(Romaine lettuce seedlings. May 2008. © Robin)
Two weeks ago M and I started our gardening season by digging and preparing an asparagus bed. We’ve never grown asparagus before, and preparing the bed is a lot of work. It would have been better if we’d started the bed last fall and spent the winter turning in the compost, but by the time we decided to plant asparagus it was too late to do any kind of digging since the ground was frozen and covered with snow.
M has done our gardening over the years. This is my first year as a very active participant in the digging, hoeing, and planting process. Ultimately I’ll take over the gardening, but I need M’s help and expertise to get started. Besides, I’ve discovered that weight workouts are no substitute for outdoor work. I’m a little weak when it comes to digging. I suspect (and expect) that won’t be true by the end of the growing season.
We planted 24 asparagus crowns with high hopes of a future springtime in which we will feast on fresh-from-the-garden asparagus. I blame it on Barbara Kingsolver and her family. She had a whole chapter on asparagus in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. She did such a good job of describing homegrown and freshly picked asparagus that I’ve been yearning for it ever since reading the chapter. We’ll have to wait until year 3 to start harvesting. Asparagus is a good lesson in patience and long-term planning (much like the almost 200 trees we’ve planted on the property and will probably never see fully grown).
Yesterday evening we went out to do a bit of gardening. I planted white onion sets while M planted radish and spring onion seeds. After we had those planted, M went off to retrieve something from the barn while I started watering the seeds, sets, and asparagus crowns. I’d seen no sign of life from the asparagus and was beginning to think we’d done it all wrong and would have to try again next year. I was disappointed, yet I also thought that might give us a chance to prepare the bed the way it should have been prepared.
But then, as I was watering, I noticed something sticking up out of the ground. And then another and another and another. It reminded me of looking for sand dollars on the beach. At first you don’t see any and then, after you spot that first one, you see them everywhere and realize you’d been practically surrounded by them the whole time.
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