It is April, and asparagus spears are pushing through the soil right now on homesteads and kitchen gardens across the country. This episode of Farm Fresh Homestead is for everyone who is thinking about cutting them before they should. The three-year rule is not a suggestion — it is the difference between a productive asparagus bed that lasts twenty or thirty years and one that burns out after a single spring. This episode covers why it works, what the crowns are doing underground during those three years, how to read the thin-spear warning signal, and how to build the kind of bed that your grandchildren will still be cutting from. Farm Fresh Homestead is available wherever you listen to podcasts.