Planting asparagus

Planting asparagus crowns is a very serious business. Unlike any other vegetable crop, asparagus is perennial and will be in the ground for more than 10 years. If the asparagus is going to do well and crop for all those years the ground needs to be prepared well. Asparagus loves free draining, sandy soil and we, like so many, have heavy clay soil. This makes soil preparation all the more important. Steve prepared the ground 12 years ago when he planted our first lot of asparagus and it did well.

Steve and I have very different approaches to everything we do in life. I like to get on with things and to feel as if I'm making progress. Steve, in contrast, is the sort of person who measures 3 or 4 times before starting anything, will never cut a corner and is unlikely to be happy at the end of any job because perfection is impossible to attain. He, therefore, is definitely the man you want when it comes to any DIY or gardening project that you want to stand the test of time. You just have to go away for a long time whilst he's getting on with it or risk becoming frustrated by lack of obvious progress.

It is for this reason that planting asparagus is unquestionably a job for Steve. The only problem being that the asparagus crowns arrived in the post on Friday and clearly stated plant IMMEDIATELY! Immediately is not in Steve's nature.

Over the course of the weekend, whilst planting potatoes, Steve started the preparation of the new asparagus bed, first rotavating it then digging out trenches. By the end of Sunday we had 3 trenches, heavily scattered with powdered rock samples (left over from Steve's years as a geologist). My only contribution to the planting was to go out today and buy a bag of sharp sand and some decent quality multipurpose compost. Then after work today Steve used the whole bag of sand, plus some gravel and a fair bit of the multipurpose compost to turn heavy clay into free draining, asparagus suitable soil.

He planted the crowns on top of mounds within free draining trenches, as is recommended in most books on the matter. Let's just hope the asparagus survived their temporary wait wrapped in damp kitchen towel and are now enjoying their lovely prepared bed.

Sorting out the girls' bed

We went out on the allotment yesterday with the promise that my girls would finally be able to get some seeds sown. Sowing and harvesting are definitely the highlights of kitchen gardening and certainly the bits the girls look forward to most but they are gradually learning that there is other necessary work in between. I have been explaining to them the need for preparation. I'm quite grown up about this now because really inside I'm just the same as them and I just want to get on and plant stuff too. But wisdom comes with age (not that I'm that old!) and I know that proper preparation will save work (mainly weeding) later and will produce better returns. So having made a raised bed for them last weekend, we started this weekend by carefully measuring and marking out the bed into smaller planting areas.

I say "carefully measuring" but in the end it mostly came down to eye and whether it looked right. I measured the whole bed first - 140cm wide and 485cm long. I'd neglected to bring a piece of paper with me so I scribbled down these measurement on the side of a plant label. Then I needed to divide the width into 3 and the length into 15. By now I was wishing I'd brought a calculator with me because I haven't done long division since I was at school and even then it had baffled me somewhat. So I confidently marked out the width into 3 roughly 46cm sections using a staple gun (cheap off ebay) and string. Less confidently I marked the length out into 5 sections of roughly 90cm, with the central box being bigger than the others. Then two of these I marked out into 30cm sections. So now I had a 90cm box for my youngest daughter to plant her potatoes in, nine 30cm squares for her vegetable garden, another 90cm box for my eldest daughter to plant her potatoes in, nine 30cm squares for her vegetable garden, and the remaining space for a shared crop of sweetcorn.

That done we got on with the really important stuff - putting in bits and pieces to make it look pretty! A wind sock my eldest had made a school, a rain gauge we had bought last year from Tesco for the bargain price of 25p, the stones we had painted last year to look like bugs, the flower sticks I had bought from Lidl's a few weeks ago, the wire frames in the shape of a frog and a dragonfly I'd bought from Wilkinson's last year. Ahh... that's better.

Finally time for planting. I made them each a wigwam of canes and they pushed in 12 pea seeds each. Then we positioned some one planters on their plots and filled them with a mix of potting compost and sand. We'd grown carrots in these last year and it had been very successful with beautiful long, straight roots. So we sowed some more carrots in these. Next it was beetroot and lettuce for my youngest and rocket and radish for my eldest. Job down for now.

Back home I potted on the herb plug plants and tomato plants I'd bought from Wilkinson's a few weeks ago. And then it was time to wash hands before tea.