Garden Plant Vegetables growing tips: The best way to grow an asparagus bed

The best way to grow an asparagus bed is to plant 2-year-old roots which you can order from a seed catalog or pick up at a garden store. One-year-old roots may be cheaper, but the savings are not worth waiting an extra year for your first harvest. I think the 2-year-old roots are more reliable in transplanting.

If you live in the North, set out asparagus roots in the early spring. In the South, set them out in the fall because it can be so dry and hot in the summer that the plants may not make it through.

Asparagus will grow in most types of soil, but since it must have dry feet, it does best in soil that drains well. Place the plants about 2 feet apart with 5 feet between rows. Twenty-five to 30 crowns will produce enough asparagus for a family of four once the bed is established, which takes three seasons.

Dig a trench 12 to 18 inches deep, the length of your row, and add 6 or 7 inches of aged manure, or compost, or a little peat moss. Sprinkle on a dusting of 10-10-10, add a couple of inches of soil from beside the trench, and mix everything together.

With this mixture, build up mounds at the bottom of the trench about a foot apart. Set each crown on top of a mound and drape the roots down just the way you’d put a wig on a head. This enables the roots to get moisture and food throughout a depth of 4 or 5 inches of soil. If you place the roots flat on the ground they can feed only at one level and it will be a while before they grow down and get water and food from a deeper level.

Place the top of the crowns at least 4 inches below the soil surface. Fill up the trench to cover them with a couple of inches of soil. This puts the soil level of the row a little below the rest of the garden. When the shoots grow up, fill in the trench with a little more soil to give the stalks excellent support.

Don’t harvest any asparagus the first year. The plants need to grow as much top, or “ferns,” as they can. As the tops die down in the fall, the energy they’ve captured from the sun will be transferred to the roots below. After three seasons the roots will have enough energy to send up plenty of thick asparagus spears that you can harvest. You must allow some to develop into lush ferns. They will continue the yearly job of gathering energy for the roots.

While you’re waiting for the first harvest season to come around, you still have to take care of the crop.

First year

You may want to put a thick mulch around the small spears after they come up to keep the weeds down and hold in moisture. Let the new plants grow through the summer and fall without cutting the shoots or ferns. Let the tops die down in late fall. Don’t do a thing to them.

Second year

Every spring, starting with the second year, you’ll have to do a little maintenance on your asparagus bed before it starts to grow again. I cut the old ferns that died over the fall and winter and clear them out. I also remove any mulch that’s left. Then I fertilize the plants. I use a cupful of 10-10-10 or similar fertilizer for each 3 feet of row. I also cultivate a couple of times with my tiller between the rows each spring. Till at a shallow depth to avoid cutting any spreading roots.

As the weather warms, the asparagus will poke through the soil. Don’t harvest the second year. When the spears are tall enough to mulch, I weed and then mulch around them.

Third year

Early in the third spring, again cut away old ferns, pull the mulch back, and fertilize. You’ll probably be able to harvest some spears. They are at their prime when 6 to 8 inches tall. If they are as thick as your finger, pick some. If they are skinny, let them grow into ferns.

Harvest with a knife and cut the spears a hair below the soil surface. Cut with care. Another spear may be about to come up right next to the one you’re harvesting.

Following years

As your asparagus plants get stronger and stronger over the next few years, you can harvest for 5 to 8 weeks each spring before letting the plants concentrate on growing ferns.

Here’s a harvest tip: don’t toss out the tough bottom ends of the spears. Cook them separately, puree them, then freeze them in ice cube trays. Use the asparagus “cubes” in soups. They’re great.

Weeds are the biggest hassle

After the last harvest of my bed, I pull all the weeds. I fertilize the bed again, and mulch heavily around the spears. This halts all weed growth.

Here’s another method I use to block weeds. After the last harvest I weed the bed. Then I sprinkle in some annual ryegrass seed and scratch it into the soil. The ryegrass will grow very thickly. It becomes a living mulch for the bed, choking out weeds that try to come up. Because it’s an annual, it will die over the winter and insulate the soil and roots. In the spring it is partially decom- posed and easy to pull away from the bed.

Once your bed is established, there’s a simple way to stretch out the harvest period. Early in the spring, pull the mulch away from only part of your patch. The asparagus will come up faster when the soil is exposed to the warmth of sunlight. The mulched soil in the rest of the bed will stay cool longer, delaying the growth of the remaining asparagus. Wait a couple of weeks and then pull the mulch off the rest of the row. If you see spears poking through the mulch before the two weeks are up, pull the mulch back. Otherwise, some of the asparagus spears may curl over when they come up.

My instant asparagus bed

Some years ago, before Jan and I moved o our present home, I planted an entire asparagus bed with roadside plants to get a harvest the first year. The best time to dig and transplant asparagus is in early spring, before the plants start growing. You have to know exactly where the buried roadside crowns are. So, just before the asparagus tops died down in the fall, I stuck yellow stakes near the plants I wanted to dig.

Early the next spring I went back with my shovel and some bushel baskets. You wouldn’t believe how big and wide some of those asparagus root systems were. I had to cut them in pieces to get them out of the soil, and even then each piece filled a bushel basket. I trucked them to my house and planted them in big holes with manure and compost at the bottom. It was a long, tough job. I didn’t enjoy it at all . . . but when I think about the excellent harvest we got that very first year, it doesn’t seem so bad.

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