asparagus, watercress and sunchokes...

[denise mooney]

greetings, gardeners!...

i am interested in planting the above plants this year...does anyone have experience w any of them?...would anyone know a good source of asparagus starts, for instance?...

i am particularly interested in perennial veggies and have picked these three to start...if anyone else has any suggestions, i would appreciate learning more as i am a beginner...

thanks muchly,
denise...

[Shannon Haskins]

Hey Denise!
Planted asparagus last year... I think the starts came from Miller's Nursery.... they don't produce the first year... looking forward to see how they do this spring... should get some asparagus, then by the third year, I think you get a full harvest. Sunchokes are awesome! Super easy to grow... edible tuber and beautiful flowers... they spread like crazy, so (if that matters to you), you might want to keep that in mind when you plant them. No experience with watercress, but Ihear it spreads like crazy too. :)

[crowjoy]

I got 1 batch of asparagus starts from Agway the first season, plunked them in a bad spot and forgot about them, they didn't do anything. Got another batch from Millers 2nd season and they at least showed growth. But wouldn't you know those starts from Agway I forgot all about came up in the pumpkin patch I planted 2nd season! Whoops!

What I think I know about asparagus is you can expect nothing the 1st season, let everything go the 2nd, harvest very selectively the 3rd and go nuts the 4th and beyond. And like Carlyn says below, they can last decades! That's the kind of return this lazy gardener likes!

[Carlyn Buckler]

Excellent - I'm interested in asparagus as well - particularly in perennial veggies. We've had asparagus on our place in VA - plants must be 20 years old, however. Fabulous asparagus. How do you all cook/ use the sunchokes? Thanks for this post!

[Roxy]

Howdy Denise, I can give you all the sunchokes you'd ever want. Per the use question - use them like potatoes. Snow is still on out in the hinterlands but maybe in a week or two I can dig some up. -Roxy

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Roxy, what to the sunchokes taste like? Potatoes? Artichokes? Will my kids eat 'em?

[David Furber]

A friend of mine gave me some sunchokes that he divided about 4 years ago. They've been very easy - just make sure they have lots of sun. The less sun, the more they flop over and take sun from your other plants. Also stake or hoop them early because by August/September they will be several feet tall and if floppy, not easy to rein in. Nevertheless they flower nicely at the end of the season and give you enough extra that you don't feel bad about dividing them.

To sum up sunchokes: sun + stakes + knowing they will cast a big shadow in the second half of the season

[denise mooney]

omg!...i am grateful to have these responses (so far!)!!!...

i would love the sunchokes, foxy roxy!...let me know and i will come dig up under ur direction...

i was thinking of ordering the asparagus online...jersey giants?...does anyone know anything about this kind?...how do people plant the asparagus?...a friend of mine told me it needs to be planted in raised beds...is this true?...

i have very wet soil here at the pond thats why i thought the watercress sounded good...

i am a lazy gardener my self...i like the way of gardening where things kind of take care of themselves for the most part w a little help from me, but not much...lol...like i said, lazy, but in my mind, efficient in a permaculture way...

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Denise, I planted "Super Male" asparagus, though the name was intimidating, 3 springs ago from Miller's Nursery. It's been a great success -- so far. (Must be because I'm not particularly fond of asparagus.)

Following the advice of my fave gardening book, Gardening When It Counts, I planted it in a double raised bed: 3'w x 14'l x 20"h. Gardening When It Counts actually suggests planting asparagus in depths up to 4 feet! Used a mixture of 1/3 sand, topsoil and compost. Placed (as instructed by Miller's) the roots deep with generous spacing. Also, topped it with a heavy pine chip mulch.

The first year you can take none of the stalks. Year two: a quarter of them. Year three: half of them. Year four: whatever you want.

Note: some of our "super male" asparagus isn't male -- or a least some of it is gender confused -- because it fruited last year. Not sure what's going on there...

[Greg Nelson]

From what I recall reading, Super Male just means that a larger fraction (perhaps 75%) of the plants are male, and the male parts are what you want for food. (If the name bothers you, perhaps the act of chopping them down will at least make up for it. :-)

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Thanks for explaining "Super Male", Greg. Thought it was a World Wrestling allusion. And 75/25 split sounds just about right in my asparagus patch. I knew male asparagus was more desirable for the steamer, but I thought I'd be getting all male plants somehow. Are the females plants necessary? Do they serve a reproductive function? Have this idea that asparagus grows via the roots/shoots vehicle rather than by seed.

At any rate, it's doing well. Grew over 7' high last year. Beautiful when it ferns out actually. Even enjoyed the little red berries from the female plants.

[Greg Nelson]

We have had sunchokes for years. As well as treating them like potatoes, you can also eat them raw (unlike potatoes). Good in salads, if you like that sort of thing. The texture and the intensity of the flavor is similar to water chestnuts, but the actual flavor is different. We find that they store incredibly well, too. Harvest a half a bushel in the fall and keep them in your crisper drawer or root cellar all winter. By the spring, some of them will have sprouted and you can replant -- if you need to.

One interesting property to be aware of -- I think I have this right -- if you plant them in loose soil, they will grow large but not spread vigorously. If you plant them in compacted soil, they will dig their way through with all kinds of underground runners and expand outward vigorously. In the latter case, you will have a devil of a time getting all the little broken off tuber and runner bits out of the soil, and they'll regrow from that (all over the place) the next year. So it may be easier to contain them in good soil than in poor soil.

Watercress wants alkaline conditions. We're putting in a couple of slabs of limestone so the water can trickle over it and make the right soil conditions. Kind of like blueberries (in reverse because it's high pH instead of low pH) -- get the soil conditions adjusted first, then plant the following year. At least, that's what we're doing.

[Jennifer Maffett]

We grow sunchokes and asparagus. Both I moved after a year, and both came back from pieces left behind. Couple things to note about sunchokes... they store amazingly well in the fridge and in the ground. Not very well in the air for us, but if someone knows how to "cure" them like potatoes or onions I would like to know. We have some from the fall in the fridge and some in the ground that I dug up yesterday (March 21) and both are in good shape. The other thing to note is that they store the carbohydrate inulin instead of starch and for some people, that is uncomfortable to digest. So first time eating them, go slow :)