Will I smother my asparagus if I add soil?

Hi Everyone,

In spring of 2006 I planted Jersey King asparagus crowns in a raised bed. I mulched with straw when the hot weather arrived and they grew well. This year, they again grew well but now the ferns (I am not yet picking) are tipping over, dramatically. One fern has even gotten brown and died. I think the soil in the raised bed has settled and that I need to add soil to help support the ferns and keep them upright. They've been so buffeted by the wind that they carved out a hole where they attach to the crown, before finally tipping over altogether.

My question is, can I apply the 4-5 inches of compost & soil that's needed to bring the ground up to the level of the bed where it was when I planted, or will this smother or otherwise hurt the crowns? Should I instead add soil incrementally?

Any insight welcome on my vegetable investment!

Thanks,
Rebecca

I have the exact same problem and question, so I hope someone replies.

Very good question!! I just put in asparagus this year too and I am wondering if I need to add more soil. The same thing is happening to my asparagus plot.(Holes at the soil level and ferns falling over from the wind.) I was going to add a thick layer of compost and soil mix this fall to my asparagus bed but maybe I should find out what the answer to this question is first. I would hate to kill all of my newly planted crowns.

I, too, am waiting to hear the answer from an experienced asparagus grower.

Since the instructions when you plant the crowns are to dig a trench six inches deep, and fill it in gradually as the sprouts come up, my feeling is that refilling the bed will not hurt them. But, that's only my guess.

Karen

Well, good! I was feeling unique, but with four of us waiting, perhaps we'll learn what to do!

Nobody is hopping on the asparagus bandwagon here. Sooooo. . . . Google time!

My plants have only been in the ground a couple of months so they are just sitting there for now growing their little ferns. The ferns are about 18" to 2' high. They have not fallen over dramatically nor seem to be seriously affected by the wind.

Lots of info how to plant, where, when, picking them, etc. Nothing on how to care for them after the first year. I'm not finding the specific answer to whether or how to add to the soil depth later. It would appear that advice on planting depth for the crowns runs from 6" to 15" depending on who you ask - with 6-8" getting the most votes. The advice is to plant in the trench and then gradually cover them as the green tops grow higher until the trench is filled. I did this trench and cover-up thing, but I cheated with 4-5" because my raised bed is only 6-7" deep.

If the soil level in the beds has sunk, has the soil depth above the top of the crowns also not sunk by the same amount? I would think that if your crowns are less than 8" deep now, you can put the additional soil on them without harming them. Since they are heavy feeders, compost would be good.

The only reference I found about crowns rotting involved poor drainage in the bed and water standing around the crowns, which should not be a problem in raised beds, I wouldn't think.

One place did talk about the crowns "rising" to the top of the soil after a while. I also found several places that said the roots grow horizontal to the crowns rather than downward/vertical, so to be careful when weeding or adding amendments directly into the soil. Other sites say they are deep-rooted plants. So, that's clear as mud.

This is from the Univ. of NH on original planting:

"Dig holes or trenches about 8 inches deep and 10 inches wide. Spread the roots in the bottom of the hole or trench and cover the crown with about 2inches of soil. As the young shoots continue to grow during the first summer, gradually fill in the hole with soil. The tops of the crowns should be about 6 inches below the soil surface when the trenches are completely filled. This allows for cultivation by hoe or rototiller and also provides a sufficient depth of soil for new buds to develop on top of the crown."

These folks have the crowns planted 15" deep:

http://www.gardenandhearth.com/GardenCooking/Growing-Asparagus.htm

And these folks plant 6" deep:

http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/articles/frederick/2001/asparagus.htm

Well, that is what little I've been able to find out on the net. It just seems reasonable to me that if the beds have sunk in depth you can bring it back to the previous depth without harm, assuming that would not put them too deep.

It is amusing to contemplate that the silly things will grow wild for 25-30 years on their own with no care.

