I swear I’m running out of questions about my current plants to ask and soon I will be quiet. Or maybe my constant posting will give some people out there who are on LJ merely to procrastinate something to keep busy with? ;) Sorry to the latter, I do have to get off here and get things done at some point today! (here, I will even use a different LJ icon, so you won’t get bored)
A few days ago on a whim I bought a pot of asparagus from the local farmers market/nursery. Now everything I’m reading says that I need to dig a really deep trench and plant the crowns and blah blah blah but I already have a young growing asparagus plant in a pot, NOT a crown (er, little root chunk)! I also don’t have a long garden bed to plant it in, or 4ft of space that one asparagus plant apparently needs?! I was planning on just putting it in a little 2×2 box near my main garden and letting it have that all to itself.
Now I’m considering digging up part of the yard that is along the fence to expand my garden, buy MORE asparagus, and making a large section of my fence an asparagus garden and a pea garden (since the fence is perfect for peas anyway) and then I could lean my cucumbers onto the fence, a la a comment suggestion in my cucumber post.
This relies on a couple things though:
1) Will my 1 asparagus plant spread? It’s just in an 8″ pot right now and I was going to center it in the 2×2 raised bed and hope it spread to take over the entire thing. However, my Google-fu is suggesting that asparagus does not spread.
2)…. UNLESS the 2×2 bed is too small for a full grown asparagus plant.
3) I’d love a long bed of asparagus but I could not afford nor justify having to buy more plants from the nursery to fill in the bed.
4) I could just plant it in an 18gallon barrel and put it on my back patio so I won’t have to fret about yard space or where to put it, or worry about moving.
Planting this will also be a test of my patience, considering I usually go for instant gratification, and I know I won’t be able to harvest this for at least one year, sparingly next year if at all. Maybe I should have waited until I had an area to plant this in. Oh well! This might help me convince my dear sweet boyfriend to let me expand my garden early. *evil grin*
You can see the fence on the far end, it’s probably too far away to try and string my peas or cucumbers up to it – not to mention they would probably get too heavy and start drooping the fence down.
The box in the middle is the 2×2 I’m talking about (actually now that I’m looking at it, it looks like a 1×1 instead).
There is room for me to dig up a long bed in front of the fence and use that just for my peas.
Just a sideways view.
Here’s a bigger, yet less clear, picture of the area. My yard is huge but really only this top area up here gets enough sun to plant a vegetable garden, and the area I’m standing in to take this photo gets too much foot traffic, not to mention the septic tank is there (and I’m not sure how deep or wide it is anyway) and an underground drain from one of our gutters, AND there’s a questionably maybe-dead tree whose shade I have yet to see, so it’s not an ideal spot.
The area I’m going to expand my garden to is to the right of this garden, you can see more of the area in the second picture, but that’s a project for later this summer or even next summer. If you’re curious to know what else we’re doing with this area, we’re either going to mulch or gravel on top of the visible cardboard when we can afford it.
