I am not surprised the asparagus is up.

Yesterday the peach tree bloomed. It usually blooms quite a bit later than the plum trees, but this year it has bloomed just a few days later. Everything is so early this year, and I am afraid a late, hard freeze or frost is lurking out there sometime in March. (I refuse to think as far ahead as April.)

The gutter garden looks like fun. I hope your DD has great success and develops a love of gardening. My son didn't really develop an appreciation for the garden (other than liking to play in the mud when he was little) until he was in his early teenaged years.

Dawn

I have planted two year old asparagus crowns last spring, they are not yet up. Your gutter garden is nice.

Dawn, my four year old daughter love playing in mud and water too, she also love picking fresh vegetables from garden. Yesterday she was asking to build garden for her...

-Chandra

melissia, yours is ahead of mine. They say not to eat any the first year after planting, but that one could yet get frost bitten so if it were me I would be out "grazing." It looks like it's big enough that the crown can spare it.

You might want to mulch your crowns. Not only will it hold water, discourage weeds and keep the soil cooler during the summer, but it will also discourage these too-early-to-be-safe shoots. DH put several inches of wood chips on our bed and there's nothing showing yet. In the past several spears have come up too early and got frosted back.

Dorothy, I'm glad you told her to eat it, because I sure wanted to say that, but thought I might be wrong. It seems to be a fairly wide stalk to be coming off a first year plant.

I put my bed in about February or March last year, and I am anxious to see what I have this year. The roots that I planted were very large. I hope I at least have a few to snack on this year because three years is a long time to wait for any crop.

I mulched today because I'm surprised how tall the shoots are... They're like 8" or more... There are probably 4-8 shoots that I could eat. I didn't want to stunt the plants. If y'all think it's okay... I'm eating asperagus tomorrow : )

Asparagus is not frost hardy so it's a good bet that those will get nipped back. It would be better for the crowns if they hadn't come up this early, but they did. So you might as well enjoy.

My asparagus is coming up now also.

One of the places that sold me mine said not to eat any the year I planted it if planted in the spring. But the following spring to eat any stalks bigger than a pen. That is the way I have always done it and my asparagus has done great. Jay

Jay, sounds right to me. I know that Al will be out there munching on that one tomorrow anyway no matter what I say. LOL So far only one is up, and it is bigger than a pen.

I was amazed at the size of these roots last year and they were 2-3 times the size of those packaged roots you see in the big box stores.