Karen

Hi Karen,

Thanks so much for all that Google info! I had decided that the point you made in your earlier post (that since initially the crowns are planted to a certain level, it seems likely that maintaining the crowns at that level is okay) was completely logical, and I went out and put compost in my asparagus bed, since I had time, energy and compost at hand.

Then later I read that the plant stores food from photosynthesis by its ferny leaves, which is why you have to stop cutting at some point each season (says the book "Four-Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman). So again it made sense to me that keeping the plant covered was just fine.

It is funny to pamper & worry when they can & do grow wild and fine, as you say! I'm happy to oblige them, though, since they are taking up one whole bed of my six raised beds and there's nothing like fresh picked asparagus first thing in the spring.

Thanks so much for all your good information. Even the contradictory stuff I find helpful, because it underscores for me that there are multiple ways of doing things, rather than one perfect uniform method that works for every garden and gardener. (Not that experienced people don't know more, just that solutions aren't universal.) The foreward to "Four-Season Harvest" is written by Coleman's wife, and she says that she read an earlier book of his before she met him and that "It was refreshing to read someone for whom gardening is not a gladiatorial contest."

I love that approach. I'm new to gardening, and it's very freeing to turn under something that is not flourishing and plant something else. Or, to give yourself a break if you identify the nascent zinnias you planted in between your asparagus rows as weeds and pull them up. Not that that happened......

Thanks again,
Rebecca

There is absolutely no problem with adding more compost. Actually you can go as high as you want. Ever seen White Asparagus? They are covered even more after they sprout from the crowns and are protected from the sunlight.

Hi Karen, Hi compost171,
I've been lurking around, watching your thread, since I don't think I can grow asparagus here in Tucson but sure wish I could; I love the stuff! Anyhow, and slightly OT, I wanted to thank you both for the reassurance you've both provided me. I'd been working my way towards a gardening epiphany of sorts, and you've pretty much nailed it: gardens are like kids. What works for one combo of garden and gardener (or kid and parent) may or may not work for another combo. And, compost171, exactly as you said, "Not that experienced people don't know more, just that solutions aren't universal." (Not to mention, both can get very very muddy at times...)

What a relief! Thanks both for feeding my asparagus fantasies, and articulating for me that it's not all cut-and-dried!

Jill

Hi Rebecca,

I am so glad that my Googling was a help for you. I truly love the internet. To me, it is like having your own huge library at your fingertips.

Yes, I agree that even contradictory info is helpful, as it shows that everything is not cut and dried, that there is leeway to experiment and find what works for you, possibly even try things that you might not otherwise try. I purchased Four-Season Harvest a couple of months ago and have been too busy to read it. Should be able to get to it in a month or so. LOL But I think the concept is great and see no reason why it shouldn't work. I agree with Coleman's wife regarding her "gladiatorial contest" comment -- I've sure seen a lot of that going on, but it's not for me. I'm new to gardening, too. I've learned a lot this year -- I just make a mental note how I'll do it next time rather than stress about this or that.

Sometimes asking the "experts" gets an amusing response. I put a thread on the Palms Forum asking how deep a raised bed I would need to plant a King Palm. Got lots of replies saying I couldn't grow a King Palm here. Then they all got into a discussion over what kinds of palms I could or could not grow here. Never did get an answer to the original raised bed question. Hee, hee. Gonna plant my King Palm anyway as I got the raised bed answer from a palm seller on eBay. Will I have to protect it from the cold four or five times during the winter? Yep. Gonna try it anyway.

wormagic,

Thanks for reminding us about the white asparagus. I knew that's how it got white, but wasn't sure if that could only be done in the Spring when the new spears were coming up. Now, that you mention it, though, I can see it would be a reasonable assumption that "when" shouldn't matter to the plants.

Jill,

Always good to hear from you. Feel free to join in ANY time!

Are you sure you can't grow asparagus there? I tried the internet and my gardening catalogs -- the ONLY mention I could find about zones for growing asparagus was the one from Edible Landscaping. They say zones 3-10. Burpee's did say full sun/partial shade. With your heat, you would want to put them in morning sun/afternoon shade, which should be fine.

