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Thursday, April 03, 2008

Planting for the Future

This morning we got up nice and early with big plans to plant the 250 asparagus crowns that came via UPS 2 days ago. Yesterday Eugene deep forked and than hand dug trenches in 5 50' beds and I made up a cocktail of dry amendments to put in the trenches along with compost ahead of the asparagus crowns.

Got to work putting down the amendments and than placing the crowns every 12 inches when I discovered we had an extra 35 or so asparagus plants. This surprise meant Eugene got to trench a 6th bed while I ran back to the barn and made up more dry amendments and than kept filling up wheelbarrows of wet compost and brought the compost back to the asparagus beds and than put shovelfuls of compost on top of the crowns. Finally we had enough area trenched for all the crowns. Put the last 35 of them in the last trench along with the compost and dry amendments and they were ready to be covered with dirt.

In 2 years we will be able to start harvesting the spears for the next 15 to 20 years. So a lot of work today for a lot of asparagus for decades to come. Now we have a total of 535 asparagus plants. 250 we planted 2 years ago and the 285 planted today.

That's planting for the future

1 comment:

valereee said...

I planted 8 crowns two years ago. This will be my first harvest, and I am so excited! I can't wait to see them come up. We always had an asparagus patch when I was a kid, and my dad would get the water boiling before he sent me out with a knife to harvest.