The Asparagus Forest

It occurred to me the other day that I should venture into being more instructive about some of the projects we tackle on our little homestead.  Just because I know how to grow and harvest asparagus, for example, doesn't mean that everyone does, and one of my hopes for this blog is to make what we do at our place accessible to anyone who is interested. 

The first little sapling in our spring forest

As I look back, I remember being quite certain that I hated asparagus while I was growing up--that is, until we moved to a house that had two established asparagus beds.  Once I tasted a stalk that had just been picked and lightly sauteed, I was hooked.  There is no comparison to the stuff that has traveled thousands of miles to reach your local grocery in November.

So, I suppose that is the first suggestion that I have:  buy asparagus in the spring, and from a market that gets its asparagus locally, such as a farmer's market or a grocery store with a clear and specific label on its asparagus display showing from whence it came.  Asparagus is one of the first glorious fresh bits of green to land on your plate in the spring when you eat seasonally and live where the winters are cold.

Even better than a local market?  How about trying your own backyard?  Asparagus is not only an easy vegetable to grow, it is a perennial; once you prepare the bed and let your plants get established, you will be able to harvest asparagus every spring for decades.  In order to get such a long running harvest, however, you have to put in some time and energy at the beginning, so that your plants are as healthy as possible.

A crown, ready to plant

You can start plants from seed, or you can buy crowns that are one year old or more.  Crowns are a section of roots and the point at the top of the roots where the stalk will begin to grow above ground.  The older the crown, the more expensive--but the faster you will be able to harvest more of your crop.  In the picture above, the crown is on the left end, and when you are ready to plant, you would take the roots and spread them out in a circle with the crown on top (the roots are positioned around the crown like a big old-fashioned hoop skirt around Scarlett O'Hara's tiny little waist).  Cover them with soil and mulch them deeply.  Asparagus likes a neutral pH and lives in gardening zones 3-8, with different varieties more specifically suited to different zone ranges. 

The most commonly recommended method for planting asparagus crowns is to dig a trench 4-6 inches deep and around ten inches wide.  Spread the roots of each crown and place them in the trench at least 12 inches apart.  One row will fill in a bed that is 24 inches across; in a bed that is 36 inches in width, you can center two trenches and plant them.  Add some good rich compost (a couple inches worth) and fill in the rest of the trench with fertile garden soil.  Water well.

Suddenly, there are few more popping up

One of the most important parts of starting an asparagus bed is making a firm commitment to keep the bed well weeded for the first few years.  Asparagus doesn't compete well with weeds, so keeping them out of the way is essential for a bed that supplies a bunch of food for you year after year.  Once the plants are big, healthy, and happy in their place, you will have fewer weeds to worry about, and mulching deeply goes a long way toward saving you actual weeding time.

There are a few bugs that like to munch asparagus as much as we humans do:  the asparagus beetles, either "common" or "spotted".  They will overwinter in the dead asparagus fronds, so cleaning the beds at the end of the summer and composting the dead fronds can help to break the bug cycle.  Lady bugs and some wasps will prey on the beetles.  You can also hand pick the beetles or--tada!--let your chickens enthusiastically do the work for you, preferably also in the fall when the plants are dying above ground.  After the chickens have done their job, throw a few inches of the girls' dirty bedding on your asparagus bed to fertilize, mulch, and decompose over the winter.

Now:  the fun part.  Harvesting!  Well, hold on a minute.  Remember how I said that establishing such a long lasting bed takes time?  The way that you harvest asparagus is to snap the stalk off at ground level once the stalk is at least four inches tall--you are, in essence, tearing off the entire top of the plant over and over as you harvest each new stalk that appears from the same crown underground.  Now, the crown and roots need the stalk and eventual leaves of the asparagus plant to make and store enough energy to keep the plant alive from year to year...and if you never let the plant put aside those reserves, the asparagus will die out rather quickly.  Whatever survives will be weak, spindly, and extremely vulnerable to disease and insects.

Here comes the asparagus forest!

Instead, you have to be patient and allow your asparagus to store up a bunch of energy; this way, the plant can still be healthy and long-lived, even with you gobbling it up every spring.  The recommended schedule for harvesting goes as follows:  harvest nothing at all the first year.  If you are super-patient, you can skip harvesting the second spring as well, but at the most you should harvest the spears for two weeks before allowing the stalks to grow freely.  The third season, you can harvest for four weeks, the fourth season for six weeks--and after that you can harvest asparagus for a full eight weeks each spring before letting the plants grow to full size.

Here is the beautiful, fern-like foliage of asparagus left to grow.  Please disregard the blurry chickies darting around!

So, is it worth it?  I guess that depends on how much space you have for the garden crops you want to grow, not to mention just how much you love asparagus.  For me, it is easily worthwhile.  Other than planting once and weeding several times, asparagus doesn't require much else from me other than a few minutes daily during the harvest season to snap off the stalks before they get too big to be tender.  Like everything in the early spring, asparagus grows incredibly fast--a shoot seems to grow inches in a day.  This makes it fun for kids to help harvest--from morning to evening you may find a whole new batch is big enough to pick!  Any excess can be frozen to enjoy long after your harvest is through and your asparagus patch is filled with lovely, airy fronds stretching five feet up toward the sun.