The week before last we finished planting 1000 asparagus plants. I think they sent me extra because I ended up needing an extra row. So they sent extra or we didn't space them as planned or I didn't measure the length of the rows correctly. The asparagus is on the south side of fruit trees and shrubs that were planted last year.
When the hazel nut bushes arrive I'm going to plant them south of the asparagus as a wind block. I planted 6 dogwood trees to the north side of the above mentioned swale which is south of another swale. It sounds like they will flower later than the apple trees. I was planning to place a bee hive out there this year but I decided to place the bees at the new homestead since it has a lot more flowers and is much more established.
I finished the drip irrigation for the food forest and other oak and nut trees we planted. Making the 1/4 inch drip lines with the dripper and end that fits into the 1/2inch tube makes the process so much faster! The right tools are worth it!
The two pawpaw trees I planted look to be alive and many other trees are just beginning to leaf out. I also planted a cold hardy kiwi and now the forecast is calling for freezing temps this next week so I'm going to cover a few things.
In the center of the photo is grass covering a nest of a meadow lark's 4 eggs. This is maybe 20 feet from the asparagus rows. I'm glad I didn't drive over it. I marked the area with sticks to remind me where they are.

I have been wanting to add some water for birds and such so I rigged this up with what was left of my salad bowl. I plan to add a lot of these.

This is an asparagus row, looking west, before planting and before tilling in the compost and biochar. I first dug the rows with an excavator. You could also use a plow.

Asparagus rows looking east.

We tried spacing from 12 inches in a straight line, 12 to 18 inches double spaced and 12 inches spaced on the far sides of the row so really more than 12 inches between plants. Will be interesting to see if we can tell a difference based off of these differences. After mixing the biochar and compsot into the soil we would dig a hole for the plant and cover it with about 2 inches of soil while still being about 4 inches below the original soil height. More compost will go on top.

This photo shows the bare root asparagus crown sizes for Jersey Giants from Daisy Farms. Most of them were on the larger size. I think some of the small ones were probably included for free.

I was out working on the second food forest swale when I noticed a new friend. This is the first snake I've seen on the property. It was not aggressive and eventually moved to a new area. I'm going to pay a bit more attention. When leaving I noticed a dead on the road. I believe it is a harmless bull snake.

I put some temporary sprayers on the back side of the swale to help the clover, vetch, wildflower and sunflower seeds sprout. A few had sprouted but many more are there. The next night we got more rain - yeaaa! I spread some of the leaves I got last fall over the back of the swale to help hold some moisture. I kept it to a minimum because many of the seeds are really small.

If you use a sprayer like this and set it to water 180 degrees do not line it up to try to avoid the sides because then it actually drips quite a bit. Rather unlike this photo have the water aim at one of the sides and you will get less drip. This one is setup to drip some to water a plant just in front of it.

This is the sunset on the last day of asparagus planting. It was a nice reward for working that late.
