Garden Talk: Vigorous Asparage Crowns & Leeks

 

Anybody interested in big, vigorous asparagus crowns, please drop by 209 Tyler St., Cascade. If you order from a catalog, you get a 5-to-8 root crown packed in peat moss that may have sat on the shelf for a week or 2,  then time in the mail, and cost $15, + tax. Only green (no purple) right now.

If you want me to dig them, will do. If you can get down two feet plus where the ends of the roots go, you can do the digging. Some of these are over 20 years old, and I have had decent 2nd spears in one year. Next spring?

They will only do well in sandy loam, not clay soil. Lots of fiber and fertilizer increase yield. Chicken or cow manure in  fall and horse in spring. 

Also available: horseradish root, Chinese cabbage,  (aka Napa)

horseradish root, black hollyhocks, a couple cauliflower, surpise lilies and a few leek starters. Also tons of old fashioned lilac/blue irises.

I have leek seeds and can part with this many. I find them superior to onions because you can leave them in the ground until the first hard frost. Onions should not see the August sun, they say, and if you leave them out there, they don't grow anyway, so you might as well pull them, dry them and use them.  Usually, I am out there after dark, before the first hard frost digging leeks