Asparagus are an interesting garden vegetable. These spike like stalks can be grown perennially and live up to 15 years after first being planted. Instead of being planted from seed asparagus are typically planted form starters known as crowns. Crowns are are dormant roots of year old plants and should be bought form a garden center or seed purveyor so you can get a harvest in your first year.
Asparagus Details
- Family: Asparagaceae
- Growing Season: Early Spring, 4-6 Weeks before the last frost
- Growing Zones: 3 through 8, choose a variety that is fit to your specific zone
- Spacing: 12-18 inches (30-46 cm) apart
- Seed to Harvest time: plant as seedlings, harvest the following spring OR two years from seed
- Indoor Starting: Not recommended, Buying starters is a better investment
- Earliest Planting: As soon as ground can be worked
- Watering: Water when soil is dry, keeping soil moist, but never wet. Do not over water.
- Sunlight Requirements: Full sun to partial shade
- Planting: plant starters (crowns) 8 inches (20cm) deep in trenches, covering with 1-2 inches (2.5-5cm) soil, cover progressively more as asparagus grows.
- Weeding: Asparagus do not tolerate weeds well. Weed daily where possible. Mulch heavily to prevent new weeds.
- Harvesting: Harvest Asparagus spears before they develop their top leaves. When harvesting cut from ground level. Spears may be 6-12 inches long, but can vary based on your variety.
- Known Pests: Asparagus Beetle, treat with manual removal. Fusarium wilt, treat with fungicide.
More About Asparagus
While typically we eat the young shoots of the plant, if you let it fully mature it will grow up to 60 inches tall and spread out long fern like leaves. While it may be something you never see if you are not planning on growing asparagus for many years, if you let your plants mature without harvesting them for at least two years you will end up with a strong and well established root system that will increase the yield weight in following years. If you don’t have the patience for this you can still get asparagus to grow every year, but the stalks may become spindly and thin. Like with most things in gardening, patience is greatly rewarded when it comes to growing asparagus.
Fully grown asparagus will flower and bear tiny fruits. These berries are poisonous to humans, but can be harvested to get new seeds for expanding your crop. The fruit can yield several seeds per pod and allow you to get a huge amount of seeds for expanding your crop very quickly after the first year.
If you do decide to grow asparagus from seed, you will need to start them indoors in seed trays, but their growing requirements are much the same as when starting crowns.
Asparagus Tasting and Food Notes
Asparagus have a subtle earthly taste for a vegetable. They are semi-sweet with hints of bitter flavor that make their overall taste rather unique. Asparagus are great steamed, roasted, or sauteed and should be cooked until tender, but not soggy. Season simply with salt and pepper and toss with oil if roasting or sauteing. Asparagus pair well with most meats, root vegetables, eggs, dairy, and most flavorful seafood. Because of it’s wide versatility it is an easy choice for a side dish with almost any meal.
Asparagus is relatively healthy being high in fiber, low in calories, and containing fair amounts of vitamin c, k, potassium, and folate. The main health downside to asparagus is how well it pairs with oils, fatty meats, dairy, and salt, all of which pose their own health risks when eaten in excess.
Should I Grow Asparagus?
Asparagus is not a crop of the casual gardener. It requires patience, sometimes years, to grow a good crop. It yields only once a year and can take up a fair amount of space if you want higher quantities of the vegetable. It also requires mulching and daily weed care from early spring to early winter.
Ultimately, if you plan to grow asparagus in any quantity you should really enjoy it first and foremost. If you do enjoy asparagus and don’t mind the extra work required to care for it, it rewards you with a highly versatile vegetable that preserves well in a freezer and can be cooked with most dishes as a delicious side.