Jill, next year give it a shot. They are cheap to buy. If it doesn't work, you're not out a lot. I bought mine from Daisy Farms - 14.00/25 two-year crowns, and their shipping is very reasonable. They were huge, beautiful crowns, too.

Daisy Farms has lately gotten some nasty hits in Watchdog. Their on-line order system was not working properly and apparently they had a customer service person who was a mess. When I talked to the new person, she told me she was going through all the past paperwork looking for info on any problems so that she could straighten them out. After talking to her, they shipped my order immediately. They are a small family farm.

Have a good week, ya'll,

Karen

Karen, thanks for the encouragement on the asparagus front! I may give it a go, but what concerns me is not the temperatures so much as the dryness--don't they need a lot of water?


oooo, just got an idea... I've got a spot in my shady, raised, irrigated veggie bed that's really inaccessible... if I don't come up with something else to plant there, maybe I'll try the asparagus. MMMMMMMM......

Might just have to give it a shot!
Thanks!
Jill

I love asparagus and would enjoy eating it everyday if I could get it. My efforts to grow it have been dismal, though. I tried growing it in so Calif. for the many years I lived there (zone 9a) and for the ten years I've been here. Pitiful. The plants come up beautifully but the spears are very scraggly and go to leaf stage almost instantly. I really think that it is a combination of so many days of high heat each year (this is heat zone nine) and even more so the mild winters. The vast asparagus acreage in the Salinas Valley of California (south of San Francisco) has similiar weather conditions except that many days will experience the chilly ocean fog rolling over it for several hours.

Still, the fronds are pretty, and I enjoy a few in bouquets. The closest I've come to eatable results happened with the variety UC57 which was developed for milder climates. I started one of my beds with the roots about a foot below ground level, and added about 2 inches of compost at the end of each season. The root systems are extensive as a result. I have some seeds for a very old French variety and intend to keep on trying! Yuska

I tried asparagus here in Las Vegas a few different times with different ones and never had success. The two times I managed to get them to come back the following year after planting two year old roots they were so scraggly and thin that it wasn't worth the water to try again.
A friend that lives in Boulder City which is a small town not far from us and at a higher altitude has been able to have some success with them on the side of her house that is protected from the high winds and she places a shade gazebo of white landscape fabric over them during the middle of the summer so they don't burn but still get plenty of sunlight. I don't have an area to do that so I can't experiment with it.

I planted my roots in SC about 2ft deep 18 months ago and with every visit that I make, every couple of months, I add a few inches of aged manure to the area. They are growing strong.

I originally planned to have a small herb garden by the asparagus but now DH has determined that area would be the best place for his work shed so I am going to have to move the asparagus once we actually move. I hope that they do okay....

I always put in canes and tie the ferns to those when they get tall so they don't fall over and snap off. I give the plants a good mulch of well rotted horse manure when I've finished harvesting them. Seaweed meal also gives the plants a boost during cropping.

We add composted manure every year and a pretty deep layer of straw mulch, which of course goes half to soil by the next year. The bed's slowly rising. :)

Hi again Everyone,

How fun is this thread? Replies from all over the country and even from other countries! Thank you all for posting your information and experience with asparagus.

I mulched my asparagus bed with compost (my first batch ever!) and will follow that with a thick layer of straw, as soon as I can get out and buy a bale. The straw layer seemed to work great last year -- only a few weeds came up in the bed and they say it keeps the crowns comfortable from temperature changes (I guess that's true for mulch generally). I'm still picking straw bits out of the trunk of my car from last year, but I'm sure the trunk could use a fresh layer, too!

Another question I have is about the number of spears a crown will produce once it's established. I planted 25 crowns, and in year 2, I'd say each crown has one or possibly two ferns. Does that increase? What kind of yield can I anticipate? And for those of you with established beds, how long do you pick for? The info I've seen has been unhelpfully vague, like "pick for an established period of time and then be sure to stop so the plant can recover."

