This is the time of year that spurs me to think about putting shovel to soil in anticipation of the coming growing season.
Of all the places I have lived, the best have been where I had a sunny patch of land on which to plant a garden. I like to use heirloom seeds, but I am not above buying seeds or plants from locals.
A few decades ago, when I lived near Hendersonville, North Carolina, I decided to train my eye to see asparagus growing on the side of roads. It’s a skill I think most anyone can learn if they take the time to practice.
As our recipe writer Susi Gott Seguret mentioned in a 2024 article in SML, “many treasures are just outside our doorsteps, increasing as we venture into the woods.”
When I was young I read about hunting for asparagus when my brother Peter brought home a copy of Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons.
As Susi put it, Gibbons, born in 1911, “is considered by many to have been a trailblazer of the third wave of the back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the early and widely-read writers to endorse foraging as a way of nourishing ourselves and our families.”
I put the idea of hunting asparagus into practice in my late 20s.
Asparagus has a fern look, growing tall if it has been there for years. In the winter you might see the yellowish dried stems.
I would look for it in ditches, along fences, and near railroad tracks as I drove.
It may have been Gibbons who wrote that a lot of asparagus sprouted along train tracks. I know Barbara Kingsolver has written about the marriage of railroads and asparagus.
After purposefully looking for the plant in and around the mountains, I spied a clump along Asheville Highway outside of Brevard.
I think there are two schools of thought when it comes to finding feral asparagus. The first is that it is growing wild and you pull a shovel out of your trunk and dig it up. The other is that you just note where it is and in spring you go by to cut some of the fresh sprouts in order to make a good meal better.
I think it just depends. If the plant is right beside someone’s mailbox then it is not there for the taking, though I might go knock on their door to make sure they know of the bounty right there on their roadside.
The clump I had spotted near Brevard was in the highway right-of-way, adjacent to a ditch and near no home or business. I turned around to go back to confirm that it was asparagus, and I returned with a shovel and a bucket a few months later when its stems had died back.
Over the decades I have planted a lot of asparagus around the homes where we lived. I like to think that some of those mounds may have spread and may still be producing thick asparagus stems.
I also think asparagus might be the best gift to give a homeowner, if they have a nice sunny place where it can be planted. Just swing by with six or eight root balls and a shovel and help them initiate a garden space.
You shouldn’t harvest it for a couple of years in order to let the roots get established, and you shouldn’t cut all of the stems that poke up after that, because some must grow to help maintain a healthy plant.
I also like the idea of buying asparagus roots to plant for a family when a new child is born. If they don’t own their property, ask if you can plant the asparagus in a community garden near where they live.
Before that child goes to kindergarten the asparagus will be producing plenty of tasty stems for the family or for the community.
—Jonathan Austin