Oh, hai there!

Spring only truly arrives when I see this in the garden:

ASPARAGUS!

I really should have taken a pic of this earlier.  One day ago it was but an inch tall!  Asparagus, like rhubarb, is known for its ridiculously fast growth (which I still need to procure...)

Not only is asparagus fantastic for being a perennial vegetable, but the speed of its growth just makes you feel like your garden is really working hard.  Plus, have you seen the price of asparagus these days?!  In addition, I can't describe how awesome fresh asparagus is (sprinkled with some parmesan cheese, olive oil, wrapped in proscuitto...mmm).

It's a spring veggie, but on odd occasions, my asparagus has been known to grow a few stalks late in the year, like in August... I'm not complaining!

Once I saw this stalk popping out of the soil I started hunting for others because 1) what sort of meal would be good with just ONE asparagus stalk (that's almost a mournful looking image isn't it?) and 2) if there's one, there's GOTTA be more ready to show their stalk-y self.

AND THERE ARE:

Other good signs are the fern-y leaves:

I purchased my asparagus 3 years ago when they were 2 year old crowns.  Asparagus takes a while to get started and settled into a bed (and really don't like to be moved, though I did do it once for good reason).  When they're 3 years old you can start gently harvesting them, but year 5 (now for mine) is when things really get going I understand so I'm totally REVVED to eat 'sparagus all spring! 

Self seeders. Gotta love 'em. (and some perennial veg goodness thrown in for good measure)

A boon to having a ridiculous amount of plants/herbs: self seeders.

Many years of letting the plants "just go" has made my garden basil/parsley/cilantro/oregano (a perennial.. I know, but it's flowered and seeded too!)/garlic (off shoot bulbs, yada)/Egyptian walking onion (YES!)/dill (sort of) and now recently feverfew, California poppy and bells of Ireland seem to be going on autopilot.  I find my India mustard to be easily self seeding too, but I know I'm supposed to "rotate" my beds and etc to avoid pests and disease.  I try to tear up the mustard from the bed each year and replant it in a different place, but those everlasting seeds always crop right back up in the bed or wherever I've dragged the plant off to.

Not that I mind (I eat all the errant little child plants), but it can be a little weird when I find self sown seedlings in the garden path or in the flower bed or by the trash can.


Ah, an entirely self seeded vegetable/herb garden is THE perfect garden for me...
 
Diane Meucci at Gardens Oy Vey has self seeded Siberian kale ALL over her nursery, not just for looks, but for eatin' too.  Definitely a worthy goal to aspire to. 

On top of the self seeders, I'm working towards the perennial vegetable garden and have the asparagus bed, mache/corn lettuce/lambsquarters, (hopefully sunchokes), strawberries and garlic down.  I'll probably be getting rhubarb sometime soon-ish from my awesome mother in law.  Artichokes are a possibility, but seems a bit limiting for the space they use and I understand that sunflower buds are just as nice.

I'm still working on getting the horseradish to take to the pot I've been babying it in, but it was an abysmal mess last year.  Incredible for horseradish too.

I had an air potato plant that I was worried would be invasive but never got to eat it.  Then I lost the little seed air potatoes in the great frost/amongst the vines.

This book: Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles caught my eye a while back and I am somewhat interested, but I think it's geared towards those who are lucky enough to live in very nice zones, ie 8/9+


If you live in the right climate, lots of vegetables can become perennial.  I hear in Florida eggplants and tomatoes are known to live just about forever .

Either way, I can't move my garden to Florida (and I'm not a huge fan of beaches anyway).  So it's best to make do, get tricky with Mother Nature and build cold frames.  Lots of them.

Grow my pretties, grow!

My first year gardening I built 2 large-ish trellises using branch trimmings borrowed from neighbor's yards. They've been holding up well enough for their shoddy construction, a little rotted twine here, a broken branch there. I just attach a new branch/stick with more twine in an empty or fragile looking place and pray for the best. This year I attempted to plant Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake beans by each of the trellises, but for some reason, be it sun or a pest issue, only one trellis got covered with vines. It seems that the other trellis was not going to get covered with beans despite a second attempt on my part, so I figured I'd try the next best fast growing vine I could think of: cucumbers!

I grew cucumbers last year and was aghast as to how fast the vines grew and smothered everything in its path. This year I figured I'd have it covered, plant fewer seeds and thin, thin, thin. Yeah... that thinning thing is hard for me... it always seemed like such a waste... so once again, the cucumber is taking over. This is not a bad thing per say either; I know plenty of people who like/want cucumber and my husband and I are interested in trying to make kosher dill pickles again (he hates vinegar and the first time we made them it was failure, the jar wasn't big enough and the scum reached the pickles, ick).

It's just that... sometimes the cucumbers... they frighten me. I'll be looking one way and then I turn around and it's though it's grown a foot in front of me! One minute there's a flower and then the next, fruiting.