Thanks,
Rebecca

Rebecca,

You should get more spears/ferns each year than the year before.

Oh, yes, the "when to start harvesting and for how long" advice can be so vague as to useless. Some say begin harvesting the 2nd year the crowns are in the ground. Others say don't harvest until the 3rd year the plants have been in the ground.

Although, I could not find any reason for this 2nd year/3rd year difference in point of view, I did wonder if it depended on whether they were referring to (but did not say) two-year old crowns (at planting) being harvested in the 2nd year and one-year old crowns (at planting) not being harvested until the 3rd year. If my supposition is correct, it would make them all 4-year crowns when you start harvesting.

It is also confusing in that after having said, don't harvest until the 3rd year, they then starting talking about how long to pick the "1st year, 2nd year", etc. By which I take that to mean the 1st year harvesting, not the 1st year that you plant them.

I found varying advice on how long to harvest. Tasteful Garden did give the most concrete instructions: two weeks the first year you harvest, four weeks the second year, and six weeks for the 3rd and subsequent years. They were also the most conservative, which is probably not a bad thing.

Here is an interesting article on how to extend your asparagus harvesting season:

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf77965375.tip.html

I have only 25 crowns now, but after reading this article I think I will get 25 more next year so I can give this a try. Picking fresh asparagus for months instead of weeks has great appeal for me.

Karen

Karen, I found another method to extend harvest:
http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/asparagus.html
Check down toward the bottom of "Cultural Practices", there's a recommended method for getting a fall harvest if you've got the space! I'm guessing this is a trick that works for warm-winter areas, I don't know if it will work for you but you're the adventurous type!

Jill

Jill,

Is that not a great idea? I have the space. I'm definitely going to see about doing that. We don't get our first frost until about Nov. 1, so that should work here.
Thanks.

Karen

Have fun! And if I ever make it to Tuscaloosa, I'll want to see your asparagus forest in full swing! :)

I don't think I'm brave enough to chop all the fern off in Autumn, but logically it shouldn't weaken the plant any more than taking an early crop and then letting the fern grow. It just seems wrong to be depleting the plant's resources just before the winter. If I had more plants I think it would be worth trying - I'll have to follow your lead and get more .

The other idea about a deep mulch to keep some of the plants cooler and slow them down is worth trying and sounds easy to do.

My plants are a French variety called Dariana. Do you have any favourite varieties?

Both my grandfathers used to grow asparagus to sell in the produce terminal in Louisville during the 40's. My mother said that they would take the horse and plow to each side of the row and mound the dirt up. Any seedling that they'd turn up they'd start another row with. Mostly you mound the dirt up or plant really deep so that you don't damage the crown when cutting in the spring.

Right now I have two 60 ft. established rows and am trying to see that I plant 20-40 additional plants per year. I'm trying to figure out just how much asparagus the two farmer's markets that I participate in can handle.

Usually here in KY our rule of thumb was to stop harvesting about the middle to tobacco setting season. That usually comes around the first part of June for us.

This year I mulched with some hardwood mulch and put down Snapshot. It's helped with the weeds but was a little difficult to cut the asparagus. I'll probably consider leaves or straw next year.

Asparagus in KY is relatively easy to grow. I have seedlings in the daylily field, seedlings in the blackberry rows, seedlings....well, you get the picture.

Janet

Compost171,
I grow my asparagus not far from you and have been adding a thick layer of compost every spring. My beds were starting their third year so I did some light harvesting and had a delicious couple of servings (large servings!) but have resisted the temptation to harvest more. Next year the harvest will be considerably more intense. I've waited long enough!! Also, my fronds are about 7 feet tall which even my lawn guy found amazing. Patience is the key!

Glendale Kid: Thanks for the fern productivity info and the link to extending the season. I'm continuing to get edible-size spears, while the huge tippy ferns are still green, and I'm going to wait til next year -- year 3 -- to do a couple of weeks of picking.

