I spent the morning planting asparagus crowns. After making some price comparisons a while back I ordered these from Mr Fothergill, and was expecting them to be despatched in April, so was taken aback when they arrived last Friday, just before my long weekend working at the plant centre. The instructions said that if you couldn't plant them immediately they should be removed from their packaging (a plastic bag. They would get rather sweaty) but not allowed to dry out. I wrapped them in damp newpaper and put them in a bucket in the study, as we're not lighting a fire in there at the moment and it's cool. I tipped some extra water into the roll of newspaper over the weekend, and they looked fine this morning. I think asparagus roots are quite tenacious of life, based on the fact that our existing plants are doing well now, despite having been accidentally dug up in their youth.
The current asparagus bed is my second attempt at growing it. The first time was not a success. The books said that asparagus required good drainage and normal soil, so I added a bit of fertiliser to the bed and planted a pack of crowns. This was a long time ago, and I'd not yet grasped quite how far short of 'normal' the soil in the top part of the garden is. The asparagus made straw-thin spears and struggled miserably. I decided to bite the bullet and start again, in a different bed, with masses of added home-made compost. I bought some pot grown plants from work, thinking I'd gain a bit of time that way, plus they were going cheap. A while later my other half, on giving up full-time commuting, proclaimed a desire to grow vegatables. I thought this was a splendid idea, since I like eating vegetables and much prefer growing ornamentals. One day I wandered out to the veg patch, and the asparagus seemed to have disappeared. I enquired what had happened to it. 'Oh, was that asparagus? I thought it was the roots of beans or something and dug it up'. I retrieved the (slightly dessicated) rootballs from the compost heap and found a couple that had rolled under a hedge, and replanted them. Three years on the emerging spears equal the thickness of at least the second-best grade of locally grown asparagus at the farm shop, and I think we might cut some this season. At last. I'm only buying more plants to fill up that bed, instead of using part of it for something else, so that we can have more asparagus. A surfeit, after years of famine.
Lettuce production in the next-door field is going at full clatter. They planted up most of it last week, and the last bit today. The young lettuce plants come in trays. From the one commercial horticulture module I did at Writtle I'm sure that these are bought in from a specialist grower, and that our friendly neighbouring lettuce farmer doesn't sow them himself. The trays are stacked on the back of a trailer towed behind a tractor, and two girls slide the lettuces onto a chute, and a mechanism at the bottom somehow plants each one the right way up and firms it in. I'd really like to see that close up as I can't imagine how it works. The lettuce farm did hold an open day a few years ago, but we were on holiday at the time. Two young men walk behind the trailer and sort out any lettuces that the machine has not planted properly. The crop at this time of the year is immediately covered in fleece, which comes folded, on a large roll about 1.5m wide, that two people can carry between them. Once unrolled it is unfolded, and is about 10m wide. The farm workers get the edges straight and hold the fleece down with spadefuls of earth at intervals, then a small tractor with a plough blade drives round the edge of the fleece, turning soil onto it to secure it. It must be tricky getting the fleece spread out on windy days.
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