EARLY ON TOP CROPS; ASPARGUS AND RHUBARB

Two early, easy to grow crops are rhubarb and asparagus. Once planted, these plants take care of themselves as evidenced by the large number of wild asparagus and rhubarb plants gr owning all over Michigan. These plants start growing as soon as the snow comes off in the spring and can be harvested all summer and fall if watered, harvested and, weeded correctly.

Asparagus is a plant you can buy in any of the many garden centers in your area. The only trick to planting asparagus is to dig a really deep, wide hole that will allow you to stretch out the roots. It will take a couple of years before you will see real production in your asparagus patch but, if you planted the asparagus in a relatively Sunny area and you water it a lot, you will enjoy its tender shoots all summer long but, once established, don't let it go to seed. Most garden centers carry Asparagus starter plants in the Spring. In Northern Michigan, I recommend that you start out with the plants and not the seeds. The winters here are harsh and you need to have a strong root system established the first year for the plants to thrive and produce in the future. There are many recipes for asparagus but, I love it raw or slightly steamed with cheese melted over it.

Now we will talk about my favorite edible plant, rhubarb (or pie plant). In my neck of the country (Northern Michigan) rhubarb/strawberry pie is as important as pumpkin pie on the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. No one has a successful holiday party here without the wonderful sour taste of rhubarb on the menu. Make sure you never eat the leaves, only the stalks. The leaves are poisionous.


Rhubarb is one of the easiest perennials to grow in the North. You can grow it in Northern Michigan and many tell me they grow it in Alaska. It has lots of nutrients and vitamins.

There are several types of rhubarb, as there are most plants. The most important thing to know when starting out rhubarb is to leave at least three feet between your plants in order to get the thickest stalks. Another thing to remember is to split your rhubarb plants every 3-5 years. If you don't split your plants you might end up with very thin, unattractive stalks of rhubarb.

Although you can grow rhubarb almost anywhere which almost any type of soil, it is best to keep the weeds and grass cleaned out around the plants base and to add a Little bit of peat or other organic soil around the base of your rhubarb plants every year. This will increase the yield of your rhubarb plant and perhaps, make the stalks less tart.

Rhubarb is easy to store for the Winter months. I cut up my raw rhubarb stalks, after I clean them, and then just stuff them into quart sized bags and then stick them in the deep freeze. As to recipes, you can do anything to rhubarb that you can to any other fruit like apples, plums etc. The only thing is you have to sweeten to taste (add more sweetener for rhubarb). Apple crisp can be rhubarb crisp. Pine apple upside down cake can be rhubarb upside down cake etc. The point is, a true gardener can find ways to make an easy to grow simple plant, useful in their cooking.