It has been so stunningly beautiful here in Minnesota the past few months after getting a really early snowfall in mid-October. It has just been beautiful, which has been really nice, although it’s also enabled me to procrastinate on my to do before winter list.
As I look at the forecast and see like 30, 40 degrees, it doesn’t exactly motivate me to go out there and get everything done before winter.
But now it might snow tomorrow, which would be wonderful because it’s Christmas Eve Eve and who doesn’t want a white Christmas? And it’s sort of giving me the last final nudge to get going and cross the last few items off of the list.
And I have one final item on there that I’m going to be doing today and this is something that I put off most years.
Is it super hard? No. Is it super time consuming? No. But I always seem to save it for the end. And that is cutting it down the asparagus.
Now, why in the world do I wait so long to cut down the asparagus?
One of the main reasons is I actually don’t like asparagus that much, which always elicits quite the response from people.
They’re like, what?
How do you not like asparagus? Have you tried it? Grilled? Have you try it sauteed? Have you tried it baked? Have you tried it with seasoning? Have you tried it with butter?
Maybe you’ve just always had a bad batch. And I’m like, I have tried it every single way. I really want to like it. I just don’t.
And caring for a crop that you don’t like is a whole lot less motivating than caring for something that you love.
I always recommend growing food that you enjoy to eat because you’re going to be out there taking care of it a lot more deliberately than something that you’re not that motivated because you don’t like to eat it.
But even though I don’t like asparagus that much, I will probably always grow it for a few reasons.
Number one, it’s a super easy perennial, so it doesn’t take that much time and it’s easy to grow. My family also really likes that, along with friends, so having a crop that’s easy that they like to consume is a plus.
And then I also really like growing asparagus because I like that it’s such an early season and harvest. We don’t really harvest anything in May at Minnesota, but the beginning of May, we are already getting asparagus to see those little green shoots come up at the beginning of spring.
And knowing there’s hope for the garden after a long winter is just such a blessing.
It’s like, oh winter’s ending. Spring is coming and the garden will begin growing, so I will definitely be growing asparagus for those reasons.
How to Prepare your Asparagus for the Winter
Today I’m going to be doing our fall prep on our asparagus. I’m going to be chopping everything down. It’s pretty easy to take care of, so I’m going to just bring you guys along for the ride.
All right. I should probably stop talking and stop procrastinating and get to it. Let’s go.
So I have a few different size loppers here. I mostly prefer to use a little handheld guy. It’s just really super simple for it to fit in my hand and it cuts down most of the stalks really easily, but I also like to bring more medium sized loppers up because this is going to be able to handle thicker stems that the little guy can’t.
All right. Let’s head to the asparagus. So here we are at the asparagus, you can see it’s a nice brown color, which means it is time to lop it off, to prepare it for spring.
We’ll be harvesting this in the beginning of May for a few weeks, and then we’ll let it grow up all summer. It will get nice and tall and bushy.
And then once it turns this dried out, brown color, that’s when we chop it off and it will grow again next year.
This is a perennial. I think we put this in maybe like eight years ago now, and we have done very little maintenance on it and it provides us with a lot of really great asparagus, so it’s really that simple.
Snip off the Stalks at Ground-Level
All you have to do is snip off the stalks right at ground level and put the old asparagus ferns or plants or whatever you want to call them out in the tall grass. And that’s really it.
Lopping it off at ground level. It is so simple. Asparagus is one of the easiest things you can grow and take care of.
Do I Need Natural Fertilizers or Mulch?
Now, some people, yes, will add compost or azomite or other fertilizers or mulch to their asparagus going into the winter to help boost the crop the next spring.
It’s probably a good idea. It’s something I’m going to look into doing for the future, but sometimes it’s good to keep things really super simple.
And we’ve been doing it like this for the past eight years now, and we’ve always had way more than enough asparagus to go around.
So I guess this is one of those case scenarios where you can’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
I think just the farm in general, it’s so easy to get caught up on trying to push our plants or our animals for highest production without really thinking about the time, the labor, the investment of resources that has to go into making that crop or those animals super, super productive.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated and you’ll have a great asparagus harvest, or at least a good enough asparagus harvest, which for somebody who doesn’t like asparagus, is definitely good enough.
So thanks for following along today, guys. I will be posting more here. I know that summer sort of got away from me, but we’re going into winter now and I am planning on posting a lot more content for all of you.
So thank you for following along today and we’ll see you again soon.
