Growing Chard And Asparagus At Their Summer Cottage

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Growing rare crops - chard and asparagus - at their summer cottage

Like every gardener, I love to grow something new in the garden, which the neighbors do not have.

Many years ago, they brought me tarragon seeds from the Caucasus. He took root in our garden immediately and forever. I distributed a lot of it to neighbors. At first they were used mainly for canning. Now tarragon is used in soups and salads, and we dry this wonderful herb.

Last season, from my hands began to advance in gardening Swiss chard. I grow two varieties - green silver peel and red. There is also yellow, but I did not find its seeds on sale. Chard bushes are powerful, up to 60 cm tall, they are very decorative. Chard beds are more like a flower bed, very elegant. We use Swiss chard instead of cabbage in the soup, just stew with butter and the addition of herbs, preserve the stalks separately for the winter and make a dressing for borscht from the leaves.

And you can also make a wonderful Georgian dish from it - pkhali. Chard should be finely chopped with a knife and simmered in a pan under the lid. Finely chop an equal amount of onions equal to chard and sauté under the lid until soft. Combine onion and chard, mix well, add garlic, vinegar, suneli hops, red pepper, cilantro or basil to taste. For a festive table, you can add chopped walnuts to the dish. Well, if you don't have chard, you can use spinach or beet tops.

Chard needs fertile soils, well-drained, with a neutral reaction, and sufficiently moist. It is better to take a sunny place. It takes out a lot of nutrients from the soil, so it is often necessary - once every 10 days - to feed it with manure infusion or infusion of green herbs. Good watering is needed. Then Swiss chard will thank you with an excellent and beautiful harvest. And bon appetit!

And one more undoubted success of the last season is the first harvest of asparagus … Almost everyone grows it, but just as an ornamental plant. And to get a delicious, delicious, dietary harvest, you need to work a little while planting. Sow with seeds from mid-May (germinated) or seedlings in early June, when the threat of frost has passed. The bed should be with nutritious soil, sufficiently moist, but without stagnant water. It is better to cover weak young plants for the winter with peat, compost or old sawdust. While the asparagus is growing, we are preparing a place for it to grow constantly. We dig a trench with a width and depth of about 0.5 m. At the bottom we put all the waste of garden production: old branches, weeds with a layer of 20 cm. We compact it all well, and on top we put a layer of compost with well-rotted manure. Asparagus will yield in one place for about ten years. Therefore, the soil must be very fertile and neutral. This means that dolomite flour or lime must be added.

Over the course of a year, the weeds in the trench will rot a little, and the soil will settle somewhat. In the spring, overwintered young bushes are planted in a permanent place in one row no closer than 0.7 m from each other. You can add a teaspoon of AVA under each plant and mix well with the ground. Prepare a good, loose compost by autumn. It can be a mixture of old sawdust, rotting manure very well. The mixture should pass water and air well. In autumn, the asparagus beds are covered with this mixture from the point of growth with a layer of 15-20 cm. In subsequent years, the layer is increased to 25 cm. Harvesting begins in the third year. As soon as the ground over the asparagus begins to crack, it should be gently raked out with your hands and broken off any young, bleached shoots. The soil from above must be leveled. In the early years, in order not to weaken the plant, it is better to carry out one collection.

The resulting shoots can be used fresh in salads or canned. You can boil it (put it in a saucepan vertically!) And use it as a delicious side dish for a variety of dishes or as an independent dish.

You can also collect green shoots. They are even richer in vitamin C. But bleached shoots are tastier.

How is asparagus useful? Lowers blood pressure, normalizes heart function, has a positive effect on all organs of the body. Abroad, it is the # 1 dietary vegetable and very expensive.

So maybe it's worth a little work to get a harvest from a beautiful flower bed?

Enjoy your meal and good health for years to come.