SacFM

Delta Asparagus

Roots, the food history behind Sacramento menus By , checked November 7, 2026 The Delta farms, map and what’s in season

Asparagus on the peat islands between Sacramento and Stockton was cut white, below the soil, and processed within two hours.

Sherman Island

Wilton Rancheria, the Miwok and Nisenan tribe of Sacramento County, records when the Delta’s people were taken to the missions. The Julpun Miwok of the Oakley area were taken to Mission Dolores in February and March 1811, the first group from this area, because of their hunting and fishing rights on Sherman Island.

A century later Sherman Island was asparagus ground. In 1920 the Bayside Cannery Company of Isleton had 5,000 acres of it there.

“The Julpuns Miwok had hunting and fishing rights on the eastern portion of Sherman Island in Sacramento County.”

Wilton Rancheria

Peat

Before the levees, the islands flooded every spring. A 1916 state bulletin calls them “tule lands,” once “considered almost worthless,” and dates the first Delta asparagus fields to 1890-95. Most of the Delta’s 300,000 acres were deep, soft peat, and a 1930 University of California bulletin found its water-holding and organic matter “highly desirable for asparagus culture.”

The canneries wanted white asparagus. In 1902 the Sacramento Bee described the cut: when a spear raised the earth, the cutter ran a knife down below the surface, and the spear came up “perfectly white in color.” It was processed within two hours of cutting.

Bouldin Island, 1892

Robert Hickmott was superintendent of Sacramento’s Capital Packing Company when, in 1888, he showed four jars of “perfectly white asparagus” at an exhibit and took much pride in them. In 1890 he left to can asparagus on his own.

On May 13, 1892, the Stockton Mail reported that the R. Hickmott Canning Company had opened an asparagus cannery on Bouldin Island a month earlier, near where the Mokelumne meets the San Joaquin. Its crew was nineteen Chinese men, seven white girls and five white boys. By 1902 Hickmott ran two canneries on the island, which the Bee called the largest in the world devoted to asparagus, with more than 500 people inside and more than a thousand in the fields over a season of about 100 days.

On March 23, 1904, Bouldin Island’s levees gave way. A University of California bulletin called the flood “a distinct calamity to California.”

“The asparagus is grown on the island, the soil of which is peculiarly well adapted to the plant.”

Stockton Mail, May 13, 1892

The Cutters

In 1916 a state bulletin counted who did the work. Landowners seldom farmed the asparagus themselves. Japanese and Chinese growers held most of the short leases and Portuguese growers most of the long ones. In the fields, half the hands were Japanese, three in ten Chinese and one in ten South Asian, with Filipino, Pacific Islander, Mexican and Portuguese workers among them. Cutters were paid 30 cents a box.

In May 1920 the state’s immigration and housing inspectors went through the island camps. At Chow Kee’s Camp No. 2 on Sherman Island, the San Francisco Call found thirty-nine people living in one shack. In the camps near Orwood the reporter met Josephine Quellars, 15, who had left the fifth grade in San Francisco to go with her parents to the asparagus fields, and Rosia Garcia, 11, who had left the second grade in Stockton. Their mothers said the families needed the children’s work.

Stockton’s Little Manila was the largest Filipino community in the world outside the Philippines from the 1920s to the 1960s, and its men outnumbered its women 20 to 1. In the 1930s Filipino cutters organized, and in 1937 their union at Ryde set the cutting price at $1.25 a hundred pounds. On April 7, 1939, at the peak of the season, 4,000 Filipino cutters walked out to restore their 1938 wages. That night Dr. Macario D. Bautista of the Filipino Agricultural Laborers’ association said all but two of 150 growers had agreed.

“We cannot make enough to live unless they help.”

Mothers in the asparagus camps, San Francisco Call, May 15, 1920

Plowed Out

In 1942 Isleton’s Japanese families were sent to incarceration camps. On June 30, 1945, a War Relocation Authority photographer recorded George Hisaka as foreman of the Zuckerman farm on Mandeville Island.

The bracero program, which brought Mexican workers for the harvest, ended in December 1964. In March 1965 John Zuckerman, a Delta asparagus and potato grower, asked the Labor Secretary to let growers hire braceros again: “We’ll see all the work for all our lives go down the drain.” Imports from Mexico and Taiwan grew after 1971, and in 1975 Representative John McFall told the U.S. International Trade Commission that it was the first year since before 1935 that no white asparagus had been packed in his district.

San Joaquin County grew 54,873 acres of asparagus in 1959. Its 2024 crop report counts less than 100. That year USDA stopped publishing an estimate for California; its last, for 2022, was 2,200 acres statewide.

  1. 51,600Delta acres bearing, 1929
  2. 54,873San Joaquin County acres, 1959
  3. <100San Joaquin County acres, 2024

Asparagus Now

Zuckerman’s Farm near Stockton still grew some asparagus in 2024, Roscoe Zuckerman told the Los Angeles Times. His grandfather arrived in the Delta in the 1920s, and the family sells at farmers markets, including Sacramento’s Sunday market under the freeway at 8th and W.

The other asparagus on SacFM grows outside the Delta, in Yolo County. Durst Organic Growers in Esparto harvests by hand with special tools and bunches and packs every spear by hand, and Terra Firma Farm in Winters puts it in spring CSA boxes. The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation grows it among its organic crops in the Capay Valley. Local asparagus is in season from March to June.

Isleton held its first Asparagus Festival in April 1925 and crowned Alice Perkins its queen, with asparagus sled races and trips through the fields. Stockton’s San Joaquin Asparagus Festival held its 40th in April 2026, at the county fairgrounds.

Asparagus in season: who grows it and where to buy it

Timeline

  1. February 1811 The Julpun Miwok, who hunted and fished on eastern Sherman Island, are taken to Mission Dolores. The first people
  2. August 1888 Robert Hickmott shows four jars of white asparagus from Sacramento’s Capital Packing Company. Canneries
  3. April 1892 Hickmott’s company opens an asparagus cannery on Bouldin Island. Canneries
  4. March 23, 1904 Bouldin Island’s levees give way and flood its asparagus fields. The field
  5. 1916 Ten California canneries pack only asparagus, all of them in the Delta. Canneries
  6. May 1920 State inspectors find 39 people living in one shack in an asparagus camp on Sherman Island. The field
  7. April 1925 Isleton holds its first Asparagus Festival. Canneries
  8. 1929 The Delta has 51,600 acres of bearing asparagus, 93 percent of California’s. The field
  9. April 1939 Filipino cutters strike at the peak of the harvest; all but two of 150 growers agree to their 1938 wages. The field
  10. June 1945 George Hisaka is foreman at the Zuckerman farm on Mandeville Island. The field
  11. 1959 San Joaquin County grows 54,873 acres of asparagus. The field
  12. December 1964 The bracero program ends. The field
  13. 1975 For the first time since before 1935, no white asparagus is packed in Representative John McFall’s district. Canneries
  14. 2024 San Joaquin County farms less than 100 acres of asparagus, and USDA stops counting California’s crop. The field
  15. April 2026 The San Joaquin Asparagus Festival holds its 40th festival in Stockton. Canneries

Where the Food Goes Now

Follow each Delta farm’s food to the Sacramento restaurants and markets that name it.

Pick a farm

Farms in the Delta and where their food goes: read it as a list

Sources

Checked November 7, 2026. Quotes from old newspapers keep their spelling. The bundle at the top is Vilmorin’s Dutch asparagus, 1904.