What's happening in the garden lately?

Almost all of our asparagus died 2 years ago.  We planted new last year.  Here it is growing with the parsley that managed to survive the tilling and digging.  The big bunch of asparagus in the front is about 14 years old.  Most asparagus lives 10 - 12 years.  Parsley and asparagus are great companions.

Twelve days later and look at how much everything has grown.  The asparagus in the front is almost 6 feet tall.  We do not cut the asparagus fronds.  We leave them to feed the roots.  Next spring we will cut/break them off at ground level.  In years past the fronds have been so dense laying on the ground that they have made a great ground cover and the asparagus has started growing in January.

I took the pink cover off of the end of the broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage bed so you can see how they are growing above the original cover, but this weather is getting to freezing and below still.

A tiny head of broccoli is forming.

Another tiny head.  These plants really are the same color. Don't know what happened.  Now is the time to start seeds indoors for the fall crop, but the spring crop isn't very far along yet.

 Here is one of the heads of cabbage forming.  If the weather ever warms up enough for them to stay uncovered, the cabbage moth will be showing up.  I will be covering these with bridal tulle soon.  Pictures will be posted.

Another cabbage plant.  This should be forming into a head soon.

This bed of potatoes did not get covered a couple of weeks before this picture was taken.  Everything was brown, because it froze.  As you can see now it is coming back.

Another picture from the same potato bed after the freeze.

Now that all the tomatoes and tomatillas have a Wall of Water around each of them and a tomato cage around the plant too, it has become a pain to protect them from frost.  Larry thought of dropping empty buckets (my rain water ones) inside the cages to protect them.  So far it has worked good.  There are 15 of these.  I am all for lazy gardening.

The weather was nice one day about a week ago.  Larry mowed the lawn.  Randy Robison teaches in his classes to add a thick layer of grass (chemical free) or alfalfa pellets around the tomato plants and inside the Wall of Water.  It is to stay there all summer.  We decided to give it a try.  The plants are still little, so the grass is about 3 to 4 inches deep.

Same thing here.  This one is a tomatilla and little taller plant.  I don't think we will add more grass.  Will keep you posted.

Can you see the rhubarb flower?  I can only because I know where to look.  It is center front.  I know that at least 7 flowers have been cut off at the base of 3 plants already.  All these flowers mean that it is time to dig them up and divide them next spring.  Let me now if you want rhubarb.

Here is a closeup of a rhubarb flower.  There are four flowers at different stages of development right now.  This one is the largest.