I teased you last week by mentioning the start of our asparagus harvest here at Flying Blue Dog Farm. We ate the first few spears about two weeks ago and every 3 or 4 days since have been harvesting big handfuls of tender sweet spears and this is just the beginning of a harvest that will last 4-6 weeks. None of them are making it into the kitchen right now; they are so good they get eaten on the spot.

Asparagus is a perennial vegetable which means you plant it once and it produces for years and years with just a little care. Even if you have a very small garden you can fit some asparagus in somewhere, maybe as a border on one side. It doesn’t take much to get a good harvest as each plant will produce about a half of a pound of spears at maturity. Asparagus can be started from seed or you can purchase 1 year old crowns. Starting with crowns will give you a head start over starting from seeds because they are already a year old.

Because it is a perennial you will want to think about where to plant your asparagus since it will be there for a long time. You want to look for a spot in full sun where the soil drains well. Wet water logged soil in the winter will drown and rot your crowns. Asparagus likes a neutral ph so around here it is a good idea to amend the soil with some lime. Prepare the area where it is to be planted well, add some good compost with the lime and get all the weeds out. Asparagus does not like competition from weeds. This is perhaps the most persnickety part of growing asparagus but it is worth the effort, so weed the area well.

Once the bed is prepared, dig a trench about 6-8 inches deep, sprinkle some bone meal or high phosphorous bird guano in the trench then lay the asparagus crowns in the trench spacing them about 15 inches apart in the row with 3 feet between rows. The spacing between the rows is important because once they have ferned out they will fill the space. Some books advise that you spread the roots out around the crown but I have found that you can pretty much lay them any old way and the asparagus will figure out what to do. Next cover the crowns and fill the trench back up to the original soil level but do not tamp down the soil. Water the crowns in and mulch with straw. If we have no rain remember to water your crowns. My solution to keeping weeds under control is a heavy layer of straw in between the crowns and between the rows.

Your asparagus should be up in a week or two depending on the temperature. Now the hard part is that the first year you can’t have any! The first year is all about getting established and making food for the crowns to grow. The bigger the crown the more spears you get. So your job in the first year is to keep it well watered and weeded and maybe give it some chicken manure once the spears have ferned out. Beginning in the second year you can go ahead and start harvesting spears for a few weeks then you want to let them go and fern out. To harvest you simply snap off 8 inch spears as close to the ground as possible. Once the scales at the tip of a spear have begun to separate the spear begins to develop a woody texture, so stay on top of the harvest. Don’t cut the green ferns down, they are photosynthesizing and making food for the crowns. In a few years time you too will be grazing on an abundance of asparagus. Once winter comes and the ferns have died back on their own you can cut them down close to the ground.

Asparagus is full of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and have a high anti oxidant count too.

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