Have you ever seen asparagus grow in a field? I hadn’t either…
Here’s a few things I didn’t know about growing asparagus until recently:
- Once it’s planted it takes 2-3 years before it grows large and dependably enough to harvest.
- It is harvested by hand. Spears practically grow in several days and you have to walk the entire field to pick it each day – there’s generally a very short window when it is the ‘right size’ to harvest (if you look carefully at the picture above you’ll see how sparsely it grows in the field above)
- Younger asparagus won’t thicken as thick as the older stalks.
- You could technically harvest asparagus longer than it appears in markets – but if you harvest a plant too often it won’t grow back the following year.
- A single plant can continue to grow year-after-year for up to 20 years!