asparagus!!!! =(

i have had my asparagus for about 5 years now but they never get any larger then about 1/4 inch wide!...what am i doing wrong???

That is a sign of over harvesting IMO, if your asparagus spears are too thing stop cutting them and allow to grow ferny , don’t forget that part of the plant’s energy is still required to establish a good fern canopy later on in the season so the plant can start recharging its food store for next year production.

Try to stop before the plant uses all its energy reserves, yo have to give enough time to grow a luch top cover.
Choose favourable weather conditions so that the first and most crucial ferns can
grow develop strongly. This will give the best guarantee of fully recharging the
power store and ensuring good production levels in the following year.

cristina

"Choose favourable weather conditions..."

I don't know how to do that...

you have to give enough time for the spears to grow ferny, and that is about 12 weeks of warm weather.

In the northern hemysphere would be starting of summer, remember I'm well down south, Chile

This is good for you:

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/asprhu.html

cristina

hmmmm...well iv only harvested about 8 asparagus in 5 years so i dont thinks the issue.....mabye i need to try fertilizing?????
--cody =)

cody--I have not done well with asparagus either. I also neglect fertilizer. They say it needs a lot. I also got tons of asparagus beetles eating it down so didn't feel like trying. But yeah, if you think you aren't fertilizing enough, then you KNOW you aren't, I'd say ! I hear it does very well with aged horse manure.

You might also want to check your soil's pH. Asparagus likes a pH of 7 and it will not do well with a pH of 6 or lower.

If you haven't fertilized at all, I'd give that a try as well.

Funny how you hear about wild asparagus patches and we gardeners have to work for it. I guess if the conditions are right, wild asparagus happens.



This message was edited Aug 24, 2009 2:49 PM

Thanks jenhill--my local soil is acidic- I hadn't really thought about that.

CODY - Our local gardening show "Almanac Gardener" said if your spears are thin then they lack fertilizer. They suggested fertilizing the year before for the next year's harvest.

My asparagus started going backwards a couple of years ago. Two beds were like the one Cody described - from the beginning they never really produced much. I finally bit the bullet and in the fall got into all the beds to renew them. I weeded thoroughly, added compost and leaf mold along with organic granular fertilizer, topped it off with straw and the next year I had a great crop in all the beds. Same this year because I added more fertilizer, compost and clean straw last fall. I have also used Epsom salts in the early spring. I have also heard that asparagus really like horse manure but have never used it. And as others have pointed out don't over harvest. It's important to leave the thinner stalks and let them grow out to rejuvenate the main plant. So go to it and enjoy your harvest in the spring!

This message was edited Aug 25, 2009 10:05 PM

OK. so. i think that i have come to a conclusion....
fertilize fertilize fertilize!
THANKYOU! =)

gardadore - when do you think would be a good approximate date for me to fertilize my asparagus bed here in zone 7b? This was the first year of cutting the spears, and I would love to get even more next year. I don't cut back the ferns until they have turned brown - but I've not been able to find out when is the best time to do what you do.

Thanks for your help.

Honeybee,

I add the new compost and fertilizer in the fall when the stalks begin to dry up. Ideally one should fertilize after harvesting the last ones to eat in June but I never seem to get around to doing that! Then you can also fertilize early in the spring before they begin to come up. For us they begin to show the end of April, beginning of May, so one would fertilize here in the middle of April. I don't know when your asparagus begin to poke through the soil in your area. If you use liquid fertilizers such as fish emulsion or kelp then I believe it is recommended to fertilize once a month during the growing season. I use Aggrand products and have found they were terrific on new plantings. I was actually able to harvest some stalks the next year. Here is a link, and for the record I am not a dealer nor do I have any vested interest in the company. I am always looking for good organic products. You could probably use any good liquid fertilizer brand and a liquid bonemeal.
http://www.aggrand.com/dealer/testimonials/asparagus_test.aspx

Just adding compost and keeping the beds clean will make a difference! Also don't cut the stalks down until they are completely dried out. The plants get their new energy during the summer from the stalks growing out. Some people recommend waiting until the spring to cut back the old, dried stalks. This prevents damage to the roots. I compromise and cut them back about half way in the late fall since the outgrown stalks spread all over the place and I find it hard to work in the soil around them. Then I cut them off completely in the early spring.

