Not just another UFO, the sun was actually sighted this morning shortly after the snowfall stopped. I was quite excited. The first little birds of spring were singing too. Only the prunings off of 325 trees left to pick up and chip. I like to tell myself, “Exercise is good for you. One day you will get yours in the gym.” There is light at the end of the tunnel. What gets me is that there are weeds in the snow. They look like they are green and starting to grow. How can this be?
There are a few more winter chores to do first, like pruning the grapevines and some of my little apple tree collection, but if it stayed nice and sunny for a few days I could have it all taken care of this week. I might even get to spray the peach trees with copper before it rains again to prevent peach leaf curl, a fungal infection that begins over winter and shows damage to the peach leaves later in the year.
Back in the greenhouse, I’ve a crop of asparagus starting to grow. Backtrack 13 years — when we first took over the farm here, a helpful person mistakenly rototilled a large portion of the established asparagus patch. A few plants survived. Over the years, I’ve found a few growing wild around the rest of the farm so that we can usually have a few dinners of our own homegrown veggies. Most of the time, we usually buy from down the road.
In any case, the nursery sells the two- or three-year-old roots, but being busy in spring and short on space it never seems to get replanted. A few weeks back, I went to the remainder of the asparagus patch and stripped off all the seed. Semi-frozen, I put them in a bucket and crushed the berries (correct term is maceration). The seeds cling to the berries, so you add water and let it sit around for a few days before repeating the process. You want clean seeds soaking in fresh water.
Anyhow, for most plants’ seeds in the northern hemisphere, you need to give them a fake winter called stratification or, for bulbs, vernalization. So I added a little clean vermiculite to the bucket and left it in the cold part of the greenhouse, just in case they needed more cold time. A plastic bag in the fridge with moist peat moss works best around the home. Then I seeded them in my usual fashion. It looks like I will have enough to plant a city lot at the space of one foot between plants (called crowns) and four feet between rows.
Asparagus plants that produce seed are females. Males “crowns” will actually produce more weight in stalk in a field production scenario. They are planted deep in furrows and these are filled in a few inches at a time over a season, with good garden soil or well-rotted compost. As previously mentioned, the crowns for sale are usually two or three years old and my new plants are but seedlings and not for sale.
I admit it. I like to try growing just about anything. Seeds, cuttings, whatever — it’s all part of the fun!
Evan Davies owns Beltane Nursery at 2915 Highway 3 in Erickson.