Removal of Japanese honeysuckle is possible! You need a good eye to notice the pattern of the leaves, but most importantly, you need to be persistent. Before going to chemicals, attack by mechanical means. Fall is the best time of year to do this; the other plants (in your case, asparagus) are out of the way, and you can clearly see the honeysuckle. Water the bed well; you want the ground to be soft but not muddy. Wear garden gloves. You may want to use sharp garden clippers. Simply pull up the honeysuckle by hand. That should get the vast majority of it, unless some is so close to the asparagus that you fear to damage it. If you have difficulty removing older plants because of the depth of the roots, cut the roots off an inch or so below the soil level. I believe the roots will not sprout new plants if severed that deep. With this method, you should be able to get at least 95% of the honeysuckle. Just be sure to check for new growth in the spring. Then check every fall and spring. (And be glad you don't have an acre of it.) Once things are under control in the asparagus bed, you'll need to go after the runners in the 20' between the fence and the veggie garden. Unfortunately, you may also have propagation from seedpods in the fence area. [I have Japanese honeysuckle growing in large chunks of the neighborhood, but at least no one's demanding I keep a patch of it on my own property.] At times I've sprayed with triclopyr (Ortho Max Tough Brush and Poison Ivy Killer); that was a major factor in eliminating most of the honeysuckle from the second area I tackled. I buy the concentrate (poison ivy used to be a major problem); Home Depot carries it. I've generally sprayed during the winter, and repeated spraying was necessary. Really, tearing it out by hand works much better. Here are some recommendations by the experts: http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/loja1.htm http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/forestry/invasivetutorial/Japanese_honeysuckle_M_C.htm

Skybird - sorry, I think I completely confused you! The soil that sinks every year is a container mix we had delivered from a nursery when we built the first four beds, so there's no native soil in those at all. Just organic stuff, so it's constantly degrading. I just didn't want to add SO much organic matter to our native soil in the asparagus bed that it would end up doing the same thing, but it seems like I would need to use at least 1/3 or more organic matter for that to happen, and I don't think I need nearly that much. I'm probably just obsessing anyway (what a shock!) ;) Our soil is good...kind of a heavy loam I guess. I wouldn't quite say "light and fluffy," but it usually crumbles fairly easily. It really only gets hard when it's been compacted. I find clay once in a while when I dig around but there's not much at all in the first foot or so. Many wise and hard-working homeowners before us have brought in good stuff. But it must have been all clay a looooong time ago - we're about a mile or less from what used to be an old brickyard. And believe me, we WILL certainly enjoy the asparagus - it's my favorite veggie. :) I guess we should expect to be able to start harvesting in the third year, which seems far away until I realize we've been in this house more than five years already. Thanks again! Dianne

Estrella - I like my living room to be the first thing visible from the front door...mainly because it is the one room in the house that I can usually keep picked up and looking good. As far as I'm concerned, a dining room that is used daily should be within just a few steps of the kitchen. Maximum distance? 10 feet maybe? I've never understood a house where you have to carry food through the great room and then down a hallway practically to the front door before you finally reach the dining room? Who wants to carry food halfway across the house and dirty dishes back halfway across the house? Just more chances for drips, spills, and broken dishes. I suppose if you only plan to use your formal dining room on very special occasions and also have a pretty serving cart that you can load all the food and dishes onto and then wheel it into the dining room, then I guess 25 or 30 feet would not be too much of a problem. Personally though, I'd rather not have to trek that far when I realize - usually right in the middle of Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner - that I forgot to set the butter on the table. And of course, if one happens to have a cook plus a serving maid or butler, then who cares how far away the kitchen is from the dining room? It's the "help's" job to see that food gets to the table still warm and that nothing gets dropped/broken along the way. Don't I wish?!!! LOL!

Tom, I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with voles. I gardened here in southern OK for over a decade with no vole problems even though we're surrounded by woodland and the voles were here before we moved here, obviously. During the drought of 2011, they moved up out of the woods and began eating garden plants and I've battled them since then. Every year I try to find time to dig out one raised bed (most of my raised beds are 4' wide x 40' long so it is a lot of digging) and add quarter-inch hardware cloth to the bottom of it. I've been doing that for three years now and have only three beds done, but that allows me to grow potatoes and carrots without the voles feeding on them. It is frustrating to lose a crop like asparagus to the voles because of the way we have to let it grow a couple of years before harvesting it heavily, but if you redo your asparagus bed with a hardware cloth lining, that should keep them from eating the roots of your plants. I've had the same daffodils growing in the same place since 1999 and the voles have never touched them, so I had assumed that voles don't eat daffodils (though they apparently eat everything else under creation) but maybe it is just that the voles on our property haven't really noticed the daffodils yet. So far, neither castor bean oil-based repellents nor hot sauce have deterred the voles from eating what they want in my garden, so I try to outwit them by rotating crops to new areas each year. When I find holes or tunnels, I grab the Furminator cat brush and brush the hair of one of our cats and then I pull the hair out of the brush and stuff it down the hole. I don't know if it helps, but I'd like to think it makes the voles think there is a cat around. I think a combination of factors led the voles to begin "shopping" for dinner in our garden. While the exceptional drought of 2011 likely drove them out of the woods searching for food, we had raised our garden fence from 4' tall to 8' tall to keep the deer out not too long before that year. Unfortunately, the taller fence keeps out the bobcats and foxes that used to frequent our garden at night, and occasionally in broad daylight, which seems like a good thing as I no longer have to worry that one of our pet cats will encounter a predator in the garden. However, I do think the reason the foxes and bobcats were there in the garden was to prey upon the voles, so in that regard, I wish the predators were still regular garden visitors. Amanda, Your asparagus looks nice. It is asparagus-harvesting season here at our house and we are getting tons of it. Our plants all are older and well-established now, but in their early years, I didn't harvest at all and it paid off by giving us very large, dense, thick and robust plants that produce huge yields now that the plants are older. I think my asparagus plants now are 4, 5 and 6 years old as I planted them in three consecutive years, though they might only be 3, 4 and 5 years old. Once your plants are large enough that you get to harvest from them daily, you'll have more asparagus than you know what to do with. It is fun in the beginning, but after a few weeks of constant asparagus, I start getting tired of it. Of course, the minute it is gone, I wish it would have stayed in production a while longer. Having gotten used to fresh asparagus, I won't even buy it at the grocery store because it just isn't as good. Growing your own produce spoils you that way as nothing tastes as good as food harvested from your garden hours or even minutes before you prepare it and eat it. We always break off the first few early spears, which sprouted here this year during a hot spell in either late Feb or early Mar, and eat them raw in the garden. It is sort of a celebration of spring to nibble the first, fresh asparagus spears without leaving the garden. Nothing shouts "Spring is here!" like the appearance of the asparagus spears poking up out of the soil.