Longer, warmer days work function as a Siren call to
gardeners.” It’s time. It’s time. It’s time to plant.” Tillers and shovels turn
over winter-rested soil in plots around town while grocery stores and garden
shops advertise seed potatoes and onion sets. Aggressive green thumbs have tiny
shoots of lettuce, radishes, and spinach peeking through and stretching toward
the sunshine. Our patch isn’t that far along yet, but we’re celebrating a
landmark at our house—we picked our first homegrown asparagus this week!
Since I was a child, asparagus has meant springtime to me.
This began when the eight-year-old me discovered a bed of the funny looking
shoots in an abandoned field on my way home from school. I didn’t know what the
alien-looking stuff was so a neighbor boy and I plucked a stem and took it home
for my mom to identify. She immediately identified it and warned me not to
trespass and steal. I assured her this came from an empty lot that didn’t have
a house anywhere near it. Knowing what I know now, I realize this must have
been an old, old plot growing where a home once stood.
Not long after that, my mom cooked asparagus for our family,
and I discovered it tasted much better than it looked. Once I got married,
asparagus became a rite of spring at our house because my husband liked it
every bit as much as I did. We had a couple of fronds growing in the yard of
our first home, so we looked forward to sampling the few bites we harvested
each season.
Once we moved to the country, we found a few shoots growing
wild along our creek. Again, we’d relish those fresh spears, but there were
never enough to make a mess of our favorite spring veggie. We bought and
planted crowns a couple of years in a row, but due to bad weather conditions,
they never took off. I swore then that if I ever had a yard with good soil, I’d
have my own asparagus bed with enough to share.
Finally, that dream is coming true. One of first plantings in our new home was a
long row of asparagus crowns. We studied the complicated planting procedures
and followed them. We learned that successfully growing asparagus takes effort
and time. We planted in April and didn’t see a single sprout until August of
that year. We’d begun to think we’d wasted time, effort, and money. Despite
their slow start, once those shoots peeped through, they thrived.
The patience part came into play the following spring. The
asparagus rulebook says you can’t harvest asparagus the first few seasons it
grows in your garden. You have to let those roots get well established, so you
water it, tend it, trim back the foliage in the fall, and think longingly about
tender spears of buttery goodness for at least two seasons.
That brings me to the moment. We ate our first mess of
homegrown asparagus this week. Each of us had enough on our plates that we
could gobble to our hearts content. This
wasn’t a tiny sampling. It was a feast. The flavorful shoots were so tender
they melted in our mouths. That isn’t something I can say about store bought
asparagus.
So thirty-eight years into marriage, we finally have an
asparagus bed big enough to harvest more than a few tiny tastes of spring. Watching
us savor each forkful, you’d agree that it’s been worth the patience and the
work.
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