Because Escubed, I know you're right about patience!

Patbarr, I planted Jersey King, and so far that's my only experience. They don't send out seeds, so the weeding has been minimal, especially since I have them mulched with hay. As for cutting off the fern depleting the plant, I think it's rather the opposite -- if the crown doesn't have to attend to the fern over the cold times, it can focus on itself. The plant stores up food by photosynthesis from the ferns during the growing season, which is why the cutting has to stop at some point during that season, says the previously-referenced Eliot Coleman, from which I infer that during cold times it's okay or possibly even beneficial for the plant to hunker down, fernless. Caution: that's just what seems likely to me, and I'm far from an expert, as you all know since I started this thread with a very basic asparagus query!

Does anyone know anything about moving 3-4 year roots.

Where I currently have mine planted each year is increasing on shade and I didn't plan ahead for that. Now once I move and get the chance to really do some pruning to the trees, I am not be sure I will be moving the asparagus, but just in case though and they don't get enough sun I may have to move them. I planted 2 yr roots in January of 2006. They produced some large ferns the first year and this past spring they weren't quite as big or full but were going strong but I didn't get the chance to harvest them before were to big.
So, is it safe to dig them up in January and transplant them and if so how long do I have to wait again before I can begin harvesting them. Would it just be better to leave them alone and just plant new roots?

You mean no one has ever had to move there asparagus. WOW

Probably not. Since most plantings will flourish 20 years or more, the same spot is really preferable. Since you may have no choice but to move them, here's what I would suggest. First, thoroughly prepare the new bed. Then use a long, thin spade to lift the plants and move them one at a time to the new location, transferring as many roots and undisturbed soil as you can. Try to think of it as setting out plants from containers. After all are transferred water thoroughly. No matter how careful you are, some of the roots will be cut off and others distressed, so I would not expect to harvest any from the first season in the new spot, and only sparingly the second. Good luck!

I moved some once when my husband got a little wild with the skid loader bucket and rooted a couple plants out of the ground. I basically just treated them like new plantings.

I personally think I'd move them in the fall after a frost. That way they've grown all they're going to for the year and are getting ready to go dormant. You know where they are and you know where they're going. They can lay in the ground all winter and regroup and hopefully be ready to put out new foliage in the spring. Besides, you may have more time to do it in the fall when things are winding down instead of the spring whey you don't know exactly where the plant is and you've got a blue zillion things you want to get done.

In fact, I've got some seedlings in my blackberry rows and daylily field that I think I'll follow my own advice and move into the rows this fall. Better put that on my "to do" list.

Janet

Janet, the fall transfer is a good plan.

Thank you so much for answering. I am hoping that after pruning back the trees I wont need to transfer them. But if I do, I will take the advice of both of you. Do it in the fall and also take as much of the old soil with roots with me.

Compost171, I was referring to one of the suggestions in a link that said they got a late crop of spears by letting the first shoots grow to fern instead of cropping them early and then cut off that fern making them send out new spears for cutting in autumn, the opposite of what we usually do. I thought it would be depleting the plant when it needs to be building up its reserves for overwintering. If I had lots of plants it might be worth trying to get a late crop, but with only 10 crowns I don't think I'll risk it.

Hi Patbarr,

I understand, and I appreciate how precious each crown is! I feel the same way.

Thanks for those links. I sure didn't know about the fall harvest possibility! I'm going to cut back a couple of plants today, just to see what happens.

I read somewhere (I don't remember where, but it was a reputable garden info site)) that asparagus can be moved in the fall. Cut back as usual and just be sure to dig deep and wide, as the clumps can be up to 15" both ways.

I enlarged my garden area this spring and so I"m moving my 4 yr old asparagus bed to the garden when it goes dormant, to join the 10 plants I put in this spring. I'll try to remember to let you all know how it does next spring.

Robin