Asparagus is back

These tasty spears will turn into eight foot tall ferns if I don't cut them and eat them!

I had a first flush of asparagus during that ultra warm weather we had in March and then the frost came and it hid from the cold.  The last couple of days have been warm and the rain last weekend helped a lot. Last night I cut a full two pounds. Tonight just a pound, but it will keep coming now until the end of May when I let it go to fern.

My friends who wish they had asparagus growing in their backyards,  can't believe you have to wait three years from planting to first harvest, but you do. That's just the way it is.  So I encourage them to plant now - which is no small job since you have to dig a 18 inch deep trench about a foot wide.  You plant one asparagus crown about every to two feet and they are sold in packages of 25. So do the math. The crowns are about a foot across so that is 75 feet of trench - best to do it in two rows at a minimum.  We have the perfect soil for asparagus and once its established it will go on for twenty years of more.

Anyway, while you are waiting three years for your very own nectar of the gods,  fresh cut sweet wonderful asparagus, you can go foraging for wild asparagus along the country roads. We foraged for years before we finally broke down and planted an asparagus bed.

Wild asparagus is exactly like tame asparagus, so there is no reason not to go foraging.   You will have to look out for poison ivy and you will have to shower ticks off you as soon as you get home (and throw your clothes in the washer right away) but other than that, you can come home with several pounds of asparagus in just an hour or two of foraging. Just ride your bike or walk along the road looking for last year's tall brown dead fern leaves (asparagus is really a big fern like plant when you let it grow).  Rummage around in the grass and weeds along fence rows and you will find asparagus growing wild.  You might still be able to find a copy of Euell Gibbons book "Stalking the Wild Asparagus".  This little book is a handy guide for all kinds of food foraging. Talk about eating local, you can't get much more local than that.