I agree with everything George said.

Some years potato plants bloom and some years they don't. You get potatoes either way. Blooms are really a neural thing---neither negative nor positive. Some years you get a lot, some years you don't. It seems to relate more to the weather they are exposed to than anything else.

Often (although this is not guaranteed), when the potato plants begin blooming, this is a sign that small tubers already are forming and some people will dig around very gently in the soil to find and "rob" a few young, small potatoes to eat as "new potatoes", especially if they have green beans to harvest at the same time (I do) so they can have that favorite springtime/early summer dish of green beans with new potatoes.

I have had potatoes blooming on and off for a couple of weeks now. I planted about 7 or 8 varieties with different DTMs and the only ones in bloom so far are the earlier varieties. In years when the potatoes are exposed to more cold nights (normal here, since very early planting is required to beat the heat), they seem to bloom more often than they do in years when there are more warm nights, but sometimes there seems to be no rhyme nor reason regarding how/when they bloom. I think the blooms are pretty, and you will get flowers in different colors from different varieties.

I am a little surprised that brand new asparagus crowns that have been in the ground for only a short while are ready to bloom already, but it is just one of those years. I was shocked by how early my plants formed flowers this year, but then again, the winter was warm so they started producing spears almost 2 months earlier than usual and then they finished up earlier than usual, so of course we got flowers earlier than usual. Some asparagus plants produce male flowers and others produce female flowers. Eventually you end up with red berries that do contain seeds. I just leave the plants alone once the harvesting period ends and let them grow. You will sometimes get new plants sprouting in spring from seeds from the berries, and can dig up and move those to spots where crowns didn't grow, using them to fill in the bare spots. If I don't need any young plants to fill in a bare spot in the asparagus patch, I yank them out. One reason an asparagus patch declines is that it can become overcrowded, so the baby plants are a problem in that regard if you let them all stay.

Because female plants put a great deal of their energy into producing flower and seed, having only male plants is desirable. However, I planted one male variety---one of the Jersey hybrids---and one variety that produces both male and female plants (a purple variety, probably Purple Passion) so I get some baby plants but not a lot of them. Both varieties produce a more than ample harvest of spears. I wouldn't replace anything in your asparagus patch this early but would just wait and see how it produces over the next couple of years. Your crowns that haven't yet sprouted still might do so. Sometimes crowns can be slow to get going in their first season.

The part about the aphids that I don't understand is how they got into the house and found the pepper plants, although this could happen if you had other plants that were going outside during the day to harden off and then coming back inside at night. I'd wash them off exactly the way George said. It is guaranteed to work and I don't think you really want to bring a lady bug indoors on purpose as they thrive in their natural outdoor habitat and there's no guarantee one brought indoors would eat the aphids. With lady bugs, while mature bugs do eat some aphids, it is the little alligator-shaped gray larvae that really devour them. Most plants can tolerate a very heavy load of aphids for a while before you'll really see substantial damage, so I just ignore aphids when I see them outdoors, knowing that the lady bugs will eat them. Indoors, or in the absence of a good lady bug population outdoors, you need to assist and knocking the aphids off the plants with a strong stream of water usually does the trick.

Pepper plants don't have to be huge to go into the ground so you probably can start to harden them off as George suggested and go ahead and put them in the ground. I put a lot of pepper plants in the ground a couple of weeks ago when they were sort of smaller than I like. They have tolerated the outdoor weather conditions just fine and have quadrupled in size, so the weather here has been just perfect for them to grow quickly. They are growing much more quickly in the ground than the remaining pepper plants (mostly ornamental peppers) that I still have growing in paper cups in flats.

I typed it opposite. The berry asparagus are females. Or not. I can't tell if those little teeny tiny round things are berries or just part of the fern. The berries (or whatever they are) are very small. I'll just leave them alone for now.

The grow light shelf has had "gnats" buzzing around it. Maybe those little white things on the peppers aren't aphids--maybe they're something else related to the "gnats". I have taken other plants around them out and in.

I put the peppers on the front porch this morning. Maybe a couple of ladybugs will find them. I have several peppers that are still too small to go out, but they ones with "bugs" are probably large enough. Part of the reason they haven't been planted yet is time. And another reason is (for some reason) I put peas and cabbage in the bed that was reserved for the peppers. Maybe I can squeeze them in around the other plants. The peas should be done in a month or so.

