The Depot Farm

  With rain forecast for tomorrow and they are calling for snow over the weekend, I need to finish putting the asparagus patch to bed today. I first cut the asparagus ferns off at the ground; cover with about 6" leaves; add a layer of straw and top off with a sprinkling of manure and wood ash. The old ferns will go into the compost.

  In spring I'll pull the covering back to the paths to make harvesting easier. After I finish picking the crop for the year, I weed the beds thoroughly and rake the mulch back in to help control the weeds.

  I plant only Mary Washington asparagus; it's an old variety, dependable and hardy. I tried growing  the "modern" varieties: the all male, better yield hype catalogs tell you about. After 3 years growing, the spears produced were all thin (like in the supermarket), inferior tasting and no noticeable increase in yields compared with Mary Washington roots planted the same time. I removed them and planted my trusted variety. Lesson learned.