Also receive the 蜜桃恋人 Daily newsletter including gardening tips, weather, astronomical events, and more.
Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Asparagus
Types
Female plants produce berries; males plants do not expend energy on berries so they can be up to three times more productive than female plants. For this reason, growing male asparagus plants is often preferred.
- Gardeners in Zones 4 to 6 have a wider selection of varieties, including 鈥Jersey Giant鈥, 鈥Jersey King鈥, and 鈥Jersey Knight鈥. Older varieties 鈥Mary Washington鈥 and 鈥Martha Washington鈥 may produce female plants, which are not as productive as the males.
- In colder climates, 鈥楪uelph Millennium鈥 and other varieties that emerge late often escape damage from spring freezes.
- In warmer climates, early and heat-tolerant varieties such as 鈥楢辫辞濒濒辞鈥 and 鈥UC-157鈥 produce well before the weather turns hot.
White asparagus is not a variety, but simply asparagus grown in the absence of sunlight to prevent chlorophyll from developing. White asparagus is slightly sweeter but has less fiber than green asparagus.
Purple asparagus is bred to be purple in color but turns green when it is cooked. Purple varieties tend to have thicker spears, but fewer of them. 鈥楶urple Passion鈥 is tasty but is not an all-male variety.
Harvesting
- Skip the harvest in the first year and the second year, if possible. Ideally, wait three growing seasons before harvesting in order to allow the crowns to become fully established.
- If you have young plants, the season may last 2 to 3 weeks. However, established plants produce longer鈥攗p to 8 weeks.
- Check your plant every other day for harvest-ready spears. Spears grow quickly and may become too woody before you know it! Once an asparagus spear starts to open and has foliage, it鈥檚 too tough for eating.
- Harvest spears when they reach 8 to 10 inches in height and between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick. (Bear in mind that younger, thinner spears will be more tender, so harvest according to your own taste.)
- To harvest asparagus, simply cut the spears with a sharp knife or scissors at ground level.
- Stop harvesting spears when the diameter of the spears decreases to the size of a pencil.
- After harvest, fertilize your asparagus patch in the early summer. You can top-dress with a balanced organic fertilizer or scatter another inch of rich, weed-free compost over the decomposing mulch.
- Do NOT cut down the remaining ferns in summer or you will ruin your asparagus bed. Allow the ferns to grow and mature; this replenishes the nutrients for next year鈥檚 spear production. Always leave at least two or three spears on the plant through the growing season.
- Only cut back asparagus ferns AFTER the foliage has died back and turned brown or yellow. This is usually in early winter after several hard freezes. Cut the ferns back to the ground.
- Fertilize the bed with a 1-inch layer of rich, weed-free compost or manure topped with 3 inches of straw, rotted sawdust or another weed-free mulch. Clean spears will push up through the mulch in spring.
How to Store Asparagus
- Plunge just-cut spears into cold water immediately to preserve their sugar content.
- Asparagus does not keep for very long after it鈥檚 picked, so be sure to eat it within two or three days from harvest.
- To store, bundle the spears together, wrap the stem ends of the spears in a moist paper towel, and place the bundle in a plastic bag. Store in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator.
- If you have enough space in your fridge, you can also store asparagus by placing the spears in a cup of water. Keep about an inch of clean water in the cup.
Cooking Notes
A simple and easy favorite when it comes to asparagus is .
Catherine Boeckmann
ADVERTISEMENT
You might ask a local nursery or gardener for best advice for your area, but I’m thinking that you might see some spears pop up in about a week or two. Sometimes emergence can be delayed due to cool weather. In Ontario in general, it looks like asparagus is available from May into June.
Hiya. My husband takes the "let the ferns grow" advice to the extreme and hardly harvests ANY of our four year old asparagus bed each year! We live on the coast, north of Ventura county, and he just lets they keep going to fern every year. At this point (mid-April), there are a few spears, but most of the bed is already tall and fern-ish. What is this refusal to harvest doing to the plants, and can I cut back the ferns now for a harvest or no? Help!
Hi, Meg: WHAT are we going to do with that hubby of yours?!! We’re just guessing now, but perhaps it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or Old Farmer to figure out that maybe he just doesn’t LIKE asparagus? Your plants aren’t really getting harmed by not being harvested … think of them as just wild and free, like the Woodstock Generation of asparagus. Once they start to fern-ize, they get harder and harder, but you can go ahead and cut them back without harming anything. Then you can harvest them again as they come up, continuing to to do so until the stalks are about the diameter of a pencil. Then leave them alone so that they can build up energy for next year. It would seem that your biggest challenge will be not in dealing with your hubsparagus, but in finding a way to divert your husband’s attention. Feel free to find the best days to harvest aboveground crops here: http://www.almanac.com/bestdays/calendar. Oh, and if it turns out you need to sneak out there under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night, you might want to check out when the next New Moon is going to be at: www.almanac.com/astronomy/moon/calendar/. Thanks for asking, and good luck!
We read that it's good to soak crowns right before planting for 24 hours or less. We put them in water last night because we planned to plant them this morning. However, we had a heavy rain last night. Can't plant in bed when it's so wet. It will make the soil clump because we have a clay type soil-- even though we have added mulched leaves. Afraid it will be hard lumps if try to dig it wet. What do we do with crowns? Let them dry out? Continue soaking them? Plant them in wet bed (raised bed)?
If you think you can plant within 2 or 3 days or so, then it probably would be OK to wrap the crowns in a moist (but not soggy) newspaper or paper towel and place in a cool, dark place; check every so often to keep things slightly moist. It might be best not to use a plastic bag, so that air can circulate. Alternatively, some gardeners place crowns in a bucket of moist sand in a cool, dark area, such as a basement. You don’t want to keep the crowns soaking in water too long, or it may invite disease. They like to be slightly moist, but not waterlogged, and not totally dry either. Hope this helps!
My asparagus is in 16" high raised beds, full sun. Planted last year from one year old plants. Had lots of ferns, no picking. In south central Georgia. Shoots are coming up in late January. Covered beds with 2" of compost manure in late fall. Will still have some below freezing and frosts. What should I do? Can they stand the cold and frost? The shoots are already over an inch high and over a quarter of an inch around.
Asparagus is sensitive to frost, which can ruin the quality/taste of the spears. If your spears are emerging too early, you might try covering them with 8 to 12 inches of straw (not hay) or similar cold protection to insulate the spears and crown until threat of frost has passed. Good luck!
How long do asparagus corms produce?
With good care and environmental conditions, asparagus crowns may remain productive for 15 to 20 years, sometimes even more.
Hi! I have about 35 plants or so I grew from seed this year, all in individual pots (one gallon and smaller). Should I plant them before the winter or can I leave them in the pots and transplant in the spring? I live on Vancouver Island and we typically have very mild and short winters.