Hope this helps!

gardadore - thanks for your great tips and the link. I'll have to check my gardening log book to see when my first stalks appeared this year and count back about four weeks to fertilize them. I didn't realize asparagus liked bone meal so much. I'll be sure to give mine some - I always have a box or two on hand.

My asparagus bed did get a good helping of compost right after the stalks appeared, and I'm careful to keep the weeds away. Next year they'll get the compost BEFORE they come up!

When I first put in the crowns, I didn't put them in a trench. I thought the crowns were like strawberries and made sure the crowns stayed just above ground level. It wasn't till much later that I found they should be buried, and then hilled as they grew. This might be why half the crowns died the first winter :(

Next year will be their fourth season, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get a good harvest. I love asparagus! In fact, I just purchased some at the market this past week.

Thanks again for your help :)

Its interesting that Asparagus have male and female plants. The female plants bear skinny stalks and eventually will bear seeds on the ferns. Since we are not interested in planting the seed, we don't require the female plants. If you bought roots on a 'special'
they could be female plants, which gives only skinny results.
I planted from seed - just for interests sake mostly, and the male plants are remarkably hefty. neat huh!

The kid that mowed my yard accidently used the weeder on a few of mine, I believe they are two years, but this is the first year I've planted them. So they should be ok after he weedeated them?

Ok, all sounds interesting...a few years back we dug up some roots and got some roots to plant as well. The roots we dug up were huge! They came from a wild patch growing in our woods. The roots we purchased were very puny by comparison.

Learned something here.. male and felmale plants, dint know that until just now!

SO ok, heres how its been with us... we have let the plants go to seed, drop seed and put roots in. You would think the bed would be loaded. Some years it is, some years its not. Amazing plant that asperagus, one day no staulks, then a bunch a foot tall right before yer very eyes!

While we find plants growing here and there in our woods and prairie, there is nothing to write home about as far as edible staulks and they are always thin and then ferny!

I think I am gonna load the bed with some horsemanure....cant hurt it.

Now for my million dollar question, how do you keep the grass from filling in the bed? just how do ya;ll keep the asperagus weed free and clean?

MIne is always grassy. My scerge here is grass in all my beds! But thats another thread...


Here it is, going to seed....I have left the ferns and do not plan to cut them off until spring now to let the plants re-juvinate. We have let the seed drop before, but as for babies.. eh! Cant prove me one way or the other if any germed or if that they are the original parents without digging them up which I refuse to do! It took 10 years for our bed to get as thick as it is now, Im not messing with that.. and its not really all that thick.

I have read that the fronds with berries should be pulled out, because they won't make edible stalks and will take up room better used for the male fronds.

We have finally achieved a very impressive asparagus bed after years of working on it. We bought our place in 1972, and there were wild asparagus plants on the bank by the river at the time. We have harvested them along with the domestic ones each year and I really can't tell the difference in size or flavor. DH mulches the asparagus each year with cardboard and salt hay and doesn't add anything else, and it does very well.

I had hear that salt will kill the weeds but not the asperagus, is it really true?

We had a neighbor that used ti run his field cultivator through his patch and that divided up the roots and supposedly that did fine. I never heard of doing such a thing nor saw it done but they said it worked.

Im skeptical... I would think it would harm the roots but what do I know!

Well.. anyway, I am gonna do the horsemanure.. just as soon as I got a dry day. Dont reckon fresh would hurt it none and put it on thick, say several inches unless someone stops me because they say they got bad luck doing that!

