Asparagus – Best known as garden asparagus, Folk name is sparrow grass, scientific name Asparagus officinalis. Young shoots are used as a vegetable.
Asparagus harvesting season is underway and mini-skyscrapers of green and maroon colored asparagus punch through a blanket of straw.
At the Farm Hub, it is one of the ones harvested earliest – typically in May and June – and “it’s low maintenance,” says Jeff Arnold, vegetable production manager. It is a perennial vegetable emerging year after year and isn’t a popular vegetable with animals including rabbits and deer.
Three days a week just after dawn, a crew harvest asparagus, seeking young shoots that ideally eight-inches tall that haven’t flowered. The vegetable comes in all shapes and sizes, some with thick thumb-sized stems while other pencil-thin.
Here is a gallery of photos from a recent harvest, including one of a nest of baby rabbits that had made the asparagus field their home.
– Amy Wu
