Progress on the asparagus front

Progress: three blocks cleared of asparagus and replanted in the new long row. There are two more 4x4s that need to be cleared – one is full of plants, the other sparsely populated, but between the two of them, they’ll likely fill a lot more of this row. The other asparagus bed, to the right of this one, is a 16×2, and I’ve decided instead of digging all that up, I’ll build a frame around it and year by year add more soil to it as it grows and we harvest, so the plants will force their way to the top and use the middle layers for rooting instead of the dense bottom where they’re punching through to the clay-like soil underneath (as that has no nutrients to speak of). Yes, that will be a bit of a long process, but farming teaches patience in a lot of ways. Once the remaining two 4x4s are cleared, I can finish off the first new N-S row, get it filled, then start on the next two in the same way.

I also decided that if I am crazy enough to expand again – if the CSA idea takes off, for instance – and we run more raised beds, we will not be hauling all the soil by hand. We’ll build out a row, and either with our own tractor (one day!) or a rented one, fill that row, then back out, build the next, fill it, etc., until it’s done. There is something to be said for the manual work of hauling all that soil, but it also takes quite a bit of time that could be spent on other things.

Asparagus!

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