Years ago, we made a few raised beds around our made from scraps greenhouse. In one of the beds I deposited a bunch of horseradish roots that were hanging around the farm, and while I was planting said roots, my hubs presented me with a handful of asparagus crowns.
I plunked the crowns into one of the raised beds and then proceeded on, kinda forgetting they existed for most of the year as I was a little more preoccupied with young children, 300+ lavender plants, a garden the size of West Texas, homeschooling, and a job at the library. The most attention I paid the asparagus was to ooh a bit when I saw a couple lacy fronds bloom out of the one or two spears that would come up every year.
However, last year I decided to pay attention to the asparagus after telling myself to do so for like the last three or four years or so. (Side note: It's amazing how many more things you get to when your kids become competent and functional teens:). Anyway, I weeded out the bed, added some compost, and spent the winter with hope that more than just a few asparagus spears would emerge.
Well guess what! I got asparagus! And it was nice in size, and there's more on the way! Now, admittedly there's only enough for one person to enjoy a nice serving, but as I'm the only one in my house that really loves the stuff, I am still pretty excited about this development.
Asparagus, aside from being delicious, contains a lot of nutrients and fiber without being super calorie dense. I love to toss asparagus with olive oil, salt, pepper, and minced garlic, roast it in the oven, and squeeze fresh lemon juice on the resulting roasted veg of gloriousness. Pickled asparagus spears are also a snack of excellence!
This summer I plan on keeping the bed well-weeded and properly amended with applications of glorious compost. I'm not really sure if horseradish and asparagus are meant to be companion plants, but they seem to have gotten along all of these years. When the asparagus blooms out all dark green and lacy fronds, it looks pretty striking against the backdrop of lime green horse radish leaves.
And on that note, I must run. This is the busiest of times for me on the farm, our daylight hours are getting longer, the weather is warming, and plant life is just exploding out of the ground. My next post will most likely be about what I have been up to in my downsized vegetable garden, it's only 80X100 this year, but I reconfigured everything to be a lot more integrated and permacultury (that's totally a word).
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still sighing at the shameless photobombing Corgi's behavior iPhone
