I let the stalks die then if they have seeds on them shake them off ,cut the stalks off at ground level put them in compost pile ,add a little compost and cover it with wheat straw or leaves from the yard,the wheat straw seems to break down over the winter a little better.

How do you prepare your asparagus bed for winter?

I'm happy to say that my "asparagi" are sprouting. May was the second highest rainfall ever in our area of Wyoming. And June is starting out good! I have used NO chemicals nor artificial fertilizer. The only thing was compost. Can hardly wait for two years hence to take a sharp knife and kill them for the dinner pot.

my first spear

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my asparagus bed
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I'm anxious to get them started! I haven't received them yet - won't until maybe the last week in April or first week in May. Our frost here in wonderful Wyoming sticks around for a while. Farmers' Seed Supply said they would ship for our area and since I've got to wait two+ years anyways, I'm okay.

Yes a plant and a crown are the same thing . Just different terminology with different people. I would assume that they are one year old plants
if it doesn't say, but if they are older plants thats all the better sense they are a long lived plant. I'm not absolutly sure but I think they live like 20 yrs. and from seed it takes three years to maturaty.

I've heard a lot of people talk of digging a deep trench and planting them in it,but all my life i've seen big patches of wild asparagus growing and making good size spears from seed just falling on top of the ground. In my patch I just spread the roots out and covered then with about 6 in. of top soil , but they do require a lot of compost and covered with leaves or straw in the winter which adds to the compost ,after a few years of composting they should be plenty deep .

I added a 24 in. x 1 in. chicken wire fence all the way around my patch to keep the guineas from scratching around and keeps the cats out to.[They think its a big litterbox] Horse , cow and chicken manure is ok but people can contract worms and diseases from cats and dogs .

I don't know how you feel about chemicals on your garden but after your asparagus is established a year or two you can put Preen on it pre- emergent and the weeds and grass won't grow but the asparagus will grow up thru it.

I was looking through the Shumway catalog and they have 20 "plants" for $12.98. I assume "plants" means crowns? It does not have a breakdown as to age of the plants.

Also shop around . Gurney's is high on their prices , i gave $45.00 for 100 one year old crowns. I just cant remember who i ordered from. i'll look around and see if i can find the paperwork on the order.

The 1 year roots are the first year after planting the seed. It will take 2 years to get a harvest.
The 2 year roots are the second year after planting the seed.It will take 1 years to get a harvest.
My mother ordered 10 of the giant grade last year to go with what she already had,they were big,its probably roots that have been in beds for a long time that haven't been sold,but if your going to start a small 4 x8 bed and can afford it I'd put in twenty crowns of giant grade and harvest next spring.
But regardless of which one you plant i personally wouldn't plant over twenty in that size bed.

[quote="Watchman"]
... a 4x8-foot framed bed that I have made and this is where the asparagus will go....
... confused though in the terminology of the plants they offer...
... each "offer" is 10 plants....
[/quote]

10 crowns is a usual retail unit. Sometimes you can find individual crowns at a retail store, but that's just a matter of pricing. Ten plants is a good place to start.

I don't know about a 4x8 frame - that might be kind of on the small side. The asparagus plants are pretty hardy - usually it is planted in a wide trench. The crowns are the roots of a plant - many roots coming together into a central crown - like an octopus. The plant is set in the trench by spreading the leg roots out, with the central crown in the middle of the trench, then cover with a layer of dirt and compost. You will only cover the roots, not bury them. As each season goes by you add more dirt and compost to the trench, eventually burying them and leveling the trench. The soil protects the plant from freezing (you may have to consider the depth of the winter freeze in your soil, I don't know). After 2 or three years you will see the thin spears being replaced by thick, substantial spears.

We have a book called "Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening" by Rodale. It is an old book - written in 1959. The book has been reissued, but is a shadow of it's former self. The old copy we have is 1145 pages, the newer not even half that size. You can find this old book used on the internet. They recommend a trench 10 inches wide by 12 inches deep. Place a 3 inch deep layer of mature compost humus (good compost mixed with dirt). This layer should be wel dug into the bottom of the trench. The crowns should be placed 18 inches apart, rows not closer than 4 feet. Here we hit some confusion - I took the 18 inches to mean crown to crown (center to center, as with joists). The 4 feet between trenches I took to mean 4 feet of undisturbed dirt between one edge of the first trench and the adjoining edge of the next trench.

We have bad soil here - it is called "chert". Looking at an exposed/eroded bank, you would assume it is clay because of the red color. But it is hard/flinty rock surrounded by dirt. When we dug our two trenches, they were the width of the roto-tiller. It was tough going. We repeatedly ran the tiller through the trench, each pass getting a little deeper, and piled the dirt removed on the sides of the trenches. The soil was so rocky that we ran it through a sieve (sp?) - much faster than trying to pick all the rock out. The sieve was nothing fancy - we took the door off the chicken house and ran it through the hardware cloth on the door. Anyway, the result of all this was a pile of rock waist high and well broken up soil for refilling the trench. We didn't have a crop of compost yet, so we used bags of composted manure purchased at a local feed store. If you dig the sod off before tilling, the sod can be placed green side down in the bottom of the trench to provide organic matter before putting the dirt in the bottom og the trench.