The potatoes in the large potato box look great. The ones at ground level look okay, but not as good as the others. The box potatoes are the ones with blossoms.

I had to google asparagus flowers because I have never seen a flower on my asparagus. The old bed that I just took out had both male and female plants and I got a lot of little red berries. In fact, one year in the fall, I cut the plants back and mulched them for the winter and threw the plants into an area of the garden that I had put a plastic fence around and let the chickens run in that area. The next spring, I had asparagus plants everywhere. LOL The new bed that I just planted in March is all male.

We have not had that many warm days but my potato plants are large and some of them have blooms that are just ready to open. No flowers are open yet, but very close. I don't plant a lot of potatoes, but I do have 3 different kinds and only one kind has flowers forming.

I have planted a few of my peppers and they look healthy but are not very big. The remainder have been growing in cups outdoors for weeks, and I hope to get them planted today. It is still wet in my garden, but I am going to plant anyway. I was hoping for warmth and sunshine today but it is 52 and cloudy with a forecast high of 61. The puddles had dried up but things were still wet. Last nights light rain only added .05 so I should be able to plant today.

I rarely see lady bugs in my garden, but this year they are already there. Only one year since I have lived here have a seen a lot, but there was plenty of food for them that year. Interesting how nature takes care of things.

• Flower: Perianth regular (actinomorphic), whitish–greenish yellow, 4–6 mm (0.16–0.24 in.) wide, fused, 6-lobed. Male flowers’ perianth narrowly campanulate, female and bisexual flowers almost spherical. Stamens 6. Gynoecium fused, single-styled. Flowers solitary or in pairs–whorls of a few flowers in leaf axils. Quote from this article. I googled the flowers, too. The only thing I grew last year was Jersey Knights (from seed). They are supposed to be male, but one had 4 berries on it last fall. I don't remember flowers last year, but mine have flowes now as well. I was glad to see most are male, may have to figure out who the female is and if any have to be culled, that will go first. Suppose I have a bisexual?
• I have lots of lady bugs this year, too and too many aphids.
• The spinach is bolting, getting a few peas, but mildew already...only on Sugar Anne, don't think I'll do those again. I'm already behind, but the soil is wet and needs some stuff for drainage added before any thing else goes in the ground. The parsnip/salsify/root parsley bed makes me happy every time I walk by. Tomatoes in solo cups are big, even the ones that got dumped off the shelf seem to have recovered.

Hazel, Those could be winged aphids but also could be fungus gnats, which are common in soil that is a bit too wet.

If the reason the peppers are not in the ground yet is because the cabbage and peas are hogging all the space, that's not a big deal. They'll keep on growing in containers for a long time, but the later they go in the ground, the later the harvest, so remember that. However, as cold as it is supposed to be tonight, your peppers should be grateful that they can be inside the house and warm while the other plants are outside shivering. I don't know how cold y'all are supposed to be up there, but out our forecast is for 45 degrees. I thought this morning's 50 degrees felt cold so I kinda dread tomorrow's 45.

The asparagus flowers are so small and insignifcant that I barely even notice them. They are sort of bell shaped.

You can see asparagus flowers in one of the images on this page:

Asparagus Cultivation

Carol, We got about the same amount of rain as you did. I hadn't emptied the rain gauges after Friday's rain, so at first I thought it had rained a lot, but then I realized we really only got a small amount because the rain gauges weren't emptied after the last rain. Regardless, it still is very wet. We must have had heavy dew this morning because water was dripping off everything.

I had planned to remove a lot of the bird netting hail coverings today and do a lot of weeding but then a close encounter with a snake ruined that plan, so I moved to the other side of the garden and weeded the onion bed for a while. That was about as far away as I could get from the snakey spot. The ground was wet and cold and I got tired of it so came indoors after doing only half the bed. The bed is 40' x 4', though, so half of it still was a lot of weeding.

Amy, You're not too far off on that male with berries thing, but it is not because your asparagus plant is a bisexual (or, lol, a metrosexual) but because it can produce berries from flowers that are hermaphrodites. (Hope I spelled that right....it is not a term I use often.)

