Plant No-Pamper Perennial Produce

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Actually, this all sounds much more complicated than it really is. Asparagus is delicious, it's easy to raise, and-after the mild amount of labor that it takes to establish a bed -it'll put gallons and gallons of food on your table every Spring (when you're hungriest for something fresh and green) from now until (if you're a young couple) your first grandchildren are born. Try it and see!

RHUBARB

And try rhubarb (sometimes known as pie plant") too. Rhubarb-just like asparagus-likes a rich, slightly sandy soil (with a pH of 5.5 to 6.5). If anything, however, it prefers colder winters than asparagus and-as a result-grows well from the upper southern states all the way north to Alaska. MacDonald, Chipman's Canada Red, and Valentine are the popular varieties in most sections but, in California and other warmer states, Cherry and Giant Cherry seem to do better.

Although rhubarb can be propagated from seed, it's a longer and slower process than most gardeners want to fool with. For that reason, new beds of the plant are usually started from root cuttings. (A rhubarb crown is dug up and divided into several pieces, each of which contains one or two good .1 eyes" or buds.) If your falls are long and cool, plant the cuttings in the autumn. Otherwise put them into the ground in early spring.

Rhubarb sets are generally planted three feet apart in rows spaced four feet from each other. Dig a hole measuring about two feet by two feet by two feet deep for each cutting and place a half bushel of manure in the bottom of the excavation. Then fill the pit on up to ground level with a mixture of compost and topsoil. The root is then positioned in the center of the prepared soil and covered with three inches of patted-down earth.

Five to ten good roots of rhubarb will supply enough "fruit" (this is the only vegetable that is truly used as a fruit) for year-round pies, preserves, and stews for 10 years ... if the patch of plants is well fertilized each fall with a cover of plenty of compost, straw, and manure. Pull the mulch back or not, as you see fit, in the spring . . . and water the rhubarb regularly during dry weather. It's a good idea, too, to remove flower stalks as they develop during the growing season.

Rhubarb occasionally suffers from "foot rot", which causes its stalks to rot off at the base and fall over. The best cure for that infrequent ailment is to move the patch. It's also attacked once in a while by the rhubarb curculio?a beetle-but the insect can be picked off the plants quite easily. The pest also likes wild dock, and gardeners who clear that plant away from their rhubarb beds seldom are bothered by the beetle.

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