Purple asparagus

I bought and planted some seeds of purple asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) before we moved here.  I think I got about 10 seeds in all, which is not many but at that time purple asparagus could only be bought from one place so I didnt have a great deal of choice if I wanted to grow it.

The seeds were small, black and unremarkable.  I soaked them in water overnight and planted them, then waited for something to happen.  From those seeds only 3 germinated, it was very exciting.  At that time I knew of no one who had ever grown asparagus from seed so was pretty much on my own to figure how to grow them.  I have grown many things over the years which people have told me are impossible to grow, so this didnt daunt me.

Out of those 3 tiny seedlings grew, then slugs or snails killed 2 of them one night.  After noticing the loss I quickly put crushed eggshell all around the last survivor to help protect it.  That one seedling was not killed but did sustain some snail damage from time to time and needed the crushed egg shell placed around it pretty often.

This one tiny seedling grew slowly, it died down each winter as asparagus must, and grew back larger each Spring.  Each Spring the snails would hammer it and I would protect it with egg shells.

Then it was dug up and moved here with us.  Considering that we moved in the height of summer the plant did not enjoy this move and its growth was slowed but it did not die.  I planted it into the soil at the edge of the vegetable garden near the fence.  Asparagus dies each winter and sprouts again each spring.  I am told it takes 3 years from seed to get a crop, but this plant had such a difficult start that it took a bit longer.

Purple asparagus spear emerging in early spring

Asparagus plants are either male or female.  Female asparagus tends to be a bit thinner than the male plants as they put energy into seeds and fruit, male plants grow thick and fat spears.  Most people kill off the female plants and only grow the male ones.  I had no idea if this plant was a male or a female, I didnt particularly care as I planned on keeping it regardless.

Purple asparagus spear

Last year (or the year before, I cant remember) this plant flowered for the first time, it is a female plant.  It grew a handful of red berries, most of which were eaten by birds and the seeds deposited who knows where.  I kept some berries and extracted the seeds.  I am yet to grow them, if I do they will most likely not grow true to type as many wild asparagus plants grow here and would have donated pollen to my plant.


What purple asparagus looks like

One question that I had when buying purple asparagus seed is what the plants would look like.  After searching the internet I found many pictures of purple asparagus spears, which looked amazing, but no pictures of the plant once the spears matured.  I wondered if they stayed purple or if they grew green like normal asparagus.

As it turns out, the spears are nice deep purple, then they turn green as the fronds emerge more.  The fronds of purple asparagus look much like regular asparagus, green and fluffy and beautiful.

While I am disappointed that it is not purple for its entire life it is still a beautiful plant.  Tiny birds like to hide in the fronds, some of them make nests in some of the other green asparagus plants that grow here and I hope that they decide to nest in the purple one some day too.

Purple asparagus starting to frond up, note the immature female flowers

What purple asparagus tastes like

Home grown asparagus, like many home grown vegetables, tastes far superior to store bought asparagus.  This is probably due to the freshness, it can be picked minutes before being eaten instead of being picked weeks earlier and stored/transported/stored again before being eaten.  We have a lot of green asparagus growing here, most of it is from seed that birds have kindly deposited under apple trees, along fence lines, and under electrical wires.  While it often grows in unsuitable places this does not stop it from being delicious.

Strangely I have only eaten purple asparagus a few times over these years.  I like this plant so find it difficult to eat it, I would hate to eat too many spears and leave the plant depleted of energy.  I find that it tastes much like the green asparagus that is growing on this property, only sweeter.  If you like fresh asparagus you will love purple asparagus.

I find it disappointing that I can not buy this in the shops as it is nicer than the green type.  Hopefully one day someone will remedy this and grow purple asparagus commercially.  Unfortunately that someone wont be me.  Due to health issues any form of large scale farming is not in my future.

One can cover the spears as they grow to produce white asparagus, these white spear are more tender and sweeter again. 

Purple asparagus, each frond gets green as it grows

Why grow asparagus from seed

Most people think asparagus can not be grown from seed.  I have even had people try to argue with me over this point.  The fact that asparagus are flowering plants that produces seed, and that I have planted seeds and grown asparagus from those seeds, seems almost to be moot points as they have their minds already made up and no amount of logic and evidence will convince them otherwise.