We have lots of lady bugs, and lots of crickets and baby grasshoppers, and a moderate amount of sow bugs and pill bugs. Other than that, garden pests are almost nonexistent in our garden....still no cabbage worms of any type, no Colorado Potato Bugs, and practically no cucumber beetles. I've only seen one and it was a striped cucumber beetle. Normally we have the spotted ones. The Slug-Go largely has taken care of the cutworms and snails, and we've never yet had slugs. My worst pests in the garden now are snakes. I'm so tired of snake encounters. However, one advantage of having covered all the rows with bird netting for hail protection is that the snakes keep getting hung up in the bird netting before they can make it to where I am. To the extent that this prevents scary snake encounters that are a bit too up close and personal, I am grateful. Any snake encounter I have in the garden, though, is not a good thing, and generally upsets me enough to ruin the gardening experience for the day.

It sure feels cool for early May, but I'm not complaining. The heat will be here all too soon.

Dawn

That's a great link--the pics helped a lot and yep, I have mostly females so far. One more popped up in the fuller bed for a total of eight. Two are too small to tell and of the other six, only two are males. If they produce better than plain females, I'm hoping for a bisexual or hermaphrodite or male with berries or even a transgender--I don't care as long as they give me some yummy asparagus. (I totally don't understand the last paragraph of the link--the one about super males and males who come from hermaphrodite flowers can produce berries. Can't I just have some asparagus to eat? Does it have to be so complicated! ;) )

Pretty sure it's aphids. In the natural light, the bugs looked that pale green color. I lightly rubbed the leaves with my fingers, hoping to squish the bugs. A couple of them were planted--we'll see how they do. It's chilly here, so they got covered up.

Sorry about your snake encounter, Dawn. I've been fortunate and have not encountered a snake out here yet.

I'm only averaging one snake encounter a week within the garden itself so far, but they do scare me. I've been too close to being bitten by venomous snakes too many times to ever be able to shrug off any snake encounter. I expected we'd have snakes here before we bought this place, but I think I underestimated how many of them there would be. Often, one encounter in the garden with a venomous snake is enough to keep me out of the garden for the rest of the day. I always feel like if I see one venomous snake, there's likely another nearby.

Joy of all joys, the recent river flooding seems to have driven new snakes up onto our property----I'm seeing some kinds of snakes I've never seen here before, and we've lived here since 1999. These new ones, as far as I can tell, have been non-venomous snakes, but they are aggravating me by coming into the garden and eating the toads and frogs who are so happily engaged in pest control within the garden. We do have crawdads (though not in the garden) on our property this year, which only seems to happen in the wettest of years, and perhaps correspondingly, we now have Graham's Crayfish Snakes. This raises the question: who is Graham and why is his or her snake in my garden?

Graham's Crayfish Snake

The river has receded and is back inside its banks now, more or less, but nobody has told the snakes that, so they continue to hang around here.

As for the asparagus, all that really matters is that it grows and produces a crop. I do think all the knowledge so readily available now would make my dad and my grandparents laugh. They surely would think that we overthink and over-discuss gardening. They didn't really talk about their gardening much---they just did it.

I think that nobody within miles of me is growing asparagus as I've never yet had an asparagus beetle in all the years we've had asparagus here, and I think that is because there just aren't any near enough to find our garden and migrate to it. I hope you have the same kind of good fortune. I did have harlequin bugs one year and they migrated from broccoli to tomato plants to asparagus, but I relentlessly hand-picked and drowned them until they were all gone.

While weeding last week, I was yanking out tiny newly sprouted asparagus plants. They likely are Purple Passion because my other variety is a green Jersey hybrid type that is supposed to be all male. Purple Passion is not all purple, so it appears its seedlings emerge green. Or, I'm getting Jersey hybrid plants from some of those hermaphrodite flowers that may appear on the plants. Either way, I planted asparagus so closely to begin with that I don't need to let the baby plants live, so I yank them out. I love Purple Passion as it produces huge spears and very early in the season, but it is much less productive than the Jersey hybrid....which I think is Jersey Knight, but it might be Jersey Giant. Either way, it produces enough asparagus to eat and to have tons left to freeze.

Nothing says spring like asparagus spears emerging from the ground, but this year it happened in late January instead of in February or March, which is not something I ever expected to see. The gardening world is amazing and full of surprises.