Year: 2012

A meal of fresh asparagus picked from the garden and brought
into the house for a quick sauté in butter and a sprinkle with salt is one of
the first signs of spring in my garden.  The
first indication that anything is growing in my asparagus patch is the green
spears that push through the mulch and look like the ones you buy in the
grocery store.  After I pick the
asparagus for about 6 weeks for my mature patch, I stop picking and allow the
plants to grow.  The spears grow into 3
feet tall feathery bushes with foliage that resembles that of a very
fine-leafed fern, and visitors to my garden are often mystified as to the
identity of those strange plants.

 

Garden centers and catalogs sell seed year-round, and they
sell crowns, which are dormant asparagus roots, in the late winter and early
spring.  Start seeds in early
spring.  Some common varieties are the
heirloom “Mary Washington,” which has male and female plants, “Jersey Knight,”
a hybrid with all-male plants, and “Purple Passion,” a hybrid with purple spears.  All-male plants produce bigger harvests than
female plants because they do not waste energy making seeds.

Crowns, although they are the most expensive way to start
asparagus, produce an asparagus harvest more quickly than plants started from
seed.  Plant them as soon as you obtain
them about six inches deep.  After
planting and watering the crowns, cover the bed with 4 to 6 inches of mulch,
leaving a small opening on top of every crown for the first tiny spears to
emerge.  After the spears emerge, tuck
mulch around the spears.  In subsequent
years, mature plants have no trouble pushing spears through the mulch, so cover
the entire bed with mulch. 

Unlike the asparagus you see in the grocery store, homegrown
asparagus varies in diameter, but all tastes the same.  Harvest asparagus when it is 6 to 8 inches
tall by pulling over the stalk until it snaps. 
If I don’t have enough for a meal, I store spears for a few days in the
refrigerator, with the ends wrapped in a moist paper towel in a closed plastic bag. 

Harvest no asparagus the first and second springs after
planting if the plants were started from seed because the plant needs to devote
all its energy to growing larger. 
Finally, the third spring, harvest asparagus for a couple of weeks.  When the newly sprouted spears look
consistently pencil-skinny, it is time to stop harvesting.  In subsequent years, harvest until the spears
become skinny, usually after 6 to 8 weeks of harvest. 

Harvest a few spears the second year after planting if the
plants were started from crowns, and harvest for 6 to 8 weeks in subsequent
years, but stop when the spears begin to be skinny.  The remaining spears will grow into ferny
little trees to adorn the garden until frost. Harvesting for longer than
recommended weakens the plants.

Winter is a great time to prepare an asparagus patch.  The weather is pleasant for work, and fall
leaves are available for mulch.  Asparagus
is one of the easiest vegetables to grow, but planting it does require some
planning since a healthy asparagus patch can produce spears for decades.  Choose a site with well-drained soil in full
sun. 

Enrich the soil with compost, organic fertilizer, and lime
if the soil requires it.  Eradicate any
serious weed problems before planting because tilling the soil among the plants
is impossible, and removing invasive weed roots from among the spears is a
tedious job.  If you don’t have enough
room to devote an entire bed to asparagus, mix in some plants with your perennial
flowers.  Asparagus comes up at about the
same time spring bulbs bloom, and the mature foliage complements flowers. 

I wish my guineas, The Pearl and Mr. Cuteypants (named by my
6-year-old daughter) would learn to fly on purpose.  It shouldn’t be that hard, should it?  Most birds do it all the time.  I imagine normal birds think about flying the way we think
about walking: “Oh, dear, there’s a dog I need to escape.  I will fly to safety.”  They fly to safety.  “Now the dog is gone, so I’ll fly back to my
nest.”  They fly home. 

Guineas apparently lack such logical thought, because nearly
every day I have to help them solve some problem.  A few weeks ago,  I went out after dark to close the
hen house door.  The guineas were absent.  I found The Pearl inside the 6-foot-tall fence
surrounding the garden, and I found Mr. Cuteypants outside the fence opposite
The Pearl.  Both birds had snuggled
themselves on the ground, separated only by the fence wire, for the night, ignoring the supposedly powerful
instincts they have to fly up to roost at night. 