It was a lot of trouble to go to, but asparagus is a little different from most crops - it is a perennial, so do it right once and never deal with it again. After that, it's a matter of adding organic material and additional fill dirt to the top of the trench every year. The neighbor has a bed that is 7 years old - looks like a jungle in August with all the ferns leafing out. The plants fill in thicker and produce more with every passing year, reseeding themselves as noted in a previous post. I like to look at the patches the farmers have when we're buying produce during the summer - most of them are growing it for personal/family consumption.

I should think the different grades of crown being sold are a matter of age - could be mistaken. Maybe they are plats that bear more than their siblings. I guess the setermining factor of which plant you buy is a matter of how much your money is worth compared to the time you'll wait . We used year olds - the typical crown for sale, and in 3 years you'll be munching on it while working in the garden.

Regards,
Pat

Thanks for the info! Here's where the pedal hits the metal. I put a lot of faith when someone recommends something to me, after all they have the experience, right? I am taking your advice and looking at Mary Washington asparagus in the Gurney's catalog. I have a 4x8-foot framed bed that I have made and this is where the asparagus will go. I am confused though in the terminology of the plants they offer.

First, they say each "offer" is 10 plants. Here's how they break it down: 1-Yr Medium Grade $9.95; 2-Yr Heavy Grade $14.95; and Giant Grade $21.95. This is where it is confusing me. I understand that each price is "10 plants" but which one would be good to start with?

And most important, how many "offers" would I need for a 4x8 bed? Remember, each "offer" is 10 plants.

Aargghh.

P.S. I called Gurney's and a "plant" is the same thing as a "crown".

I started my asparagus bed this spring. It's suggested to plant about 40 crowns or plantes for a family of 4,of course my family of 4 realy likes
asparagus .I made a bed from old crossties,32 ft. long and 4 ft. wide and the ties are 8 ins. tall . I tilled the ground inside the ties about 6 ins. deep
and planted 100 Mary Washington crowns in 3 rowes,then i filled the bed with a top soil and compost mixture to the top of the ties.

I did notice some of my crownes were larger than some of the others and they all came up, some the size of a match stick and some the size of my index finger.The larger ones seeded out,little green berries that turned red and fell back into the bed.
The instructions that came with my crowns said not to harvest any till the second year and just a short harvest then.On the third year i could do a 4 to 6 week harvest.

I planted 6 crowns of Mary Washington for my mother 4 years ago and her 6 plantes after reseeding themselves have turned into about 75. Her original 6 put up about 8 to 10 spears each the size of your thumb.

I planted Mary Washington because their non hybrid and reseed true to the original plant .Once established you will never have to buy another plant. Also to start another bed just pick off the red seeds and scatter them on the ground where you want them and in 3 years your in bussiness.

I planted in full sun {had to ain't got no trees} with good drainage but dont let them get to dry,if no rain fall i'd water once a week.

It takes a little patence but well worth the wait and easy to can too.

Well, I can’t remember the variety we planted – but I went with the instructions included with the asparagus and the article in Rhodale’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (the old one – 1400 pages, not the newer editions – you can find it used online). You can get asparagus in two ways – seed and root crowns. The root crowns are year old seedlings, inexpensive – I recommend that. We calculated the length of beds we’d need, based on the number of root crowns, and came up with two trenches – can’t remember how long – 25 foot, I think.

We ran the rototiller repeatedly over two areas to make trenches. The dirt here is chert – flinty rock held together by gravel and clay – it can be like a mining operation to dig around here. After each pass of the tiller, we dug the loose dirt out and ran it through a sieve. You don’t need to do this – we just found it faster than picking all the rocks out. Then we’d run the tiller on another pass and repeat the process. We got the trench about a foot and a half deep, placed the crowns, and lightly covered with dirt and composted manure. Each spring we pile on compost. Last year was our first harvest (3rd year). The spears are so sweet it’s hard not to munch on them while picking.

The neighbor has a bed that’s 7-10 old. He laid down railroad ties and mulches every spring. It looks like a grove of bamboo. I don’t think he went to the trouble we did to plant it deep, so maybe you’d want to try his method. His bed is about 20x30. The trick is not to pick the bugger to death. After harvesting for the last time, you let any subsequent spears open into ferns; they go to seed and sow future, additional asparagus plants.

In some parts of the country it grows wild. I remember a friend of mine in Indiana telling me about his parents seeing patches of wild asparagus while driving. They’d stop and pick, take it home and eat it. He could never understand why his parents ate weeds from the roadside. I don’t know that I’d recommend that – what, with all the exhaust fumes and herbicides sprayed by county road crews, but in a protected area, I’d go for it.

Regards,
Pat

I want to establish an asparagus bed and I've never tried it before. Please let me pick your brains. Tell me everything there is to know about: varieties, location, drainage, watering, sun/shade, etc.