Hungry Hollow Happenings: March 2023

Is it Asparagus Season yet?

This time of year, people start asking about our asparagus. When will it be ready?

A single asparagus spear pops out of the cold ground with green hills in the background — One of the first asparagus spears of the year pops out of the soil to greet us

Well, as hungry as we may be for California spring asparagus, harvest depends on the weather. Typically we start harvest in the beginning of March but, of course, every year is different.

This year we had a brief warm spell towards the end of January, which coaxed the asparagus spears out of the ground to greet us. That’s fairly normal for our region and while the want to begin harvest as soon as possible is strong, we know from experience that it’s best to wait.

Tempting as those first juicy January spears are, we couldn’t start harvest just yet. Our major concern, in terms of asparagus harvest timing, is frost. Frost can do a lot of damage to the asparagus crop that has emerged, so we try to wait until we think there is minimal frost risk before we start to harvest. As with any other crop, we also want to wait for harvest to be worth our while. At the start of the season, the plants emerge slowly, sending up a spear here and another there. Sporadic spears make harvest more time consuming and less fruitful. Once the plants do get going, though, they can be hard to keep up with! They can grow up to a couple inches a day. At the peak of the season we need to pick each field daily.

Until then, while we’re waiting for all the right conditions to align, the hearty January asparagus spears are still growing out in the field. We let them do their thing until just a few days before we plan to harvest, at which point we go through the field with a mower to get a fresh start. This helps stimulate the plants to keep sending up new spears, and also makes harvest easier (no navigating around older spears when looking for good ones to harvest). In addition to mowing the older spears, we also need to cultivate the field to manage weeds and aerate the sleepy soil before we begin harvest.

Just before we anticipate harvest, we lightly work up the asparagus beds using a lilliston rolling cultivator. The lilliston is a tool we use a lot on our farm for bed prep and cultivation. It is made up of a series of spider gangs mounted onto a toolbar, which is pulled by a tractor. The spider gangs can be configured in different ways depending on the task at hand. For asparagus we typically have two on each side of the hilled beds. We can set it up to do three beds at a time, and we angle the spider gangs in such a way to maintain the hilled shape of the beds.

The lilliston is ground-driven, meaning there is no motor making the spider gangs spin. Rather, the speed of the tractor and the angles at which we set the gangs determine how fast they move and how deep they penetrate the soil. In asparagus, it’s especially important that we don’t go too deep with our tools, so as to not disturb the crowns. At the start of the spring season, the lilliston helps us by dislodging small weeds, pushing soil back up around plants, and opening up soil crusts that formed during the rainy winter - all in one go! Breaking up the soil crust is important as it allows oxygen to get back into the soil, which helps wake up the roots and stimulate growth.

Winter rains followed by the warming temperatures as we approach spring activate the annual weed seeds that have been waiting all year to come back. We knock them down now, while they’re small. As they mature, weeds harbor pests (which can also spread diseases) and rob nutrients and moisture from the soil we want to preserve for our crop. If they’re large enough, weeds can also make harvest more difficult. A good “spring cleaning” of the field sets us up for success during the harvest period ahead.

(Shown below is a field before (top) mowing and cultivating, and one that’s ready for harvest (bottom)).

This is what the asparagus fields look like before we mow and cultivate at the end of Winter

This field is ready for harvest (2022)! It was mowed, cultivated, and has grown back strong for the season.

The other “ground prep” tasks on our spring to-do list are focused on preparing for tomatoes. Our first trans-planting of tomatoes is scheduled to go in the ground next week! They are currently about 5” tall in the greenhouse. But, it’s looking like we might be a little behind on that, again due to the weather. The rain has saturated our soils, making it difficult to do any ground prep in anticipation of new plants. We don’t want to work wet soils because it can damage the soil structure, and will make things worse in the long run. This is especially true for heavier clay soils by causing compaction.

All this is to say that we aren’t quite sure when asparagus harvest will start. The rain and cool temperatures have delayed us past our typical starting date, but we are hoping to begin before the end of March!

an asparagus tip pokes out of the ground

Despite our disappointment in our delayed asparagus season, we are thrilled to be seeing all this water. In fact, we are looking at a good irrigation season this year! Our irrigation district has informed us that there is currently almost enough water in the reservoirs that feed our local canals for a full release season. This will be a great relief on our wells and aquifers, which we relied heavily upon over the last two years. More surface water may even open up more planting opportunities in fields that we had resigned to grow barley, as they do not have strong wells (we harvest the barley just as our seasonal irrigation needs rise). And, we have been gifted with extra “inside time” to work on our planning for the season ahead.

With all the variations from year-to-year, the one thing we can rely on knowing is that no two years are the same. It will be interesting to see how these heavy rains will affect the season ahead!

In the meantime, we’ll be stockpiling asparagus recipes we want to prepare as soon as we can get in and begin harvesting.

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