How Would You Like Your Asparagus?

I'll take mine in full bloom, or perhaps covered in silvery dew - it's so hard to choose :)

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Asparagus is such a fascinating little vegetable. It doesn’t necessarily look like much in the store, but it is SO MUCH FUN! We initially planted it because we like to eat it, but honestly, now that I’ve gotten to know asparagus, even if I never ate it again, I would always want it in my garden!

With most crops, of course, you have this standard, familiar cycle. You plant a seed, you watch it grow, it blooms, it bears fruit, it ripens, you harvest it. But not asparagus. With asparagus, you eat the first tender shoots of new growth each year.

So these little spears come nosing out of the soil as temperatures warm, about as thick as your thumb. You let them grow to 6 - 10 inches, and then you trim them and eat them! Each day, more spears nose their way into the world, and each day you harvest everything that’s long enough to eat. And only after you’ve had your fill of asparagus, and only after the new stems are emerging pencil-thin, do you leave those little spears to grow.

Day by day they stretch and lengthen, the points of the spear gradually separating and opening and unfurling, until they turn into what they were always aspiring to be: lacy, ferny fronds as tall as you are!

The feathery leaves gather summer sunshine and produce their next surprise - a sweeping crop of tiny bell-shaped blossoms, shimmering pink and pale yellow, nodding in pairs at every branching intersection.

Tiny pollinators busily pollinate tiny blossoms, endlessly varied and endlessly fascinating. Even a hummingbird will pause to visit these golden bells.

Summer flowers transform into red fall berries. And then, on some certain morning when the nighttime temperature drops below some specific dew point, a magical transformation takes place. Suddenly, the summer-green fronds are all silver-white. Suddenly, every tiniest ferny feather is coated in sparkling droplets. Suddenly, our asparagus patch is transformed into a glittering diamond wonderland!

It never gets old. It’s a bit hard to believe that all of this magnificence is just part of the seasonal life story of asparagus. Sure, it’s delicious, but I’m glad to have gotten to know it a little better, to find that it is also elegant, stunning, magically full of surprises. It is absolutely a farm favorite for me now, one of nature’s little wonders that has nestled its way deep inside my heart :)

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