress for extending the harvest into summer, as
a practical matter asparagus is a spring crop for most of us. Many experts recommend limiting harvest to
four weeks the first year, then eight weeks in ensuing years. Many gardeners believe them, and cease
harvesting by the calendar.
What
I have found in my own garden is that the asparagus itself seems to “know” when
it is time for harvest to end. The
stalks start coming up looking ferny, and have an air of “wanting” to grow out into summer mode. Though it is possible I am
attributing more sentience to this particular biomass than it deserves, or
drink too much beer.
One way or the
other, ceasing the harvest just means leaving the asparagus to do what it’s
going to do, and what it does is grow lush tall fronds that make an attractive
backdrop to tomatoes and other summer crops.
Mulch the row back in and let the stalks stand there photosynthesizing
and working on their root systems throughout the rest of the growing
season. In fact, it is best to leave
them in situ even after they die for the winter, to mark the row in case
anybody gets overzealous with the tiller come spring.
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| Asparagus grows tall and leafs out in summer mode, providing a ferny backdrop to the veggie patch. |
In conclusion,
growing asparagus at home requires a considerable investment in time up front
but is very little trouble thereafter.
Further, it affords the gardener the satisfaction of looking at the price
asked for the delicious green stalks at the store and saying smugly to the grocer:
“This is a joke,
right?”
