OLD-FASHIONED COMPANION PLANTING

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Asparagus roots resemble nothing so much as octopi too long out of water: a cluster of ugly gray-brown, foot long, pencil thin, rubbery single strand roots dangling limply from a central disk. They usually arrive in the mail packed in sawdust and are better stored dry in the heat of the kitchen than down in a dank cellar where they will absorb water and sprout a luxuriant blue-green mold. Indeed, if you order by mail, I recommend that you immediately remove the roots from the packing and dry them out. I'll bet you a serving of asparagus with hollandaise sauce that they are already a little moldy. Don't wash them. Just let them dry well and the mold will go dormant (and be eaten by soil organisms once roots are planted). If they must be kept for more than a few days before planting, untie the roots and put them loose in the main body (in dry air) of your refrigerator till planting time.

A bundle of 10 roots will fill about 20 feet of row and produce four to five pounds of spears per year over a month-to-six-week cutting period. That means that for each one pound of spears you will need a pair of mature roots, requiring three to four running feet of row (rows and roots in the row spaced 18" to 24" apart). To figure out how many roots to plant, buy enough store asparagus to provide side dishes for the family. A one-pound bundle will be ample for most. Decide how many times a year you want asparagus (including frozen meals). Multiply the pounds used per meal by two to determine number of roots needed and multiply that figure by 3.5 to 4 to determine feet of garden row required. (Example: 20 meal/yr x 1 1b/meal = 20 1b/yr x 3.5 row-feet for the pair of roots needed to produce a pound of spears = 70 row-feet, needing 35 roots.) If your garden is the typical 25 feet wide, that's three rows taking up seven or eight feet at one end.

For years, Mary Washington (a reselected, open-pollinated variety) was the standard for home gardens. It is still sold (as is Waltham, the even earlier standard variety), but these days you can find a wider selection. A good choice for mild climates such as the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and Southeast is UC 157...(12 roots for about $15.00 from Johnny's Selected Seeds). The best-adapted for most of North America is the Jersey Giant/Knight hybrid developed by Rutgers University. It ignores asparagus root and crown rots, resists rusts, and produces mostly male plants which, being spared the chore of making berries and seed, live longer and produce more heavily than the ladies. If you do get a female plant that produces small red berries, don't try planting its seed, which will be open-pollinated and of uncertain quality.

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