Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Doug Willhite <drwillhite@earthlink.net>]

Burning off the asparagus bed
by Gene Logsdon

From GENE LOGSDON
Garden Farm Skills

We are overwhelmed right now with asparagus. We eat it steamed,  
creamed, and teamed with morel mushrooms, omelet, pasta, and salads.  
Nothing vegetative tastes better to me and in my opinion nothing  
makes a safer or more effective diuretic. I even have a theory that  
asparagus can slow down, if not reverse, enlargement of the prostate  
if you eat lots of it. Lots of it is every day from mid- April to  
mid- June, and at least twice a week the rest of the year.

We had our first asparagus this year on April 5, which is very early  
for northern Ohio. I have another theory (I am full of theories) that  
suggests we can enjoy asparagus this early because of our spring  
ritual of burning off the asparagus bed on some dry, windless day in  
March. The dead, brown stems and stalks of last year’s crop lie thick  
over the patch at that time, and make a brief, cheery blaze that  
warms up the soil a little and leaves a black film on the surface to  
absorb heat on subsequent days.

Burning off the old plants has another good effect for sure. Since we  
have been doing it, there are fewer asparagus beetles. Evidently the  
fire kills overwintering eggs.

Burning also discourages rabbits from making their nests in that old  
residue, which they love to do. Rabbits have been displaced for us  
however, by deer, a far worse scourge. Since deer have become part of  
everyday life on the farm (I’d rather say part of everyday death) we  
have to put netting over the bed when the asparagus spears first  
start coming up. After the crop really gets going, we remove the  
netting since it is difficult to harvest through it, and (so far) the  
deer by then have other plants they apparently like better. Some  
organic growers tell me that sprinkling wood ashes on the asparagus  
deters the deer.

Weeds are always a problem in asparagus for organic growers. After  
the soil has warmed up well and the spears are coming up rapidly, I  
cover the entire bed with six inches of tree leaves that I piled  
nearby the previous fall. The asparagus shoots come right up through  
the mulch, but most weeds won’t. Then in June, at the end of the  
asparagus season, I crawl alongside the bed and pull any weeds  
(especially tiny volunteer asparagus seedlings) that have had the  
nerve to grow, at the same time stirring and turning over the leaf  
mulch with my hands. This is a bit tedious, but not as bad as it  
sounds because the soil after years of heavy mulching, is very  
friable and loamy, easy to churn with your fingers. Except for a few  
redroot (wild amaranth) lambsquarter, sow thistles and an occasional  
tree seedling, all which have to be pulled later in the summer,  
that’s the end of weeding for the year. And of course, the really  
diligent survivalist knows that amaranth and lambsquarter make good  
salad too.

The carbon police frown on my practice of burning the asparagus bed.  
I am contributing to global warming, they say. Never mind all those  
jets flying high overhead, each of whose engines contributes more  
carbon emission in one minute than my burning asparagus patch does in  
a couple thousand years. Those very important people riding around in  
jetliners are doing the Lord’s work (like dropping bombs on people),  
while I am just a heathen dancing in this lovely May weather while I  
scarf down fresh asparagus.