Asparagus I: The Short Version

Asparagus Unveiled:  Demystifying Les Points D’Amour (Part I)

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 asked when her mother explained to her, at age 10, the monthly magic of womanhood:  “This is a joke, right?”

She had a point.  This business of existence as self-aware biomass is a serious thigh-slapper, is it not?  The entertainment we derive 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 to which I refer.  When I began gardening, I had no idea what part of the plant were the toothsome green spears that we eat.  They were not fruits like tomatoes, roots like turnips, nor leaves like lettuce.  So what is asparagus, and what does it look like in the garden?

Answer 1, I soon learned, is that the edible part of asparagus is the shoot that rockets up from the roots as the plant’s first growth; but it does so with such disconcerting 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.

Rather, one leaves the asparagus row an undisturbed expanse of dirt, then returns next morning to find six-inch spears looming above the earth.  One cuts the spears at ground level, leaving the row again vacant – until, next night, the miracle recurs.  It is possible a fairy is involved.

Another element that adds to the asparagus mystique is its price, prohibitive enough to keep it off family tables.  The seasonal spears are historically rich-people food, served to Roman emperors and French aristocrats who called them points d’amour, or “love points.”  But fear not:  give it time and a permanent garden spot and you can have asparagus for almost nothing.

Asparagus grows well everywhere except the swampiest tropics – it requires at least a brief winter dormancy – and it prefers full sun and light, well-drained soil.  For the home gardener, though, the most important consideration is not whether your site is sandy but whether it can withstand the sands of time.  Once planted, asparagus stays put, rewarding you for decades to come with delicious green harvests, but making it a mite awkward to till the rest of the garden each spring if situated in an inside row.  (Do not ask how I know.)

Plant asparagus any time after the soil has warmed; you will not harvest it this year in any case.  You may start from seed but that lengthens the wait until first harvest, so most gardeners begin with first-year crowns – hairy, tarantula-looking root balls from year-old plants, available in most garden centers.

Place the crowns 15 inches apart in a furrow six inches deep.  One can go cross-eyed deliberating which end is up; in fact, they will send forth their tentacles either way.

One can also develop strabismus choosing what variety to grow, what with plant catalogs hyping “new vigorous all-male hybrids,” as opposed to the time-honored but patently female heirloom, Mary Washington. 

Here I must confess to a degree of horticultural gender confusion.  It is true that one might associate “male vigor” with the precipitate skyward thrust of asparagus’s growth habit; but in turning over crowns during the which-way-up dilemma, I cannot say I discerned any clue as to boy- or girlhood.  Thus plant sexuality is one secret of Nature we must leave intact, at least until that nocturnal vigil with the flashlight. 

To be continued ...

Robin Ford Wallace lives in Deerhead Cove, where she plays quietly in the dirt, disturbing no one.