Last week’s freezing overnight temperatures were a sorrowful development for many of us who planned to be picking asparagus instead of turning our furnaces back on. In the interests of perspective, though, I have to concede that an early-April freeze is much more inconvenient for the asparagus than it ever will be for me.

In my case, I just have to wait for the asparagus roots to get their bearings a second time and make the decision, again, that spring is really here, that it’s safe to start sending up spears.

I prefer to think of last week’s freeze as the gardener’s equivalent of a false start at a track meet, or a lane violation in a basketball game. In this case, it was Mother Nature who blew the whistle and sent everyone back to toe the line.

A few days before winter’s untimely return, we picked some of the earliest spears and ate them raw. They were tender and mild-flavored, and they teased us into thinking that the crisper drawer would be full in no time.

After the freeze, the last spears to pop up just before the cold snap hit were lying limp on the ground. It was a truly pitiful sight.

Strangely, these spears looked like they had been boiled to death, rather than frozen.

In the time we’ve been growing asparagus, I don’t recall seeing full spears so damaged by cold. We’ve seen spears that had their tops burned by a mild freeze, just as they were poking up through the ground, but this was a record freeze coming so late in the spring.

This doesn’t spell the end of the asparagus season, though. This past weekend, new spears were beginning to make an appearance, and I am hoping that another week of warmer temperatures will bring them up in force. While this year’s harvest may be shorter than in other years, we generally pick through the end of April.

Asparagus is no different than any other perennial plant. When the soil has been sufficiently warmed by the sun, the roots get the message that it’s time to grow above ground. Perennial flowers send up shoots and bloom, while asparagus fires up spears for cutting. Left in place, the spears turn into ferns and the females among them drop seeds.

A good stand of asparagus can keep doing this for decades. The proof is in the numerous asparagus patches that are still offering up spears at old farmsteads out in the county, long after the folks who planted it, and sometimes even the houses they lived in, are no longer in evidence. I’ve read that an asparagus patch can be counted on for 30 to 40 years, but I personally think that time frame is too short.

The stands of untended asparagus that return year after year to country roadsides also are a testament to the long-term hardiness of asparagus. A word of warning is in order here. I emphatically would not recommend that people pick and eat anything that emerges from the side of a road. I wince whenever I see cars parked on the roadside and people picking asparagus nearby.

While the chemicals that public works trucks spew into the ditches may not eradicate everything that grows there, the wild asparagus is still soaking up its share.

This same caution should apply to wild garlic, Jerusalem artichokes and other edible vegetation that pops up along county and township roadways. Most of the herbicides are aimed at noxious weeds, such as thistles, but everything in the vicinity is a likely target.

— When she’s not writing about foods and gardening, Gwyn Mellinger is teaching journalism at Baker University. Her phone number is (785) 594-4554.