Time Difference

This weekend we were lucky enough to have family visiting. As they travel up to Nottingham from Portsmouth it is interesting that some signs of spring are much further ahead and others are about the same. The asparagus on our allotment is just starting to show a few spears and yet in Portsmouth they have already been able to cut some of this early treat!

Last year we noticed some of our asparagus crowns weren't as strong as others and have ordered crowns of Pacific 2000 to replace them. I am not sure if the female crowns don't produce such strong crops because they put more effort into seed production. The new crowns are supposed to be all male - so we shall see how they do. In the past we have grown asparagus from seed but it takes longer to take a crop- these new crowns should give us a small crop next year and go on to crop for up to 20 years at least.