Look Away Debby!

 

I don't wish to antagonize Debby but I still do so on occasion with some of my politics and with pictures of my asparagus bed as it looked this past weekend. Hopefully she will successfully get hers going one of these years. Above is the lower end of the asparagus bed which tends to produce first. I'm not sure why but it always seems to be this way. The top half of the asparagus bed only had a handful of spears but I'm sure will be producing plenty by the next time I go down. 

What I love about this asparagus, which my parents plants many, many years ago, is that the spears are quite fat, but yet really crisp. Always before I have picked just the tops of them and we have eaten and preserved those. But this year, I am picking them down to where they start not being crisp. They don't snap apart. By doing so, I'm left with some spears a good 16 inches long! These I plan to pickle for a tasty side that I consume all year long.

We really didn't have a lot planned for this trip to the garden. My wife planted a few cucumber seeds next to the trellis. I mowed the grass and picked asparagus before walking around looking at our orchard trees. Above is a peach tree that we planted the day after our wedding nearly 19 years ago. Peach trees don't live very long this far north and so this one is almost ancient by our standards. I think last year it produces a single peach. Maybe this year will be the year when we get enough for a pie or cobbler. It certainly looks pretty with all the blossoms on it. Behind it, is the cut flower bed my wife planted last year for the first time and will continue again this year. It kept fresh flowers on our table all summer and fall last year. The fabric is to just keep the weeds in check.

This is the new orchard that we started and will probably stop. The above is a plumcot we planted last year as replacement for the ones we planted a year before that and promptly died. It is looking nice. We may transplant some of these trees up to our home if we ever make the transition or if they are too big, just leave them and come down for an occasional visit to pick fruit. This one had to be anchored down because some large bird sat and crushed it when it was first planted. I added the tie downs to straighten up the trunk and hopefully heal it to where I can remove them here this summer.

Finally, we ended up with quite a mess of asparagus for our first picking. My wife kept a slug of it to grill, consume and experiment with freezing. She thinks she can preserve it via freezing but I'm not optimistic. I took the ends not used for grilling, the stubs and all the rest and pickled 10 pints of them. So by April 14th, we had our first harvest and first preserved for future use. Not too shabby.

On the morel front, it was 80 degrees so plenty warm, and we decided to go see if we could find any morels. We haven't had any rain for a couple weeks now so it has really dried up and I wasn't optimistic about finding any and it still was early. I usually figure the third week of April as the start of morel season. We went to the spot where I found two mushroom machines, i.e. recently deceased elm trees, last spring and filled up our pans with delicious gray morel mushrooms, but found nary a one. Although the foliage levels and types of plants growing looked right to my eyes, the ground was just too dry as I expected. But rain is forecasted for tonight as I write this and perhaps part of tomorrow. If so, that might be enough to pop them out. I have to make another trip down to the farm mid week anyway, perhaps that is where I am right now as you read this, and that will give me another chance to look.