Judybusy says:

May 3rd, 2007 at 8:13 am

Robyn, I too, have childhood memories of asparagus. We had a patch growing in our woods that surrounded our farm. We’d go out and get a few spears every spring. It remains one of my favorite vegetables.

As an aside to Margaret, you might want to consider getting “crowns” or plants. I think growing from seed would take a very long time. Does anyone else know more?

Margaret says:

May 3rd, 2007 at 11:43 am

Yeah, I know all about growing crowns, etc. But I am not in a hurry for the asparagus. I don’t even have a permanent location for it to grow in yet. (I will be building more beds later in the summer, in which I can eventually transplant the plants I will be growing this year) In the meantime I can use it as filler for bouquets from my rose garden. I think it takes about 3-5 years to get a good crop going.

shruti says:

May 3rd, 2007 at 2:00 pm

Looks delicious! I rediscovered asparagus lately (not having grown up eating it) and was quite startled when someone told me about the whole asparagus makes your “void” smell thing. I guess I must be one of the few.

Anyways, thats a sidetrack, but I’m excited because asparagus is one of the few crops we seem to have a nice selection of at the grocery store and some of the farm stands. Nice thick bits…

Robyn Dochterman says:

May 4th, 2007 at 10:55 am

Hi Annie,
You should see asparagus shoot up from your crowns this year. That’s what is really hard — you can see the asparagus, but you can’t pick it yet. My understanding is waiting to pick allows better roots to develop, which in turn, gives you a better producing plant down the road.

JamLady says:

May 18th, 2007 at 7:23 pm

Ah, asparagus! It grew wild along the railroad tracks in St. Anthony Village in the 1940s & 1950s, between Stinson Boulevard and Silver Lake Road.

When my son was in high school, I would drive to Kornder’s in Jordan (now Brewery Creek Farms or something) and buy 30# for about 75 cents/lb. (The price dropped considerably if you bought 30# or more. He and I would eat it fresh for a week or until it was gone. We are purists who do not believe in gilding a lily; my preferred way to prepare it is to snap the stalks and lay them flat in a skillet for maybe 1/3 cup of water, sprinkle with only a leetle bit of salt, gob on a couple tablespoons of butter, cover and cook it hot and fast on the stove for maybe 3-5 minutes, rearranging the stalks a bit if there’s depth in the amount. Sublime.

Now my brother calls me when he picks his first meal’s worth – just to rub my nose in the fact that he grows it and I do not! The big creep! And my son and I regale each other with the prices we’re paying at the supermarket, he in Tucson, me in the Twin Cities.

Yesterday I paid $3/lb at a local farmers market and then discovered, on my way home, that Cub is selling Washington-grown asparagus (fat stalks—just like I likes ‘em) for $1.68 a pound! The injustice of it all.