Picked my first mess of asparagus Satarday and a second mess today.  Gosh its good.  Both times I was able to prepare it within and hour or two of cutting it.  Nothing like Fresh asparagus.  I think fresh asparagus is my all time favorite veggie.

You see I grew up in South Jersey in the 60s, where tomatos were king and aspagus was queen.  I remember driving by hundreds of acres of asparugus as a kid.  From early summer on the fields seemed like a sea of ferns with row after row fine ferny stalks 4 or 5 feet tall.  The great thing about asparagus is its a perennial.  Where there was a ferny field in August, there would be a bare soil field of raised hills with migrant Pueto Rican pickers bending over to harvest the emerging spears in April.  It was then as a 4 or 5 or 6 year old that I fell in love with asparagus as a vegetable. 

Now I'm into my third patch.  I moved away from the first one in Keezletown just as it began to produce well.  Then my previous patch here was decimated 2 years ago by the need to install a new drainfield.  Of course the health department inspector had to layout the septic system so it ran right smack through the asparagus patch.  Well any way, when all was said and done I only lost the portions of the patch that were dug up for the lines.  The aspagus in between managed to survive the compaction and being burried alive in mid-spring.  You guessed it, right smack in the middle of harvest season.  It actually had actually re-emerged and developed full fledged fronds by fall.  It was all I could do to not harvest the tender shoots in mid-summer and give the plants a chance to recover.  And they have recovered nicely, and are again producing an abundance of thick succulent spears this spring.  I'll still go easy on them this year in anticipation of more rewards in future years.

In between the survivors  replanted new plants last spring to fill out the rows properly.  And I expanded the patch a bit.  Can't have too much of this good thing.  Of course I will lay off harvesting any off these new plants for another year or two.  But by 2010 I will be in asparagus heaven in April again.