Garden Update:
The rest of the seeds were planted yesterday!
- The heirloom, ox heart-shaped tomatoes from Italy
- Cucumber
- Zucchini
- Yellow Squash
- Watermelon
- Hubbard Squash
I’m going to plant the beans and the lettuce directly into the soil in a few more weeks.
In the meantime, the collard, kale, spinach and leek seedlings are doing well outside. The seeds I planted directly outdoors are sprouting up and the seedlings I started indoors are getting acclimated to the outdoors and ready to go into the garden.
The grow bags were filled with garden soil and the seed potatoes are planted! I am waiting on some Jerusalem Artichoke roots to plant in another grow bag so they don’t grow out of hand like they did a couple of years ago :p
I also planted a couple rhubarb roots to see how they do.
But, hands down, the best thing to happen in the garden recently is….
…the asparagus is sprouting!
Asparagus is a very easy vegetable to grow but they take patience. You need to give them at least 2 years to establish themselves before you harvest them. This is their 2-3 year in our garden and there where a few ready to harvest. I let lemon drop try out the first one and, to my delight, he LOVED it!
If you want to plant asparagus this year, buy the roots, plant them in your garden and let them do their thing for two years. The first couple of years you will see them sprout but they will be very thin. Just let them grow out. They will turn into these stalks with bushy tops. Let the stalks die off and dry out, then cut them back to the soil level in late winter/ early spring. The second or third year, you will see the asparagus sprout up larger, more like the size asparagus you see in the store. Once they reach that size, they will be large enough to pick.
It is a bit of a wait but it is so worth it to be able to go out and pick fresh asparagus in early spring! And the best part is, they will grow back every year, you do not have to keep replanting them.
Happy Gardening! 
