There are some vegetables in our gardens which come back yearly, and those plants must be nurtured in a way very different from the other vegetables and edible flower varieties. Others need to be harvested daily and not allowed to go to seed or they will cease to produce. With the upsurge in survival gardening these past twenty years, people need to ask, can you pick asparagus the first year.
The answer to that question simply, is yes, but also no. These spears are a plant which will winter over nicely and come back stronger and better each year. Experienced gardeners will tell you that first-year spears can be harvested for about two weeks, then allow the rest to mature in order to have an even better harvest for the next season.
Broccoli is a plant which should be handled in precisely the opposite manner because it will die over the late summer and winter months. It begins to produce florets in late May and June, and one can still get a harvest until mid to late July depending on how hot the region is. However, eventually the plant becomes spindly and can allowed to go to seed.
In certain regions broccoli may come back from seed, but if the late summer is too hot, or the winter too bitter cold, it can kill the seeds. If one grows only heirloom varieties of vegetables then seeds can be harvested and saved in a climate-controlled area till next season. Heirloom means it is not a GMO or a hybrid, as those plants will sometimes produce seeds, but the plans produced from those seeds are sterile and will not fruit.
One thing seen in some of the new gardens around the country is a chicken run set up all around the perimeter of the vegetable beds. A chicken run is just what it sounds like. It is an area enclosed, sides and top, with chicken wire and this allows the chickens to roam the area, eating bugs one might not want in the garden, without getting in and damaging the vegetables themselves.
This is still a free-roaming chicken since most of these flightless birds have a small territory they would keep for themselves were they still their wild ancestors, the guinea hen. There are some areas where chickens are not permitted, but if one has adequate privacy fences and no crowing roosters, then the neighbors will be none the wiser. The hens will still produce eggs without the presence of noisy roosters.
Many people start gardens because it is important to them that their children have that experience. Others are gardening because they love the way it makes them feel. However, the primary reason people are growing their own food these days is to combat the presence of unmarked GMO foods all over our grocery stores.
Growing fruits and vegetables in the yard allows one to make sure everything is sun-ripened on the vine. Many fruits and vegetables one might find at the local supermarket are picked green and allowed to ripen in transit. Most fruits and vegetables done this way are hard and lack the flavor that foods had when most of us were children.
The answer to that question simply, is yes, but also no. These spears are a plant which will winter over nicely and come back stronger and better each year. Experienced gardeners will tell you that first-year spears can be harvested for about two weeks, then allow the rest to mature in order to have an even better harvest for the next season.
Broccoli is a plant which should be handled in precisely the opposite manner because it will die over the late summer and winter months. It begins to produce florets in late May and June, and one can still get a harvest until mid to late July depending on how hot the region is. However, eventually the plant becomes spindly and can allowed to go to seed.
In certain regions broccoli may come back from seed, but if the late summer is too hot, or the winter too bitter cold, it can kill the seeds. If one grows only heirloom varieties of vegetables then seeds can be harvested and saved in a climate-controlled area till next season. Heirloom means it is not a GMO or a hybrid, as those plants will sometimes produce seeds, but the plans produced from those seeds are sterile and will not fruit.
One thing seen in some of the new gardens around the country is a chicken run set up all around the perimeter of the vegetable beds. A chicken run is just what it sounds like. It is an area enclosed, sides and top, with chicken wire and this allows the chickens to roam the area, eating bugs one might not want in the garden, without getting in and damaging the vegetables themselves.
This is still a free-roaming chicken since most of these flightless birds have a small territory they would keep for themselves were they still their wild ancestors, the guinea hen. There are some areas where chickens are not permitted, but if one has adequate privacy fences and no crowing roosters, then the neighbors will be none the wiser. The hens will still produce eggs without the presence of noisy roosters.
Many people start gardens because it is important to them that their children have that experience. Others are gardening because they love the way it makes them feel. However, the primary reason people are growing their own food these days is to combat the presence of unmarked GMO foods all over our grocery stores.
Growing fruits and vegetables in the yard allows one to make sure everything is sun-ripened on the vine. Many fruits and vegetables one might find at the local supermarket are picked green and allowed to ripen in transit. Most fruits and vegetables done this way are hard and lack the flavor that foods had when most of us were children.
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