I have started cutting the asparagus, a mere handful of spears each time. I suddenly noticed a few days ago that there were a few stems ready to harvest. Since then I've read that St George's day was the traditional start of the asparagus season, but I didn't know that when I cut them.
Apparently the UK is set for a bumper harvest, because last year's good summer and this year's mild spring are what asparagus likes. I don't think that will apply to our crop. I haven't looked after it very well, indeed, when I started clearing the vegetable patch over the winter I had grave doubts whether it was still alive. There didn't seem to be many old fronds from last year, and asparagus is one of those plants that disappears completely below ground in winter with no dormant buds at ground level to reassure you that there's still life down there.
The current bed is my second attempt, which put us back for starters when you're supposed to give plants time to become established and build up their strength before cutting any spears at all. I planted the first one in the ground without doing much to it first, having read that asparagus liked good drainage and thinking we had that. A few sad stems pushed their way up through what seemed almost a solid carpet of stones, and were eaten by a pest which may have been the asparagus beetle. I decided it was time to start again in a different bed, this time boosted by the addition of lots of compost, and bought some pot grown plants that were going cheap at work after the manager had potted up some packaged roots that were left languishing unsold in their bags.
Unfortunately due to a communications failure with the Systems Administrator when the SA was going through a vegetable growing stage they were dug up and thrown on the compost heap. I rescued as many pots as I could find and replanted them. They were supposed to be an all male variety, but as some carried berries and bird sown asparagus started popping up in the gravel they clearly weren't. There hadn't been enough pots to fill the whole bed, and two or three years ago I sent off to one of the seed companies for some bare rooted plants of an allegedly superior variety. There followed a horrendously dry summer, and while I tried to water them they were a long way from the house and there were a lot of other possibly dying plants that needed watering as well.
I did manage to get the bed weeded and Strulched, and for a while it looked under control, but last year I don't think it was weeded at all, and by then the covering of Strulch had broken down, so it was a sadly overgrown and weedy asparagus patch that greeted me this winter when I decided to try and have another go. Some of the most recently planted posh plants had become exposed, so that the central part of the clump was above the level of the soil, held in place by its surrounding circle of roots. They looked completely dessicated and very unpromising.
I gave it a preliminary weed which got the big stuff out, though I need to go round again and scrape out more oxalis, and delve away at the running roots of a grass that's set up camp in the middle. And there are a couple of bramble roots I haven't got out completely, and some strawberry plants that rooted from runners making a break from the strawberry bed, and that can stay there just for the minute in case I need them. But the asparagus is no longer competing with any large weeds, and I have watered it once or twice. I intend to spread a layer of mushroom compost over the bed, just as soon as I can get round to it, which the exposed roots will probably appreciate. They are throwing up a few incredibly thin and weedy shoots from underground, so are not dead yet. Indeed, I've a feeling I've read about asparagus fields surviving ploughing, so the essential life of the plant must be located quite far down.
I've only taken my small crop from the older plants, which have been sending up some good fat spears as well as the weedy sprue, and I reckon are strong enough to take it, though I don't think I'll be picking until June. There was nowhere near enough for it to be worth serving with hollandaise sauce, but it made a good flavouring for a couple of cheese flans. Home grown asparagus and our own eggs, but that's as close to the Good Life as it's going to get, since we are definitely not keeping a cow.
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