Growing Asparagus

[Alice Johnson]

What are your tips and advice for growing asparagus?

[bario1]

My advice would be to spend more time and money preparing your soil than you normally would. The plants will be there for at least 20 years (hopefully!) and can't be disturbed, so you may as well make the effort to get it right first time. I wish i'd incorporated more grit into my soil when I prepped my bed, but I baulked at the extra cost.
My tip would be to get hold of some seaweed in Autumn if you live near the coast, and apply a thick mulch of it to your bed once you've cut back the ferns.

[Jimny14]

Good advice bario, I'd second it. A good balanced soil good drainage but some decent fertility to it and not too acid or alkaline. Open and sunny site is ideal. Having said that the only place I had available to try my asparagus bed is in dappled shade on acidic clay soil in a frost pocket and they seem to be doing fine so far. They've just had their second summer and seem to be coming on nicely, had more stems and ferns this year. Will hopefully get a few spears next year but won't take too many to give them more chance to bulk up their strength as their plot isn't ideal

[It never rains..it pours]

After 12 months forming some views from fern height/size this year ie tying ferns up, but proof pudding be next year. Agree on soil/bed preparation especially preparing soil / bed No1. If have light / free draining soil then adding some manure deep in the bottom of trench pre planting plus some phosphate fertilizer mixed in, is about it I would say. If like me on acid clay and high rainfall, then need to add lots of peat and grit into baulked up rows (or raised beds) with lime & phosphate mixed in with manure in trench bottom
If going to use seeds rather than crowns, get them planted indoors now, the seeds planted last xmas, seem to have as much tall/thick fern as the crowns planted last autumn now. Plus they will be disease free and can select the high vigour ones but are lot of effort compared to just buying crowns. This year used liquid seaweed but will be getting some seaweed from the coast once cut the ferns down as bario, Nicos, etc have suggested

[Bigmallly]

What are your tips and advice for growing asparagus?

Asparagus, Tips?.............I thought is was a play on words, nice one Alice............

[Mr Bones]

If you find your asparagus is in the wrong place, move it. The roots are big but the plant is tougher than you might imagine.
In addition to top dressing the bed each year feed in late summer / early autumn with high nitrogen organic fertiliser, well before the ferns die back.

[Hereford fruit grower]

My advice is to mulch it like mad. Otherwise the weeds take over, Asparagus is hopeless at providing ground cover.
I acquired some leaf mould and composted lawn mowings for this purpose and spread it about 3 weeks ago (well before the 25 cm of snow!) To reduce the labour input and keep the weeds away, I also planted young strawberry runners. Currently they and the mulch are the only item visible in the asparagus bed, but in the growing season the ferns will be far above the strawberry leaves.

I think the strawberry variety may be Talisman. It's extremely prolific, so it really covers the ground rapidly between taller plants, but if these taller plants get going it retreats a bit, so it doesn't aggressively take over. I was given about 10 plants 6-7 years ago and it's covered at a guess 15% of the garden (1,350 m2). I just view them as an excellent ground cover which produces edible fruit in summer.

[rary]

I planted six asparagus roots three years ago, waited two years before harvesting and only a light harvest, on the third year while expecting a better harvest this year the third year I was very disappointed, it could have been weather related but as I have a very limited veg garden I think it takes up too much space for the returns, so it will get composted in the spring