Well, Mother Nature decided today to relieve me of my asparagus
surplus. Two minutes of hail driven by a furious wind riddled both of
my big patches. The hail was small, mostly the size of a pea, but it
was very numerous and traveling at a high rate of speed. Many stalks
were hit by 3 or 4 hailstones resulting in most losing their tips.
Even the smaller ones that I had left to fern out were decapitated.
In a strange phenomenon that I don't understand, the surviving spears
had arced forward at a 90 degree angle, so that they were horizontal,
pointing into the wind that had driven the hail. This should not
cause long term damage to the roots, but will curtail production for a
few days. Nearby emerging potatoes suffered some holes in their
leaves, as did my larger brassica plants, but they should all recover
in a few days. I don't know what the wind velocity was, but it was
sufficient to blow five 80 lb bales of straw off a stack, and move one
of them 25 feet. Oh yeah, we got a tenth of an inch of rain, too.