Would there be enough time to spray the bed with roundup when the grass is starting to grow before the asparagus comes up? I have shoulder, foot and back issues so I'm always looking for short cuts. Or how about putting down straw or some other material that will eventually break down on top of the bed. Would the asparagus still come up and the grass be blocked?

Roundup is systemic so you need to be careful. If the heads are poking through you could kill the plants...I have heard people doing it, but I personally have not tried that rout, although have been very tempted.

Besides that, what then do you use to kille the weeds later in the season for the next sergence?

Salt hay isn't salty - it's just marsh grass.

I'd never use roundup on anything I planned to eat. The surfactant has recently been shown to have a mutagenic effect on anurans - frogs and toads - in the wild, so I wouldn't like to think about what it could do to people!

Horse manure is good stuff but you do have to contend with the weeds. You can probably smother a lot of them with extra mulch, though.

No real advice here but an anecdotal tale..One or two hundred years ago my parents and I would make summer trips to see my grandmother (well, mostly to go fishing) and I was an impatient traveller and even a more impatient fisherman.

But then there was the ditch. It was our secret ditch. In that secret ditch grew the best wild asparagus you could imagine. Year after year after year. Dad would stop the car and we would slip out of the car and cut asparagus. As much as we could possibly cut in case someone else might find our secret ditch.

Later my mother would boil those tender and delicious greens into a sopping slothery pulp helped in texture only by overly generous portions of salt and butter and pepper. And of course, crispy bacon and the attendant fat.

While I have eaten and made some really really delicious asparagus dishes, every once in a while I sneak mentally into that private ditch and conjure up some over-cooked asparagus with too much butter and bacon. Bring it on Mom.

Do you think the fact that it grows in a ditch might have something to do with its thirst for nitrogen ....ugh.. nitrates in runoff from farm fields....chemicals and all that rot! Or perhaps it likes a wee bit of moisture? Course its rarely in the bottom of most ditches I have seen and grows profusely on its banks, but think on that. The runoff travel down the banks so it gets something for its pleausre of living wild where it does! Chemicals.. sheesh, we cant avoid them even if we do not use them. Road ditches are so full of lead from automobiles anymore...Jeez.

I do not resort to chemicals if I can help it. I flood and so use of such is a very big to bad issue.

By the time my horsemanure gets to it, its been leached out of most of its nutirents and is worthless as only glorified mulch anyway. Now the chicken poo on the other hand...... not leached and pure....have not tried that. That goes on other more "thirsty" plants for it here.

Actually, I dont mind the grass that comes in the manure. OUr hay is pretty mych weed free, the spears make it through the grass ok. Just gotta look for it harder when you want those 10 inch spears!

I was just curious on how some people got those beds so clean. I heard using salt....not salt hay will do it. Been leary on trying that though.

Yeah, not to get too off topic here, but there were all those cans of you know the brand of cream of mushroom soup infused vegetables in the church basements. If you grew up in the midwest ya know what I'm talking about. Time to go take my heart medicine.

Yeah, if your my age, or there abouts, there was a lot of lead tin cans back in the beginning of stored food....

Ima wondering now, there are ferns that love lead filled soil. They plant the ferns in those areas to CLEAN UP the soil. The plants thrive on those dirty places. As far as the lead...hmmmm does it really go into the plant? I mean now, lets take this here asperagus...its kind of ferny by nature.. so is it a fern relative?

Oh and I take that back...the asperagus does grow well in the bottoms of the dittches too.....seen one today. But it dint seem to be a ditch that was always water logged.

Blosssombuddy,

I remember reading a few years ago that one should add horse manure and epsom salts to asparagus in the early spring before they come up. I'm not sure that fresh manure is a good idea because won't it possibly burn the roots? I think rotted would be better but someone else who uses manure would have to comment on that. I have never used it but I have added epsom salts in the past. Asparagus needs phosphorus, hence the reason I use the bone meal. As for your grass problem I add a heavy dose of straw in the fall and then again in the spring. It helps a lot but there always seems to be a need for some weeding. Maybe the straw would help you. Once you have removed the grass roots and keep adding straw mulch the weeding should be reduced.

