Garden Progress

Life has been busy.  I have made time for gardening in between responsibilities but there has not been time for blogging.  A lot has happened since the last post and here is a quick recap.

 The final beds in the garden were amended after I cleared all the weeds out.

 A second succession of peas were planted.  Swiss chard, parsnips, cosmos, zinnias, dill and cilantro seed were all planted.  I'm a little late on some of these things but better late than never.

 An unimpressive 4 of 16 asparagus plants came up.  They are about the height of a pencil but incredibly skinnier.  It's about time I realize I do not have a good site for asparagus.  I will try them again when we eventually move.

 It's been fun watching volunteer seedlings pop up from plants that went to seed last year, like this little dill.

This is why I need to get an indoor light system going.  My windowsill is bulging with seedlings started inside and they are growing leggy from trying to reach towards the sky.  Most of these are in the process of being hardened off outside right now.  The seedlings consist of basil, Fantasia and Music Box sunflowers, dianthus, and snapdragons.

This past weekend a bunch of work was done and I will post about it soon.  We also have a big week ahead.  I plan on changing some plants in our landscaping, mulching, finishing plantings for the summer garden and our new bees are coming.  We ordered Carniolan bees from California this year instead of the Italian bees from Georgia we have gotten the past two years.

Asparagus

8 out of 10 crowns that I planted this year have so far come up.  Hopefully this year's crowns will be more successful than last years.  If they don't come back up next year then I am done with asparagus at this property and will try again the next time we move.

Spoke Too Soon

A few weeks ago I was cheering that the asparagus did not die over the winter and was coming in.  Although it seems I spoke too soon.  I only ended up with two tiny spears and next to the popsicle stick you can see they aren't worth cheering over.

It appears that the crowns did die when they were exposed around the time we had actually seasonal winter weather, during an ice storm.  So it was time to dig them up and replace them so that I don't loose yet another year since asaparagus crowns have to go at least a year before you can harvest from them.

I thought about ordering live plants but since I was making a last minute decision and wanted to get them in the ground while there was still time I bought crowns from a local nursery.  I went with the all male variety Jersey Knight.  Last year I crowded 16 crowns in a 4x4 area spacing them 12 inches apart.  Asparagus should really be planted about 18 inches apart.  Thinking that maybe overcrowding was part of the issue I replanted the same area with only 9 crowns and then added a tenth off to the side since the package came with 10.

Here's hoping I have better luck this next year!

Asparagus

I can't really count this as my harvest because I didn't grow it but I did help to pick it from my Dad's over the weekend.  I have asparagus envy, I was wishing our asparagus was able to be picked.

WaHoo!

I have been watching our asparagus beds carefully for a couple of weeks now waiting for them to come up.  I was starting to get worried that their mid-winter exposure might have killed them off and they weren't going to come up at all.  In fact I figured if they didn't come up by the end of this week I would need to go buy new roots to start over with.

But then after our mulching project I was surveying the garden when I spied this guy.  He sprung up over night because the day before I had scoured the bed looking very closely hoping to see a sign of asparagus and found nothing.  Here is hoping the rest follow along soon!

Exposed Crowns

We've had a lot of mild weather recently.  I went out to see if the asparagus might be coming up because many of our other plants think it's time.  I went out hoping that they haven't started to come up yet because I am afraid February might not be kind to them. 

I got out to the raised bed to find that the crowns have become exposed.  This worried me because I wondered if they were exposed during the ice storm we had a few weeks ago.  It seems with all the rain we have had alot of my soil has become displaced outside the beds.

So I immediately went to the garden center and bought some bags of topsoil to recover the crowns and protect them from possible harsh weather.  I am really hoping that no damage has been done.  We planted the crowns last year.  So being their first year we didn't take a harvest and just allowed them to grow.  This year will be the first year we can take a light harvest from them.  I will be devestated if we lost a year and have to start over.

Exposed crowns, they look like pieces of straw sticking up.

You can see how low the soil has become in the boxes and the mulch that the rain has displaced into the boxes.

