I'm seriously considering converting a flower bed to and asparagus bed. I've 'read' and 'heard' many different things about how to prepare it. I would like to hear from someone with practical experience.
I have several, not especially well kept beds, mostly because I run out of time to get to them regularly. They like deep, well composted beds. fertilize once or twice a year and keep them weeded and watered. They take about 3 years before you can harvest a crop. If you like asparagus, they are worth the time you put into them and the space it takes up. I have both purple and green. The purple tastes much better than the green. I like it raw, but if you cook it, it will turn green. Get your bed ready this fall with lots of compost or aged manure and order your plants for spring and get them in as soon as they come or you can work the soil. I go around and collect all the seedlings I find( complements of the birds) and put them in the row with all the others.
I agree with Carolyn, although I started from seed which I won't recommend. The weeding around the tiny seedlings was torture!! I've never seen the purple asparagus Carolyn, but I had the same experience with purple beans-they taste better and also turn green when you cook them. Good luck FBG!
We have grown asparagus in upstate NY and here in Texas, for about 25 years total. We learned that you need to pick the variety to suit your climate. Martha Washington doesn't like Texas! As the other posters said, prepare the bed the very best you can. You won't have an opportunity again, except to side dress. I suggest you get two year crowns to plant in early spring. That cuts down wait time for harvesting. Two years after planting you can harvest lightly, then after that you can harvest more. Asparagus is salt-tolerant, so if the weeds start to get ahead of you, you can spray them with salt water or sprinkle salt lightly between the rows. We fertilize as soon as the little green shoots appear in spring, and again after finishing harvesting. We get two cuttings in Texas, spring and a lighter cutting in the fall. Asparagus is one of the most rewarding vegetables you can plant. Good luck with your asparagus bed!
we had a small bed of asparagus, hmm, maybe about a doz. this would have been the 3rd year. haven't seen it up this year. maybe a died out with too much rabbit manure, I don't know. We must have did something wrong. Maybe I could use some help on this topic.....
I don't have an asparagus bed but I do have a patch of "wild" asparagus that someone probably planted many years ago, I go out and pick it often and it is yummy, especially with some olive oil, salt, pepper and then grilled....yummmmmm
If I have any dissent, it is I *do* grow from seed. And have prefferd it over many trials. Asparagus' corm is large and makes its best spears with regular manuring and mulching.
I have an 'unlimited' supply of stall muckings. Please elaborate on this subject. In great detail if you don't mind.
use well aged manure for your bed ( do not use fresh/green manure). Dig a trench and fill it with the manure. Add and mix as much as you can. heap it well as it will settle quite a bit. Top dress with manure tea in the spring/fall and you can side dress with aged compost/manure at the same time. after a few years the crowns may start to get near the surface and become tough when they grow, so then you might want to top dress with 6" or so of well aged manure. Asparagus likes "light" well drained soil. do not plant them where they might stand in water. this would rot the crowns and they would not emerge. And once again, keep them weeded, which is much easier said than done.
Fer my two cents, Rose and asparagus are the swine of a garden. Not because they are messy, rather cause they want all the sun water poop and mulch they can get. Asparagus seed is easy for forage for in the fall. The adult ferns are distinctive, especially with red berrys on them. Seed will germinate from direct autumnal sowing, or dried from saved seed. They can also be over wintered in your cold frame. seedlings keep well (with care) in cells for a year. Asparagus seedlings can be set out direct onto a layer of cardboard used as a light block in construction of a raised bed. The first layer of added soil aught to be cooled compost. But additional layers can be fresh manure. It will be three years between application of this fresh manure and your first harvest. Seedling asparagus are a microscopic version of the adult plant. The corm of which can be eight or more feet wide from root tip-to root tip. Two foot spacing in two foot apart rows are more to accommodate adult fern tops... For my admittedly biased opinion and slow busted up body, its easier for me to work to my clock than to a nursery-man's. S/he delivers corms when it suits him, not me. There is a measure of delayed gratification in growing asparagus, Its longer than growing strawberrys, but less than getting a northern spy apple from your own standard tree. Mary Washington seed is offered pretty widely and works well in zones 6 and colder. Warmer sites need cultivars with fewer chilling hours. Male or Supermale asparagus, for all of the puffing about its greater productivity, is simply the selected (and re-selected) trait that all asparagus has of not setting seed every year. They still set seed from time to time, just less often. they do yield more than good old Mary washingtons. But not enough more to bear the twenty times multiplied price they command. If I was gardening by the acre from the back of a tractor, supermale asparagus might look a lot more interesting to me than they do now. My fix is simply to plant more seed. Rant over Post Script: Birds do what birds do. For what ever the reason, that seems to be while at roost, versus while in flight. Mary Washington has been in production for perhaps as long as a century. Some birds find their berrys to be good mast. Birds eat asparagus berrys, and poop out the seed on-at fence rows. I bought MW seed over my first three homesteads. Some time ago I noticed 'wild' asparagus while foragaing. I no longer buy what providence has worked so dilligently to provide to the curb, for my use...
