{"id":8849,"date":"2021-05-28T11:35:37","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T15:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=8849"},"modified":"2021-05-28T11:35:37","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T15:35:37","slug":"i-canned-up-the-first-batch-of-asparagus-yesterday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2021\/05\/28\/i-canned-up-the-first-batch-of-asparagus-yesterday\/","title":{"rendered":"I canned up the first batch of asparagus yesterday"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d planned on canning asparagus for a couple of days then got busy, bringing in all the flats of plants off of the back deck. The forecast for the night was a frost warning coupled with temperatures in the low thirties. As there were dozens of flats, I kind of got distracted. (Asparagus often will freeze when it frosts, or the temperatures go below 32\u00b0 F. The spears get dark and droop dismally downward, soon shriveling and becoming tough.) I’d meant to pick it, but just plain forgot. Will got the heater going in the greenhouse after a quick fix. It seems that mason bees had built a nest in the gas jet and two larvae had hatched out, blocking the gas! We did buy two mason bee houses and we’ll have to get busy and hang them up for them if they’re that desperate for a nesting site. We do love them as they are great pollinators. Well, the temperature got down to 28\u00b0 F at night, but all of our plants were cozy inside. OH oh, I remembered the asparagus. Fearing the worst, I checked it while doing my morning chores. I was happy to see that it had not been affected. So I got busy and cut all three patches then canned it up. I only got six pints but then it was the first big picking and we’ve had such dry weather. I’ll keep canning it for a couple of weeks and even if it’s only six pints at a time, they sure do add up quickly.<\/p>\n

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I just love seeing thick asparagus stalks pop up, seemingly overnight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Asparagus is one of our favorite foods; so good for you too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Boy, are our plants in the greenhouse doing super fine! I just can’t believe how much difference it made in their growth. Those tomatoes look like trees! Only a week or so and I’ll be setting them out (depending on the weather forecast, of course). We used to use Wall O’ Water plant protectors but when we started growing for the seed business, there were just too many tomatoes to use them. Too labor intensive for two senior gardeners. So our tomatoes will be a little later this year than usual but we’ll still get a great harvest (I hope!).<\/p>\n

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I just can’t get over what a huge difference our greenhouse made in the plants. This Bill Bean tomato looks like a tree!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Will’s work on the driveway is slowly paying off. The muck dried up as the rains quit. Today, he took the tractor out with the back blade and knocked down the ruts and smoothed most of the rough places out. There are still a lot of clay chunks on the drive but when they dry, he’ll blade it again and it will be nice and smooth. Well, pretty smooth for a long drive through the woods. Hey, I remember when it was barely a four-wheeler trail through swampy spots and rocks! Improvements do take time, after all. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d planned on canning asparagus for a couple of days then got busy, bringing in all the flats of plants off of the back deck. The forecast for the night was a frost warning coupled with temperatures in the low thirties. As there were dozens of flats, I kind of got distracted. (Asparagus often will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,13,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8854,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849\/revisions\/8854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}