Very few people grow asparagus from seed due to the time it takes to obtain a crop.  I can understand that, it takes a few years to get a large enough plant and by then you may be too attached to it to be able to eat much of it.  Asparagus is a long lived perennial so the effort will be payed off by years of asparagus crops.  You need to be aware that growing from seed has disadvantages, but there are a few reasons that may make you consider growing asparagus from seed.

Asparagus can accumulate virus load and not grow as well.  There are currently no certified virus free sellers in Australia so growing from seed to remove the virus load is currently the only way around this.  Virus load is probably not a huge problem for asparagus around here though. 

Growing from seed would also ensure an amount of genetic diversity which, assuming that you grew several seeds, would make your crop a bit better able to cope with problems that arise. Some seed grown plants will out perform others in your garden even if they came from the same parent.

Some varieties are not for sale as plants anywhere and only available as seed.  You will not be able to grow these unless you grow from seed.  Some of these are excellent varieties and I dont know why they are rare, others are rare because they are not all that great.

I grew purple asparagus from seed as I could not find crowns or plants.  Some places sell purple asparagus plants now.  To be honest I would not bother to grow asparagus from seed if plants or crowns are available.  That being said I would NOT buy tiny seedlings in a punnet though, growing from seed would result in healthier plants than buying these stunted plants that have grown in less than ideal conditions and not being repotted for who knows how long.


Where to get purple asparagus

If you want to eat purple asparagus you will have to grow it yourself.  A few places sell seeds and plants these days.  I may grow some of the seeds from my plant, if any of them are purple I may offer crowns or plants on my for sale page.  If you are keen to grow out some of my seed I may be able to send you some but be aware that it may not grow true to type.

Read More..

Water Cress

People always tell me how much they love watercress (Nasturtium officinale) yet I dont know anyone who grows it, they are all too scared that it would be too difficult.  Everywhere I read says that water cress is difficult to grow.  Many places claim that water cress requires crystal clear water and that without flowing water it will not grow.  This is simply not the case, water cress is easy to grow if you have water, sunlight and soil.

I have wanted to grow water cress for years but was scared that it would not go well.  Having no one to ask adds to the fear that it would be difficult to grow.  Having never grown watercress meant that I had also never eaten it.  I was very curios about eating watercress so decided to bite the bullet and grow some.  One day I ordered some water cress seeds from ebay (something I never like to do as there is no guarantee with seeds, but it was so cheap it was worth the risk) and decided to give it a go.  I tried to grow it in a few ways and surprisingly all of them grew well.  It grew so well and was so simple that I thought I should write a post about it and explain what I did so that hopefully some other people will also give it a go.

Watercress starting to flower

Watercress is meant to be a perennial semi-aquatic vegetable.  Mine appears to be perennial, but then it self seeds so well that I am not certain that this is the case or if it forms a self sustaining population of annuals.  Regardless I always have some growing with minimal effort on my behalf, which is what I want.  Watercress is one of the oldest known vegetables, many of the older vegetables are semi-domesticated and can be a hassle to grow or harvest or eat or even have issues with edibility due to toxins.  While watercress could benefit from some serious breeding work to increase the size of the leaves, other than that it seem pretty good.  It is probably not great to eat in huge amounts, but I dare say one would eat a ridiculous amount before any problems would be noticed.  I dont think any brassica is fantastic to eat in huge amounts so it is certainly no worse than any of the others that people eat every day.  It handles cold weather, hot weather and does not appear to have any noticeable daylength sensitivity issues.

One place I grew watercress was in a fish tank as part of a mini aquaponics tank at work.  Water cress is clearly well suited to such life and performed well.  It appears that the only limiting factor here was sunlight, unfortunately my tank does not get quite enough light for it to perform as well as it should.  That being said it did well and cleaned the water well due to its rapid growth rate.  It did not take over the way mint does which is another bonus.  Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of this, it really does get very lush very fast with aquaponics.

