Asparagus

 Once upon a time, probably about 18 years ago, I planted some asparagus crowns in my garden.  With great expectations of years and years of future crops, and jars of pickled asparagus for DH.

Asparagus takes a little bit to get established, and you have to be careful not to harvest too much too soon.  So the first few years we rejoiced in our meager harvest and ate fresh asparagus a few times each Spring, but never canned any.

Well, as the years went by, instead of getting more abundant, my asparagus patch seemed to be dwindling.  So much so that probably a dozen years ago I purchased and planted more crowns in a few new rows alongside the original patch.  Those crowns never did much.  Out of the dozen that I planted, I think I may have had five measly sickly looking sprouts.  Which I diligently left alone to feed the crowns so that they'd send up more and thicker spears the next year.

Until 2022, when I decided enough was enough, and I was done with that failed asparagus patch.  I dug up and transferred into a new row in a different part of the garden the few fruitful crowns that existed.  Then I had DH till up the old asparagus bed.

Meanwhile, I had noticed in 2021 a few spots around this little place here where rogue asparagus has popped up and was growing.  Asparagus apparently spread by the birds, from the seedheads that my few original asparagus plants produced each Fall when I let the spears grow into ferns to feed the crowns.  Asparagus gone feral, now growing on the lawn side of the rock wall (at least 20 yards from the asparagus bed), and in a spruce tree on the edge of the lawn, and beside the base of a maple tree out by the orchard, and at the base of another maple tree close to the house. . . 

Those I also dug up (after harvesting the spears), and transplanted the crowns this past Spring into the new asparagus row.

Feral asparagus from the spruce tree!

All the transplanted crowns grew in their new location, sending up new wispy spears over the summer.  Fingers crossed they like the new spot and I'll have lots of asparagus for eating as well as pickling.

Not only did the transplanted crowns grow, but in the old asparagus bed, where DH tilled, dozens of new baby spears sprouted.  They sprouted, and I hand dug to their base and found the crown they'd come from.  Then I transplanted that crown to the new row.  And another row.  And another row.  Throughout the Summer and into the early Fall. Every time I thought I had surely gotten every viable crown, more sprouts would appear in the old asparagus bed.  What had started the year as six known productive crowns turned into THREE new rows of asparagus, probably easily three dozen crowns.

I'm really curious as to see, in May when asparagus tends to emerge here, how many plants I have.