The Pearl and Mr. Cuteypants

I managed to chase Mr. Cuteypants into the pen with the
chickens, but I did not even try to get The Pearl out of the garden and into
the pen.  I still have a scar on my leg
from the last time I tried to remove him from the garden at night.  The next morning, The Pearl paced along the
fence in agitation because he was not with the rest of the birds.  I went out into the garden and chased him
(keeping a safe distance from his claws) until he was sufficiently startled to
fly over the fence and out of the garden.

Another night, I had some of the chickens inside my fenced garden to do some clean-up work of frost-damaged bean plants.  I put up a temporary fence to keep the chickens away from growing plants and to direct the chickens to sleep in the guinea castle my husband built in which the guineas refused to sleep.  Somehow, because I put their favorite chicken, pictured below beside them on the roost, in the pen inside the garden,  they figured out how to get inside the walled garden, inside the temporary fence, and into the guinea house.

They got into the guinea house, but do you think they could figure out how to get back OUT of the garden in the morning?

One evening, as I walked across the yard, I was astonished to see the guineas fly across the yard and onto the roof of the house.  They seemed as surprised as I was by their sudden ability to fly to such heights. They walked around for awhile on the roof, and, despite my worries that they wouldn’t figure out how to get off the roof and would stay there, squawking, all night, they did manage to figure out how to get off the roof.

 

The guineas appear to become alarmed about something and fly
out of the pen, without conscious thought. 
Then they circle the pen, trying desperately to fit through the
electrified netting (which apparently does not shock them) the way they were
able to when they were smaller.  Now they
cannot fit through the holes, and they cannot remember how in the world they
managed to get out of the pen.  My
husband says I should just leave them alone, and eventually they will figure
out how to get back into the pen.  That
may be true, but I do feel sorry for them when they are separated from the rest
of the flock and pace around the pen for hours while they try desperately to
get back inside. 

This is when I started worrying about whether or not they could figure out how to get off the roof…

Every day I say something along the lines of, “Poor Mr.
Cuteypants.  You really are too stupid to
live.  God bless you.”  Or, “Mr. Cuteypants, you goofy bird, stop
that!”  My mother reminds Mr. Cuteypants
that he was once in the mouth of a blacksnake and that he should behave.  He (she) doesn’t care.

Names notwithstanding, I think Mr. Cuteypants is a female,
because he (she) calls “buck-wheat!” or “pot-black!” when something unusual
happens.  The Pearl has larger wattles
than Mr. Cuteypants, and does not say “buck-wheat.”  He also tends to bully the other birds.  Mr. Cuteypants scolds visitors to my home,
but he knows who lives here and doesn’t scold the residents.

My husband saw The Pearl running across the yard, with Mr. Cuteypants following behind him.  Poor Mr. Cuteypants looked away, and The Pearl stopped running.  Mr. Cuteypants rear-ended The Pearl, resulting in a squawking mass of feathers flying into the air as they scared each other.  I saw Mr. Cuteypants trip over a root and fall on his face.

Mr. Cuteypants doesn’t scold our dachshunds either, but he knows
deer don’t belong in the yard.  How he knows all this
but he cannot figure out how to fly on purpose is beyond me.  The existence of guineas, with their crazy
behavior and wild punk rock spiked neck hair, are, along with dachshunds, proof
that God has a sense of humor.

This week, The Pearl redeemed himself for eternity for all his antics by chasing a hawk out of the chicken pen.  A hawk descended into the pen, and all the chickens ran into the chicken house.  Mr. Cuteypants flew out of the pen in agitation, but The Pearl fought against the hawk, scaring him away where he tried to recover his pride about twenty feet off the ground in a pine tree.  The Pearl flew up near the hawk, continuing the attack, and the hawk flew away into the woods.  Of course, at bedtime, I had to hold up the fence so The Pearl could slip under the fence and back into the pen with the chickens.