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After 4 years, 20 crowns and lots of disappointment, we have 'gus. Well 3 spears anyway. And 4 more if I'm brave enough to cut all the spears off the plants - that seems counter-intuitive, bit is reccomended. What does the panel think?
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No idea, Bikermike. But I've given you a sympathy like. I've put in 40 crowns and it never occurred to me we might get next to nothing. I had visions of being inundated with the stuff...
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I've only got ten, but it seems to me that if I cut off what is showing it encourages others to follow. Ten plants, about 7 or 8 years old (from seed) gives us lots of fat, juicy spears. Good luck with yours.Comment
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Hang in there Mike and Snoop. Most of our plants are about ten years old and we're now cutting over 1.5kg every other day (before trimming). It's a long haul.
Location ... NottinghamComment
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I shall keep it going. Annoyingly well over half the crowns have given up, and the survivors are at the ends of two different rows, so I have a very inconvenient bed.
As they've been in for 3-4 years now, would it be worth replacing the failed ones (again), or should I just live with the gaps?
any thoughts on stuff I could grow in the 3' gap?
Snoop Puss - I have put in 20 (or possibly 30, 2 batches of either 10 or 15 anyway). And I seem to have 2 survivors from the first batch and 3 from the second. What seems to destroy them is slug damage when the first come up. If the first shoot of the year goes, they just fade away. Problem is that as you don't know when it will.come up until after the event, you can't protect them without wastefull use of deterrent. But yes, if I was doing it again, I would do an early morning check every day and put pellets round the shoots as soon as I saw them
mikeComment
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My allotment neighbour has had real problems with losing his newly-planted asparagus crowns, too. Only about 5-6 of about 25 are left after 15 months.
On the other hand, I planted 15 just over three years ago, and still have all 15.
I think it may well be down to the strength and quality of the crown at planting time, to be honest. He just got his was a standard seed catalogue supplier, and I suspect those are probably left in cold storage for some time, whereas I got mine from a specialist supplier (which were actually cheaper than most other places), and they arrived freshly lifted with lots of large, plump roots.Comment
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We have some plants in three different beds that established and started to produce each year then just disappeared. I think you could be right about the slugs bikermike . We originally bought (supposedly) all male plants but some produce seed so have filled the gaps with self set plants. Also treat the plot with slug nematodes each year (just one dose) which seems to help.Location ... NottinghamComment
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