OLD-FASHIONED COMPANION PLANTING

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Once leaves are fully grown in spring, plants produce a large flowering stalk from the middle of the plant. It will develop an obscene looking fist-sized (and shaped) lump of a flower bud at the terminal end that will erupt into a great ugly conical mass of blossoms if you let it. Flowering is futile, wastes a great deal of plant energy, and the whole plant looks droopy stemmed and exhausted in its summer long afterglow. So, let the flowering stalk develop till the bud is up at about leaf-top level. (The plant will grow another if you pinch it out too early. May try anyway.) Cut it out at the base. The plant will grow lustily all summer, produce profusely next spring. Of course, it will get all pouty and try to flower again next summer and you'll have to dampen its ardor again.

Good Planning

Strawberry plants will try to bloom in the first season. Don't let 'em.

Boxed horseradish will keep the rest of the bed from being overrun.

Harvest

The first growing year, don't pick anything. Leave asparagus, strawberries, horseradish, and rhubarb to grow and accumulate strength in their roots. Pick blossoms from strawberry plants and flowering stalks from rhubarb.

The second year, strawberry plants come into full production, so harvest them all. You can cut a few fat, plump asparagus and rhubarb stalks, but just a few. Keep them, ends in water, in the refrigerator and they'll last till all plants have contributed. Let the rest of the stalks go to leaf.

The third year, pick away. A fully grown asparagus plant produces perhaps 10 spears a year to reach its half-pound output...the first set of thick spears up to 2" at base and 1/2" at top, and a second set that is under 1" at base, 3/8" at top. You can safely harvest five or six spears per plant over four weeks. After that, the plant needs to make fronds to store. Spears should be harvested when they are 6 to 8 inches high, while buds on the ends are still tightly wrapped.

Pencil-thick, hard stalks should never be cut, as they indicate that the plant is reacting to stress and needs all the strength it can gather. This "pencil-grass" is too tough to eat anyway.

You can use a long handled V-blade dandelion weeder as an asparagus knife, and cut off spears several inches below ground. Problem is you are buying a lot of garbage; the end of each spear is bleached white, woody, and inedible and usually gets thrown out. Better to harvest only the edible portion, leaving the below ground ends to recycle naturally and return to the soil. Poke your fingers an inch or so down into the soil beside each spear and snap it off briskly with your thumb. Where the spear just naturally breaks is a comfortable 1/2 inch or so above where the woodiness begins.

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