It is April, and yesterday was a very sunny day, so I went to the backyard to check how my garlic and chives were doing since last time (March 18), and see if there was any sign of asparagus spears. The green garlic tops were big enough that now they were poking through the mesh protecting them from the squirrels, so I removed it; those little critters are cute and I don’t mind sharing some of my berries and tomatoes with them, but they just love un-earthing garlic cloves in the fall for no apparent reason, seriously, they don’t even eat them (an excavation site can be seen at the top left of the picture above.) Anyway, in the spring the squirrels are more preoccupied with their family lives, so they won’t bother with my garlic; the green tops were about 7.5 cm (3″) tall. If I’d noticed any too close to each other, I would have harvested one and use it as a scallion; it is a unique taste, an early reward for gardeners:
Chives are such a great crop; you plant them once, nurture them for one season, and after that, they come back year after year. I will devote a whole post to chives when they start blooming, my favourite stage for admiring them and cooking with them. Right now, I can start clipping some tender leaves to chop and top potatoes, soups or eggs (oh, yeah, and I should clean that brush soon, too):
Asparagus are another wonderful perennial crop for the Canadian backyard, and April is the best month to plant them around here. I only thought of growing them because one of my daughters loves them, and asked for some plantings when we started the veggie patch five years ago; now I look forward to the spears appearing every spring. I removed the mulch covering the patch, but all I found was a few dried remnants from last fall, when the fronds got trimmed to the ground (asparagus grow feathery branches up to 6′ tall after the harvest is done).
I really should not be surprised, since the thermometer read exactly zero degrees Celsius (32°F). Even if my husband describes this weather as “great, not cold, not hot”, the ground was still kind of hard to work, and since I am from the tropics, I promptly went back inside, thinking of listening to Michael Bublé and cooking a nice pot of soup (more on that in my next post.)
My Slice of Mexico 