This message was edited Nov 1, 2009 2:42 AM

Well, aint nothing gonna kill all the grass here. Its a way of life. I am leary on doing the epsom salts.. since we pond up and hence the salt being carried away with the water.

As for the horse manure, that depends on what stage of rot you get it at. Fresh might just burn the grass a little, but not always and to composted down a lot of nutients can be missing so its hit or mis on the poop! Now chicken doo, well thats more potent!

Well, here's the berries that showed up on mine in September.. they are all red now and the ferns have fallen over. Im just gonna leave them there and clean off the ferns in the spring.

wish I could help but heck Im looking for alittle help myself.. I grew mine from seed and just brought them in about 1 weeks ago.. They both were doing great up until a few days ago and nw well you can see whats happening.. Same, soil, water, light and ect.. One is thriving while the other pot is dying.. I dont know what Im doing but Im trying.. LOL

Your yellow plant might not necessarily be dying, It could be that it is going dormant. While I have tried growing asperagus in pots, I too havee not had great luck. The plant does go dornant for the winter and teh ferns will yellow and die back on top, the roots may or may not always stay viable in a pot.

I will take a current pic of mine out in the field later.

Here is a late harvest off of mine that I got on 8/2/09 and I think the latest harvest I have ever got!

I had seed sown last spring and just today tilled a 25 foot strip that I had prepared earlier this summer and yup____I set the new row. Watered it in carefully and will soak it again in the morning. Then after raking some more soil around to level it I will mulch it heavily for winter. My tops were mostly brown but lots of life there. I have done this before and it worked OK. I'm always to busy in the spring and the remains of the plants are harder to find after a heavy snow cover. I figure we have a good two to three weeks until the mulched ground will start freezing and they should get their toes attached in their new home.

my plot 11/5/09

Just finished reading this thread and have a couple of questions and comments. I have an area in which I plan to start and asperagus bed in the spring from direct seeding. I have read that seed should be started indoors and transplanted but I don't have the space or time. Obviously this takes longer than transplanting the roots. I haven't decided on which type of seed to plant and there doesn't seem to be many selections in the seed catalogs I have. I am leading towards Jersy Giant at the present. I keep seeing comments in this thread on 'wild asparagus'. What exactly is wild asparagus and has anyone heard if it is possible to purchase cultivators?

The area I am planting in is a rock bed (40' x 10') which has been the dumping site for a combination of materials including grass clippings, garden refuse, and horse manure, topped off with straw. This layering has been going on for four years and I believe the ground is ready for planting. One interesting thing of note is the straw layer on top has not only kept the weeds down, the ones that do grow there and easy to remove. I get a number of wheat stalks of course, but those are easy to remove by hand or a couple of times a year I just use the weedwacker on them.

As a response to an earlier comment about lead. I would advise having the soil tested for lead since it is one of ten heavy metals which EPA has determined harmful, and eating asparagus from lead contaminated soil is not a good idea. Plants like tomatoes will extract the heavy metals in the vines leaving the fruits safe to eat. A metals analysis from a soils lab runs about $35 for each metal tested, so when in doubt it is a good idea to test. Here in Helena we have some areas which are top of the EPA superfund list, and there has been a number of yards in East Helena which have had up to two feet of soil removed because of various heavy metals contamination.

Wild asparagus has simply been sewn by birds and the wind from seed that developed in someone's bed. The entire road ditch for a hundred feet use to be covered with it from the seeds that formed on my grandmother's large bed in the garden. Folks from town would come out regularly to cut the asparagus and yes___ lay on the fence reaching into grandma's bed to cut spears!!