Watercress getting leggy producing seed pods

Another way I grew it was in punnets.  I planted some seeds into a punnet of soil and kept this punnet in an icecream container with shallow water.  This was the simplest way to grow it that I could think of but I had doubts that it would grow using this method as the water is far from running.  I also grew some duck weed on top of the water (I like duckweed), this would lower the dissolved oxygen in the water so added to my doubts.  This grew incredibly well, these plants have since flowered and produced seed which I now need to collect and clean.  If I had limited space I would grow watercress in this way as it is so simple and productive.  The pot could be sized up or down to meet your needs and the ice cream container could be replaced with any container that holds water that is an appropriate size.

Watercress growing in a punnet, the duckweed is also growing well

I have taken cuttings from the plants I was growing and put them in a glass of water.  In a few days they all grew roots at each node.  I tried to float a plant in some water in a fish tank and see if it would grow without soil.  Short term this went very well but eventually it all died off.  The lack of adequate sunlight was certainly a factor here but I think that water cress probably needs soil.

I am currently trying to grow some watercress in a bucket of soil that has a few cm of water on top of it in a similar way to water chestnuts and duck potatoes.  I took a cutting from the existing plants and have planted it in the bucket.  It is still early days but so far it appears to be growing well.  It has survived some frost as well as a few days with temperatures in the low 40s so is proving to be far more hardy that I would have expected.  I will try to remember to update this after they have been growing for a few months, if they do grow in this way it is even easier than the ice cream method above.

At this stage I do not sell watercress seeds but I may do so in the future if I ever get around to collecting enough seed.  If I do they will be listed on my for sale page with all the other perennial vegetables, heirloom vegetable seed and herbs that I sell.  Once you have some growing it is simple to keep it growing and propagate by taking cuttings.


UPDATE: the original plants were eaten out by slugs/snails/something in one night.  It seems odd they have grown for so long with no problems at all but then are completely gone in one night, but there is not much that can be done now.  I think it may have been water snails, but do not know for sure.  The cuttings growing in the bucket are so far untouched and are continuing to grow well.  This bucket has no water snails.

Read More..

Kids and gardening

My kids love gardening, it is something that they are born with.  I dont know if it is just fun to get dirty, or if digging holes makes it fun or if they just enjoy being outside, but whatever it is they have always loved it.

My kids have helped me plant seeds, tubers, rhizomes etc, water plants, harvest vegetables, save seeds and all other parts of gardening since before they knew it.  They know where their food comes from and understand the work that goes into producing food.  I am coming to the realisation that they have a better idea of food and growing vegetables than many adults, they certainly seem to be more capable at seed saving than a lot of people I know.

I tend to get a bit caught up in growing food plants and often forget that I should make gardening a bit more fun for the kids.  The kids certainly enjoy growing/eating things like strawberries or yacon, but sometimes they want a bit more fun so we have a few more novel plants for them to grow with me.  Many of these are still edible or useful, but they are fun for the kids too.


Rampion (Campanula rapunculus)

Who hasnt heard of the fairy tale called Rapunzel?  My kids havent, but that is beside the point.  Rampion is the vegetable that the mother stole from the witchs garden and caused all the trouble.  Apparently Rapunzel is another name for the vegetable Rampion.

Rampion beginning to flower

Rampion is a very ancient vegetable, the leaves and roots are eaten.  I have eaten some leaves and to be honest probably wouldnt sneak into anyones garden for it, let alone the garden of a grudge harboring witch.  The roots are meant to be delicious but I have not eaten any yet as I only have a few plants.  Some of the rampion has started to flower, the flowers are beautiful but are difficult to take pictures as most of the plants are hidden among other plants.

Rampion growing in a tiny pot

Rampion seed is tiny, so tiny that when I bought seed I could hardly see it and wondered if I had actually been sold anything other than dust.  The seed seems to have a reasonably low germination rate, but that may be my climate or the way in which I have tried to grow it.  It seems to have a lot of seed so having low germination is not that big a problem.

Rampion tends to do better if it is not transplanted, for this reason I am letting my plants go to seed and hope to sprinkle the flower heads where I would like the plants to grow.  The flowers on rampion are beautiful.  It ends up with a handful of long spikes of little blue flowers on each plant.  It would easily look good in an ornamental garden or a little girls fairy garden.

