asparagus

[CrealCritter]

Weather guessing is calling for freeze Monday overnight. Our last expected frost date is 15 April. So shortly after that it's gardening game on.

Amazing what a guy can scrape off a barn floor. Look honey, there really is cement under all that poo your ducks made, along with sawdust, feathers, leaves and barn lime 😝

I'm going to transplant these little asparagus starts into the kiddie pool filled with barn floor scrapings and pray they take hold and grow strong like bull ox. I'll have to babysit them until fall. Then I'll transplant them into permanent home and mulch in well and pray they pop up late winter early spring.

I decided I'm going to get another kiddie pool, full it with barn scrapings and direct sow more Martha Washington asparagus seeds. I'm seriously considering building another seedling shelf and setting up a community road side stand next spring and selling heirloom vegatable seedlings. So I could fish out fresh 1 year crowns out of the kiddie pool then, if anyone wants to buy any.

I added more barn lime and drug my little kiddie pool outside. Hopefully the rain will do the some work for me 👍

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[CrealCritter]

I appreciate you and your wisdom, so much @farmerjan 👍. So I'm doing a barn floor scraping test run with 12 cells first. I'll see if it's good soil medium or not, I'll know either way pretty soon. I've read Duck poop is 2.8:2.3:1.7 NPK. I kind of would like to get a PH meter. Maybe one of these days.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[CrealCritter]

I got another plastic kiddie pool. This is a much bigger one, It's 55" diameter by 12 inches deep or about 21 cubit feet. This should grow a lot of asparagus seedlings. Same plan, screw to a pallet for ease of movement.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[farmerjan]

Glad they are doing good in the kiddie pools with the barn scrapings and all. That is really fantastic. I was so afraid they would "burn". They ought to have great root systems for when you put them out; and have some to sell. Wonderful.

 

[CrealCritter]

Just a bit of an update and probably my last until I set the crowns out this fall after the ferns die off.

The fern dieback came back strong with the crowns sending up new ferns. The tallest ferns are about 8" tall now. The only advise I could give, is to keep well weeded and ensure the pool remains to be well watered. It's a swimming pool screwed to a pallet after all, so its a bit different than a raised bed. There's plastic seperating the the barn scrapings from natural soil.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[CrealCritter]

WOW they are doing good. Any pics of the ones you planted in their permanent bed?

I'll be setting these out this fall after the ferns die back.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[CrealCritter]

Woohoo!! Fresh asparagus. 😁👍

It's very tempting and all but... No spear harvest this year. I'll let them go to fern and harvest spears sparingly next year. The forth year plus it's game on though.
😁

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[Mini Horses]

Maybe just "one" meal?

 

[CrealCritter]

I checked on the asparagus this morning. There's a lot of pencil or smaller diameter sized spears coming up, very few the diameter of a sharpie or larger. Some planted crowns have not sent up spears at all yet, I suspect they will soon though.

I plan on side dressing both sides of the row with barn limed cow manure scrapings from the cattle run-in it needs to be cleaned out anyways. This should feed the roots well with each rain. It's still a little early in the season for asparagus. But thankful for signs of life in the bed.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸

 

[CrealCritter]

Asparagus update...

So the early spears got hit with hard freeze and wilted and died back. Had I known, I could have cut some for supper. But crowns are sending up new spears again so that's good. Pretty tough plants that's for sure. I'll harvest sparingly next spring.

Plan is to scrape out the cattle run in and spread out over the bed, sometime next month would be good. If weeds are bad I may do a shallow till along the sides and hand pull up around the ferns, before spreading out cattle scrapings. The I'll just continue to build up the bed with whatever organic matter I can scrape together and apply when the ferns go dormant. I could stand a halfway decent wood chipper, perhaps one might come along.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