Wild Asparagus

Now that I'm trying to raise tame asparagus, it's time to start cutting back on the wild ones that have had free rein of the garden for years.

Above is the commonest one, seen with Foxgloves against the trunk of the Pecan tree. This flowers and sets seed in profusion. It can get to the thickness of a ball point pen refill.

Another much sturdier variety. the young stems are about the thickness of a pencil, and quite edible, but it grows fast so you have to keep your eyes open. I haven't seen this one seeding.This is the one quite common in the local veld.

Anyway, the clearance operations ended with some of the plants plus seed pods landing on the compost heap, which led to an outbreak of wild asparagus seedlings the last few days in most of the medium size black bags filled about a month back.

This is the result of the first weeding exercise. I've never pulled out an asparagus seedling before - usually I'm fussing over keeping them alive. These are quite tough and wiry in comparison to tame ones, which are tender and delicate.

It's interesting to see how long the tap root is. The depth at which the seed germinated seems pretty random, and looks like it made no real difference to seedling development.

The high germination success rate means I'm going to have to keep an eye open and carry on getting rid of them as they inevitably pop up.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for my tame seeds to start showing up in their trays.

Update 2015/10/21:

A wild seedling growing with a Custard Apple.