I should write another post on rampion some day.  Unfortunately I do not really have any pictures as it is mostly growing in amongst other plants and can not be seen.


Worlds hottest chilli

The kids tried some chilli a few months ago and thought that it would be fun to grow some.  I figured it would be fun to grow something that they could not get in the shops so I bought some Trinidad Scorpion Butch T (Capsicum chinese) seed and planted it with them.  These were the worlds hottest chilli a few years ago (apparently some hybrid has recently surpassed them) so I figured it would be great.

We then surrounded the tiny seedlings with crushed egg shell to help protect against slugs and snails.  So far they are tiny but I have high hopes as they are growing new leaves.  I plan to keep them in pots so that when winter comes we can try to protect them and hopefully get a second year out of them.

Trinidad Scorpion Butch T seedlings starting to grow

Immali Corn (Zea Mays)

I am breeding this variety myself and know of no one else that has created anything even remotely similar.  I have been working on this for a few years now and it is almost a stable variety.  I am now working on intensifying the colour and making this variety a bit more stable.

Immali corn is completely non GM and has been bred using nature to do much of the work.  If all goes well the Immali corn will produce a blue and white bicoloured cob of super sweet corn.  Being blue means that Immali Corn is high in anthocyanins and other cancer fighting antioxidants. 

Immali corn seedlings

I dont like starting corn and transplanting it, but this year I had little choice for a number of reasons.  I prefer to plant the seeds where they are to grow.  The seedlings were planted out the day I took the above picture and are now almost a foot tall.

I have high hopes for this corn and hope that once it is a stable variety I can distribute it for people to enjoy.  Perhaps distributing it before it is stable as a diverse landrace would be good too, we will see what happens. 


Venus fly traps (Dionaea muscipula)

Venus fly traps are the most well known of all the carnivorous plants.  They are fun, other than that they are pretty useless.  I had them when I was a child and loved them.  I started with one and ended up dividing it and multiplying it into a couple of dozen.  I dont know if they can grow here as the humidity is so low and it gets so hot, but it is worth a try.  I kind of miss growing carnivorous plants, perhaps I will get back into it properly after we move.

Venus Fly Traps - notice the bee stealing water from the lower pot

We now have three venus fly traps for the kids, or are they for me and I am just using the kids as an excuse?  Either way it doesnt really matter.  They do not catch many insects so are not useful for insect control.  A venus flytrap may have up to a dozen leaves and each leaf will only hold one insect at a time, so that is only a dozen insects per plant.  Something like a Drosera or a Sarracenia can catch many more insects.  A large pitcher plant can hold several hundred insects per leaf, a large sundew can catch a few dozen.  These can be used to successfully control some types of insect in some situations, unfortunately venus fly traps can not.  Even though the venus flytraps are virtually useless they can be a lot of fun.

People often comment that venus fly traps do not flower, that is absolute garbage spread by people who desperately want to appear intelligent and knowledgeable.  What they probably mean is that the traps are made of leaf and not made of flower.  This is kind of obvious, I can not think of any carnivorous plant that traps food with their flowers.  Not one.  Some plants will kill insects in their flowers, but I dont know of any that obtain any nutrients in that way.

Other people insist that the flowers must be removed from venus fly traps or they will weaken and die.  When I was a kid mine flowered most years and it never harmed them.  Quite often after flowering they would divide into several new plants.  I often collected their seed and grew it into more plants, each one genetically different from the rest.  Growing venus fly traps from seed is heaps of fun, if you ever get a chance I say give it a go.

If they can grow here in this arid climate I dont think flowering or not flowering will have any noticeable effect on their health. The plants have already divided and have several distinct growing points.

Venus Fly Trap flowers

Herbs

Nanuq has a little dinosaur garden, in it he has planted some flowers and herbs.  Strong growing herbs such as mint are great for kids.  Interesting looking herbs and odd smelling herbs seem to be enjoyed by kids.  Things which are sweet such as stevia are adored by kids.

Here are some pictures of the herbs that Nanuq has planted in his little dinosaur garden.  He has a lot of other plants in there too, some are ornamental and others like the tree onions are edible.

Chocolate mint

Variegated apple mint in with some variegated thyme

Stevia - very sweet

Read More..