Of course I'm excited to get things growing, so it's hard to wait until my entire plot is dug up. Last week, I looked up Sunset magazine's Northwest Checklist February and saw that it's time to set out bare-root asparagus crowns and start sweet pea seeds indoors. I especially love the taste of asparagus and smell of sweet peas, so down to the garden center I went, and home I came with a package of six USDA organic Jersey Knight asparagus crowns from Van Bloem Gardens and a royal family mixture of sweet pea seeds from Ed Hume Seeds. Ed's been a gardening guru around the Pacific Northwest for ages, and he, too, has a blog.
Although I've never grown asparagus before now, it seems like a good place to start this year, not just alphabetically, but because it's almost Valentine's Day and asparagus is supposedly an aphrodisiac. I read where ancient Egyptians offered it to the gods. It's a good source of folate, potassium, and vitamin C, and China, it seems, grows most of the world's supply. In the United States, production is concentrated in California, Michigan, and Washington. Tomatoes are recommended as a companion plant in the garden to repel asparagus beetles.
