Wild Asparagus

Thought I'd post some pictures of the wild asparagus from last month. It was exciting to find it, I knew the plants were there, but had only seen it in the fall, when I gathered the red berries for my own wintersowing.



The asparagus grows on a hill across the road from us, probably the escapee of some long ago garden. The kids and I would walk over every few days, and scan the spots where last year's old stalks and branches could still be found (the farm is mowed for hay, but with last year's drought, I guess they were able to grow unhindered). We had almost given up, and the kids probably thought I was crazy, but we kept looking. Finally, after a couple of warm, sunny days (and right about the time my asparagus seeds were sprouting), we spotted our first spears.

This is what it looks like coming up out of the ground:

You can see why it can be hard to spot. The sticks in the photo are some of last year's stalks, after they had fallen down. As the grass and weeds grow taller, it becomes harder to find; the stalks and tips take on the same green and dusty purple as that of the surrounding grass and its seedheads, and searching for asparagus becomes a game of hidden pictures.

Asparagus needs to be gathered soon after it emerges, within a day if the soil is warm and growth is fast. The stalk becomes bitter once its scales have opened,

to form branches:

Another interesting thing is a ferny version - this is probably the male or female plant, I've read conflicting viewpoints on that, but I'm guessing female, unless both sexes produce spears and ferns.

What I'm curious about are the small red beetles that seemed to love the ferns, they were on every plant we found. Wish I'd taken the time to observe them more closely; I don't know if they were eating the plant. It's possible that they lay their eggs on it.


Oops, I forgot to mention the eating! Well, I can't yet compare it to garden asparagus, but I can tell you that the store-bought spears I cooked up, while much thicker, were also much tougher; I had to cut off quite a bit as unusable. The wild asparagus, cut within a day or so of appearing, was tender almost to the ground. And oh, so good. Just steam it (or microwave in a covered dish with some water) for a couple of minutes, and it's ready to be eaten (yummy with a cheese sauce!) or canned.

The canned asparagus in the photo is mostly store-bought, with some wild thrown in.

I'll try to add a photo of the mature plants in the fall, if they aren't mown down this year. I also need to find out how to wrap photos into the text, this post looks like one of my infamous Lists!

In the meantime, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons, is a related title that others have recommended; I've had it on my wishlist for a while: