Saturday 1 October 2022
On Growing Asparagus
It appears that the right time to begin gardening is last year. For many things it is well to begin the year before last. For good results one must begin even sooner. Here, for example, are the directions, as I interpret them, for growing asparagus.
Having secured a suitable piece of ground, preferably a deep friable loam rich in nitrogen, go out three years ago and plough or dig deeply. Remain a year inactive, thinking. Two years ago pulverize the soil thoroughly. Wait a year. As soon as last year comes set out the young shoots. Then spend a quiet winter doing nothing. The asparagus will then be ready to work at this year.
Stephen Leacock - Frenzied Fiction (1918)
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When we bought our house it had an asparagus bed. We soon learnt it was useless and dug it up. A friend offered us some unwanted crowns. So we dug a lot of peat and compost into our clay and planted them. We got useful crops for a good while until they too petered out. Since we can readily buy delicious Fen asparagus locally we shan't grow our own again. The bed now hosts tomatoes which are far tastier than any we can find commercially. For the other 85% of the year we simply don't eat tomatoes.
Could apply to anything, couldn't it, but I have a contemporary example concerning the only genuine XR member I have knowingly spoken with.
He was complaining about farmers growing wheat, saying how it was a disastrous monoculture that was bad for the wildlife diversity and so forth. He said that there was an alternative: chestnut flour, apparently nutritious and tasty. I'd definitely give it a go.
But it requires the farmer to forgo the profit on his wheat fields for X years (how long before the chestnut tree is fruitful enough to turn a profit?) and to acquire new plants, new kit, and new skills. For a product that might turn out to be dud.
Of course, if you forced farmers to do stuff at gunpoint, people would starve and then be grateful for anything at any price.
dearieme - we tried growing asparagus because my father was quite successful, but our attempt wasn't a great success. We find supermarket tomatoes can be okay as long as they aren't too cheap. They aren't as good as home grown, but we don't grow them, so we don't notice the difference.
Sam - chestnut flour sounds as if it is worth trying. We could say that cities are disastrous monocultures that are bad for wildlife diversity.
I've tried chestnut flour, it can be bought in Italy; there it seems to be something people treat themselves to occasionally, to remember the 'good old days' when they were starving peasants with nothing else to eat.
djc - yes, it sounds like a last resort food for starving peasants.
Asparagus has never been an easy veg to grow and you do have to wait a couple of years with newly planted crowns before the first crop, they are fussy need looking after have a short season and to be honest in an area like ours it is easier to buy them from a farm shop.
I have grown asparagus but admitted defeat after a few years.
Wiggia - we didn't have much success either. Now we just buy it, as we do for almost all our veg.
The veg that we "must" grow ourselves include sweet corn - if you've not eaten sweet corn that was harvested only minutes before you have missed a treat. Also potatoes so that we get the varieties we particularly enjoy. We grow globe artichokes in the sun and, in the shady, claggy part of the garden, Jerusalem artichokes. We often grow beans but, strangely, peas don't flourish in our soil. Also Rocket grows as a weed for us. Yum, yum.
But more than veg we find it imperative to grow our own herbs.
dearieme - we grow lots of herbs quite successfully and a few odds and ends of easy veg on a small scale, such as spuds, spring onions, beetroot and radishes. Peppers this year too, but they weren't great.
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