Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Asparagus Update April 28



With a forecast of -6 a few nights ago, three of us went out to the aspargus field and picked any tips that were up on our sandy ridge that warms up early. We picked for about an hour and found about five or six pounds of delicious, young tender (very short) tips. My granddaughter is very proudly displaying the tallest tip that she found, then very quickly ate just as soon as she posed for the picture.


We will be picking asparagus just as soon as it quits freezing at night and it warms up to seasonal temperatures.

This RAIN that we are getting today is very, very badly needed as we have been extremely dry.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Planting Broad Beans


I got in the second planting of broad beans yesterday. The first planting was on April 4, which is about a week earlier than normal. The rows are 650 feet long and we plant two rows each time. Broad Beans are planted by hand, because the seed is much too big and won't fit though our mechanical planter.

New Rhubarb

It has been nice and warm for a few days now so everything is starting to come back to life after the winter. This picture is of our rhubarb patch. The rhubarb is about 4" tall. There is nothing that tastes better than that first feed of delicious young tender steamed rhubarb with just a little dollop of vanilla ice cream!!

First New Asparagus Spear!!

Nice warm day today, so I went out to the asparagus field and sure enough, there were the first few tiny little tips adventuring out of the ground. April 20 is about the earliest that the asparagus has ever been up. This is telling us that the asparagus is alive and well and eager to get growing, but we need frost free nights before we will actually be able to get enough growth to start picking. There is a low of -3 in the forecast, so I don't think that we will be started picking for a few days, yet.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Removing Old Fern From Asparagus Field

The asparagus field is also completely dry so, although it is very early, we got the grain combine out and cut last year's old fern off of the asparagus field. The combine cuts the old fern off at the ground, chops it all up and spreads it back on the field for mulch.
We have never before been able to get the entire field done at the first attempt, there are usually several wet spots that we have to wait on.

Early Seeding of Peas


It is unbelievably early (April 3) but the ground is dry and warm so I put in a small planting of our delicious sweet and tender garden peas and one double row of broad beans . The earliest that we have ever planted in the past has been April 10 and we have been doing the market garden peas since 1986.
Peas are very frost tolerant in the spring.
If the weather was to stay this unseasonably warm, we could potentially be picking peas the end of June. Picture is of our precision seed drill and our little tractor that I use to plant our 25 or so acres of garden peas and beans every year.
We sure could use some rain, it is very dry.