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Asparagus Seedlings

They weren’t being very photogenic, small green things on a grey background, but most of the asparagus I posted about a few days ago are in the garden.  Wow, 30 varieties!

The germination rate of the seeds was phenomenal!   Nearly 100% for most accessions.  I wonder if the folks at GRIN use magic pixy dust or something.  I’ve never had that good a rate of germination from asparagus before.  It’s not unusual to get a rate of 0%, maybe more often I spend a lot of money for a package of 10 seeds, and 2 germinate.  These packages were labelled 50 seeds, and the very worst yielded 8 plants in the end, which is enough.

One company I bought asparagus seeds from this year had 10 seeds per packet.  I figured I would order 3 packets for about 3 euros a package, just in case of low germination, and none of them germinated.  I was very annoyed.

Well you can do the math — 30 packages of 50 seeds, with a say 90% germination rate gives 1350 asparagus seedlings.  Needless to say I didn’t have space for them all.  It was more than I expected, and had to change gardening plans a bit to find space for about half of them.  It’s a problem of luxury we gardeners have sometimes.  After the first year I should have crowns to transplant, and I’ll probably be able to do some initial selections then.  I probably don’t have enough space for 30 different varieties…

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Asparagus Trials

I’ve been growing asparagus for a few years now, and we are finally getting a reasonably good harvest each year.

Anyway, I decided this year to do a big asparagus expansion, and trial a number of different kinds.  I purchased some seeds and crowns for different wild and purple asparaguses, and I also ordered 30 genebank accessions.  The later of which came the other day, just in time for planting.  I’ve tried to get ‘at least one of everything’.

A big thank you goes out to the people at GRIN-ARS at Cornell, who made it possible to get these seeds!  They’re really providing an important service.  On the customs declaration they modestly declared the combined value of the seeds as US$1, and indicated if the package was undeliverable it should be considered abandoned.  In a commercial sense it’s true, but they’re worth a lot more than that to me.

Now I have 30 last minute trays of numbered asparagus seeds waiting to germinate:

It’ll take a few years of course before they are mature enough to eat, but I think it’ll be interesting to explore the differences, and perhaps try to create my own variety out of the best of the varieties I’ve received.

One of the varieties I’ve purchased is a very modern one from a local commercial asparagus breeding company.  It’ll be interesting to see what they think are good traits.

Anyone else have experience asparagus breeding or collecting, maybe with varieties or experiences to trade?  I’m not in contact with anyone who has specific asparagus breeding experience.

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The Snail of Happiness

I came across this site a few days ago, and thought I’d mention it here.

I think it’s written by a she, who’s interested in permaculture, sustainable living and gardening.  In her most recent post she mentions she has a PhD in land reclamation:

…which involved studying the re-creation of vegetation systems on restored open cast coal sites. I am fascinated by looking at natural relationships and seeing how these can be applied to physical and social systems created by people. For me, the easiest way to think about this sort of design is in my garden, because I understand the value and function of things like soil structure, micro-organisms, micro-climate, water, pollinators, decomposers and vegetation. But I am increasingly intrigued about how I can apply systems-level thinking to other aspects of my life: starting a new business, working with other people, designing a course for adult learners…

Her blog is already bringing back memories of the first few years of this blog, and I think it’s going to be very interesting to follow as she goes along.

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10 Great Gardening Websites

Ramon Gonzales, a writer for Treehugger.com, recently published a list of his current 10 favorite gardening websites, and I’m pleased to be included in his list.

I’ve known Ramon as Mr. Brown Thumb for a number of years now.  He was one of the original garden bloggers, probably the first well known one from the Chicago area, and now very active with the preservation of heirloom varieties. Even though we’ve known each other, our paths strangely rarely cross, almost never commenting on each others blogs or participating elsewhere in the same discussions.

One of the things he said in the article linked to above is:

Unfortunately, the search engine results can be gamed and the best gardening websites aren’t always at the top of search results.

This is getting to be incredibly true by now.  Not just search engines, but site statistics and even supposedly private website log files, are all being gamed these days.  It’s getting to the point where such a huge percentage of the Internet traffic is manipulated by a few large companies, or people that pay these companies, that no one can tell anymore which sites exist because of commercial interests or the quality of their content, what’s popular and what’s not.  The only reliable thing we have left is word of mouth.

Not only does this list of garden websites include some of my favorites, but I also think Ramon himself is worth keeping an eye on.

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New Dutch Language Blog

I’ve started a new Dutch language blog.  I’m mentioning it here mostly so Google will find it and start indexing it.  I don’t think it’s going to be of great interest to many people here, even those of you who speak Dutch.  You’re all welcome to stop by of course, and Google translate may be enough for you to read and understand most of it.

What’s the reason for this blog?

Since you asked, let me try to explain…

My community garden, called ‘Vlijtigveld’ (meaning busy or diligent field), has a racist and not very smart management.  The name really says it all, almost in a comical way.  What’s an organic gardener like me doing trying to have a lazy no-dig garden, with mulch to control weeds, in a place where we’re all supposed to be working hard??

Anyway, for 4 years now I’ve been trying to ignore the fact the management doesn’t recognize any gardening technique that’s not heavily reliant on sprays or chemical fertilizers, or any gardener that doesn’t control weeds by killing them with chemical warfare or pulling them out one at a time.

I’ve also been trying to ignore the garden management as they walk around telling any one who’ll listen about how they don’t let in any more Turkish gardeners, or how 60% of the gardeners have to be Dutch or the foreigners will get voting rights.  It’s us against them, don’t you know!  In this time I’ve been pretending not to notice our perimeter security fence, designed with a weak side, meaning whenever there is a break-in and a garden is vandalized, it will almost certainly belong to a Muslim gardener.

Literally, all our gardens are assigned based on ethnic origin, and the layout of the complex is planned on this basis.  Because the management doesn’t want any of us teaming up against them, they avoid assigning friends adjacent gardens, and try to promote friction by assigning nearby gardens to people of conflicting ethnic origins.

Anyway, as we can all imagine, this isn’t working very well.  It’s not working because it’s as much comical as anything else.  The gardeners are all mostly getting along and becoming friends.  The management has mostly lost the respect of everyone, Dutch and foreign.  This has recently prompted a great deal of hostility from the management, gardeners are now frequently harassed by the management and often threatened with the loss of their gardens.  Our drinking water was recently cut off!  You’d think it was war.

So, I really don’t have the time or inclination to try to solve all the problems of our community gardens.  I have no desire to join the management and try to ‘fix it’ from within.  Other than a little passive aggressiveness, I’ve really been trying to keep my head down.

I want the other gardeners to get together and decide what kind of community gardens they want to have, work for it themselves, possibly with my help.  To that end, I decided to start a blog to provide the gardeners, as well as anyone else with an interest in Vlijtigveld more information.  As well as information it will have the views of myself, the sole American gardener.  I think mostly the blog will have a lot of detailed information about how the rules are constructed, and how Dutch law might provide some help.  I’ve exchanged some letters with the garden management, and I intend to publish these.  It’s probably not going to make a lot of sense to most readers, but if you’re interested you’re welcome!

Luck was with me when I went searching for a domain name for this new blog.  ‘Their’ domain name, vlijtigveld.nl was not in use and available for registration, so this blog is at http://vlijtigveld.nl  The management are not really Internet people, so it may be some time before they notice the existence of the blog…