Harvesting the asparagus
ASPARAGUS GROWING | EARLY HARVESTING
A springtime activity
To get a good asparagus crop, patience is essential : to ensure proper growth of the plant, the farmer must wait 3 years after sowing.
Harvesting takes place from mid-April to early June, when the asparagus is still tender. It is extracted by hand or with an asparagus gouge to first loosen it gently and deeply in the soil. The soil surrounding the plant must be cleared by hand and the plant given a slight twist when the gouge encounters the resistance of the claw. All it takes is to tilt the gouge so that the asparagus is detached from the root.
To keep the asparagus of Hoerdt white, it must be harvested very early in the morning, before it comes out of the ground and sees the light: it changes colour when exposed to the sun, which means that the farmer must be in the fields on a daily basis.
The new tarping technique (one side black for warming, one side white for cooling the soil) allows the soil to be kept loose, making the harvesting easier and keeping the asparagus white.
Local know-how
On sunny days, the cracks on the mound show where the asparagus is. On rainy days, these signs, known only to initiates, disappear and make harvesting more difficult. The skill of the producer in the area of Hoerdt is to know exactly where the asparagus is before it shows “the tip of its nose”.
It is painstaking work trying to find the asparagus and grasp it using the gouge, without breaking it. Before the gouge came into use, the farmers used “rubber fingers” – Dimèlè – to scrape the soil and remove the asparagus.
The harvest was a family affair (outside of school time), and even the youngest children had to participate in the task. Today, most producers rely on seasonal labour.
Apart from the first few years when the field does not produce asparagus, the harvest will continue to be done for about ten years. The soil must then be left to rest by pulling out the roots and then used for another crop for a period of time.