I'm sure today's cultivars are more productive. This so called wild asparagus probably got larger at times because it wasn't always harvested so close. Instead the spears were left to feed the roots at times. Starting from seed you will need to wait an additional year before starting to harvest. Preferably for two. Let the roots grow and really establish themselves. Fertilize generously. Like peonies, asparagus is a rather heavy feeder.

Starting from seed I planted my row of seeds, thinning to 6 inches apart for better root size. This fall I moved roots that were on average 6-8 inches across. Seeds were planted only an inch under ground. I now was able to set the newly gown roots about 6 inches down giving more soil over them. By the end of the next summer I will be able to level the soil around my 6" deep roots. I have tried planting the seeds in the bottom of a 6" trench and gradually adding the soil as they grow, but with the amount of sand in my soil a couple of rains quickly washed to much soil over the seedlings, so I have gone to transplanting the seedlings the fall I grow them. At 74, this is my final asparagus bed. Twice before I have gone through the process.

Thank you jamlover, you may have just answered my next question without asking. I removed the straw cover from my 'rock wall' to find about four inches of composted material on top which looked decent. Then I began digging out the raised bed area where I had planted asparagus several years ago without much success. About four feet down there were hundreds of roots which still looked viable. I removed the raised bed material roots and all and spread them over a 60' x 4' on the wall or rock. Then I added about 4" of horse manure compost and replaced the straw. I am nixing the asparagus seeding idea in favor of letting these roots develop new plants, if they will. Wife suggested transplanting strawberry plants to this area if that doesn't work. She has a problem with killing the baby plants which I keep telling her to get rid of. We had a bumper strawberry crop last year...I removed hundreds of runners when she wasn't looking. Could get jammed for that if I get caught!

mraider, Jumping in here, I would really like to speak in favor of the purple asparagus varieties. I am growing purple passion, which I started from seed many years ago. The purples have a higher sugar content and tend to be eaten raw. As I do not enjoy cooked asparagus much, raw is the way I go. I have never regretted taking the effort to start the purple from seed. At the time I did this, I could not find purple asparagus plants anywhere. I have given half of my plants away over the years, as they produced more than I could eat and wanted to use the space for something else.

I also started the rest of the package of seed in a half--bushel size container. Hadn't set any of those into the ground until yesterday and found the half bushel size container literally filled with roots. These were some larger than those produced in the ground row. 'Course I had watered them and feed them a couple of times. That 24" circular container would have been all I needed for the new bed and since the new bed was full I had to find them a new home. Even considered gifting them to a neighbor, but he was still busy with the harvesting.

Anyway planted in straight compost the container of seed produced larger roots than the seed planted in the garden row and just getting usual rains. Guess they were saved from my usual forgetting of potted things by being right near the sill faucet and a pan for catching rain water. (Also a potted gooseberry fared very well with the same treatment.)

I have had this crazy idea floating around in my head... My wife's current strawberry patch has dill growing in it and I have been trying to establish the dill out on the rock wall. The layer of dirt from the old asparagus raised bed which was loaded with roots will be part of the layering on the rock wall area where I am trying to establish this new dill patch. I keep wondering if there is any reason why these two plants can't be grown together.

M - I have dill all over my garden, including my asparagus bed, and haven't noticed any ill effects on the asparagus. (I don't think you need to try to hard to establish a patch of dill, throw some seeds where you want it and pretty soon it will be everywhere, LOL)

Asparagus has ferny or feathery leaves, but it's in the Lily family. If you look at the flowers with a magnifying glass, they look like little bells, like lily flowers.

Just thought I'd comment. I have some in pots here, and it grows like a fountain, although not enough for a meal. Once a stalk is a foot or more tall, I break off the tip to nibble, letting most of the plant grow. If I didn't, the plants would be seven feet tall, one stalk did that, whoa! Maybe in a year or two I'll have decent sized spears.

I water with compost water , rarely plain water. Hmm, I wonder how it would do in an Earthbox? Hmmm.