It's sort of good that I let the cucumbers go to town because I've been noticing some squash vine borer moths flying around the cucumber/strawberry/okra bed, and so I think they've gotten desperate and are going to make their move on the cukes. Fudge muffins. Well, this is why I've got more plant than I need... *sigh*

The irony of me being up to my chin in cucumbers is that my husband doesn't even like them with the exception of an occasional kosher dill pickle. I've found recipes that involving cooking them and he tolerates them a lot more, but it's definitely something he isn't fond of. He also doesn't like melons (cantelopes, watermelons, honeydew... he's a nut!) So, I wonder if his taste buds sense a similar distaste with cucumber as he does with those as they are all in the same family.

As you might have noticed, these cucumbers come armed. Not sure what's up with the black spikies, but my understanding is that the pickling types (this is a cheap seed pack I picked up) tend to be short, stubby and spiky fruited. The spikes come off fairly easily when they are mature enough to pick. A little more prickly when young.
Perhaps I'll go a more exotic route next year in cucumbers, if I do grow them. Maybe something like the Armenian cucumbers that are fuzzy. Gotta love a fuzzy cucumber ;)

My butternut squash seems to still be holding on, though I do note nasty fracas near the base of one of the vines, and the usual suspect is a vine borer. I've allowed another main vine to grow alongside the ground as I noticed it had started producing small white roots. If it roots up well the squash will probably survive as it has alternate routes to get water/nutrients. It's sort of a crap shoot when growing the squash up a trellis too as it might survive the borers better if it was growing fully on the ground to produce more roots where the stem touched, but ground is precious space and if you saw my husband with the spin trimmer, well...
Lookin' good though! I think it needs to turn more yellow and the stem becomes more dry and woody when it's mature enough to eat/cure for storage. Mmmm, butternut squash soup. Vegetable gardening seems sort of morbid in the sense that you grow your "babies" only in anticipation to eat them!

All this cool rainy weather has apparently confused the heck out of the asparagus and it thinks its spring again because 2 lovely looking stalks were poking out of the soil this morning. I jumped at the thought of eating some of it for dinner and reminded myself to grab it before dinner but of course forgot to. I have hopes that it might be there still tomorrow, but as the asparagus is as frightening in its speedy growth as cucumber is (potentially 7 inches in one day), I won't be surprised to see some frondy, unappetizing stalks tomorrow. *Cry* Proscuitto wrapped asparagus, thou hast thwarted my tummy!
I keep becoming paranoid about my asparagus because these were moved after their first year in one bed to another as we realized that the bed was in an unfortunate spot. While they appear to be doing well, I couldn't accurately gauge if they seemed to have suffered greatly because well, we had moved them. Upcoming spring should give me a more accurate picture. I understand too that asparagus really like to stay established too. Able to produce for 20-30, and maybe 50 years, their roots can reach as deep as 40 feet! So, when I plan on moving, as I don't think I'll be in this house that long I don't know if the asparagus will be willing to move with me.

Honestly though, I am probably more paranoid by the thought that someone might not want an asparagus bed for free when I move. Fresh asparagus with the house! That ought to be a selling point hm?

The attraction to all things thorny

As I am attempting to add to my garden more “Methesulah” type plants (those that produce forever), the idea of artichokes caught my eye. As some of you may have been able to ascertain, I am not the most patient girl in the world and so I got really giddy which I heard of the Imperial Star artichoke variety that produces fruit in its first year.


Unfortunately I had to nix the idea due to lack of room/planning for a plant that gets that big. I was more saddened by the fact that I would not get to run around the yard chasing my husband with a big thorny ended stick.


Now the question is, why do I really want to grow artichokes? Answer: obviously because I like violence. No! I am really a peace loving person! I have contemplated growing patchouli in the herb garden!

Run free my plants!

For a while I was on the cuff as to whether or not I wanted to start an asparagus bed because my research showed that it took SO LONG (3 years to be precise) before you could even start harvesting. Luckily they do sell 2 years old and 3 year old asparagus plants, but I heard that the 3 year olds were not so great and were of very little difference in growth compared to the 2 year old plants (other than the exorbitant price hike).

The lure of plants that could provide me with 30 years (or more!) of harvests and fact that Gurneys does “buy one set, get one free” was too great of deal that we bit. Naturally I was bored and poked at the plants for the first year, scowling at the tiny q-tip thin fronds that came up the first year, but this year, yes, their older brothers have arrived (I am not anti-sister, sisters, I just have male plants, dig it?)

Despite not a huge harvest (potentially due to the fast we had to move the plants and their massive root systems elsewhere earlier in the year because the spot they were in was not good), we’ve gotten a good number of thumb-thick stalks and are lovin’ it. Take that McDonalds. (Dear lard, I just imagined Mickey D’s deep frying asparagus now and serving it in little cardboard boxes!)

Speaking of Gurney’s, this is the same supplier that enticed me with their “buy one, get one free!” strawberry plants. I foolishly did not plant them in a raised bed and they escaped, scampering their way underneath the fence into my neighbor’s backyard and the park. It’s somewhat amusing to see the plants meandering along the fence (they won’t do well I suspect because there is little light there with the huge trees and all, but still, they survive!) Nothing tastes better than Houdini produce.