Freshly covered and protected.

WaHoo!

Last year I refused  to plant asparagus because I didn't want to give up any portion of the garden to something that couldn't be moved or I couldn't change my mind about.  But this year I realized we like asparagus too much not to have it in our garden.  We even designated 1/6th of the garden expansion just to asparagus.

I planted the asparagus almost a month ago.  All hope had pretty much been given up that it would grow in, with all the rain we have had I even thought maybe the roots had rotted.  One day leaving the house out of the corner of my eye I noticed a skinny looking stick poking out of the ground.  I was on my way to work and late as it was so I didn't have time to inspect.  When I got home I completely forgot about it until a day later when I went out to monitor the garden.  As I was out there I found out it was true, the asparagus started to grow in.  Since then I have spent at least five minutes a day staring at the asparagus patch watching the new growth and wondering when the others will finally come in.  Only about half of the crowns have come in but I haven't given up hope on the other half just yet.

Spring Planting

Over the weekend I was able to get some of our plantings started.  It rained so hard Saturday it was too muddy so I waited until Sunday afternoon when the ground had dried out enough.  Unfortuneatly it got dark before I could finish everything.  I wasn't going to get the lamp out again, I do have my limits.  Hopefully later this week I will be able to get the rest of our Spring seeds in. 

Broccoli transplants and a new Rosemary plant in the back.

It's a very unexciting picture.  But behind the four sticks are the rows of onions and garlic I planted.  The onions are Yellow Stuttgarter.  I planted them 4 inches apart which seemed a bit close hopefully they get big enough.  This year I decided against growing red onions since I don't use them as often and the variety I chose last year did quite poorly.  We go through yellow onions much faster so I decided it would be better use of our space only to plant yellow this year.  The garlic variety is California and those were planted 6 inches apart. 

  

The asparagus patch, I planted 16 plants.  Each is marked with a stick so I know exactly where they are and can watch for the new growth.  I planted mostly Jersey Knight and some Jersey Giant.  Even though I normally prefer heirloom plants I opted against the heirloom Martha Washington so I don't have to worry about self seeding.  I only put a couple of inches of dirt on top of the roots.  You aren't supposed to completely cover them in the beginning.  As they grow rest of the dirt gets filled in around them.  I have read differening opinions on spacing ranging from 12-18 inches.  I wanted to fit as much in as possible so I went with 12 inches.

And people wonder why I don't love our neighbor's Magnolia tree.  If you need a reminder look a couple of posts down at the pretty, clean mulch of last week.  This is only half the petals the other half has yet to drop.  They are slippery and the leaves in the Fall are even worse.

Asparagus

This week I pulled my potted asparagus experiment out of the garage and back outside.  I originally put it in the garage because I was afraid that it wouldn't make it through the winter since it isn't insulated the way an in-ground asparagus plant is.  The garage isn't insulated so the asparagus experienced a milder winter than it would have outside.  We will see what happens with this experiment.  I have been contemplating adding a bed just for asparagus in our new garden plans.

Very Cold

Tonight it is going down to 4 degrees.  A bit unseasonalbly cold for this time of year, we normally don't get these temps until mid January.  I have decided to bring the potted asparagus into the garage.  It is sitting below the glass block windows so it will still get some indirect sunlight.  Being in a container it has already frozen solid and doesn't have the protection of being in ground.  The leaves have begun to die back so I figure it's ok to bring it in since it has gone dormant.  I will put it back out once temps raise back up into the 30s and 40s regularly in a couple of months.

Asparagus in a Container

I bought this asparagus about a month ago in a moment of delusion.  Then when I got it home realized why this Spring I had decided against asparagus.  It needs to stay put in the same spot for years.  In my little plot and needing to rotate year to year there just wasn't a spot.  But we love asparagus and I got carried away.  I am going to see how well it does in a container.  Some have said that asparagus does just fine in container.  I found this container for free at a local garden center ready to be thrown away so after a month the asparagus finally gets a home that is about 6 times larger than its previous one.  We will see how it goes.