Planting ASPARAGUS From Start To Finish [COMPLETE GUIDE]

good afternoon gardeners it's tuesday february 16th and it is a gorgeous spring-like day here on the southeastern coast of north carolina and today i'm going to teach you all about planting asparagus crowns and why you should be growing them in your garden asparagus is a cold hardy perennial that grows very well in usda hardiness zones three through eight so they survive in a wide range of climates even harsh cold climates and the wonderful thing about asparagus and why you should be growing them is because once you plant your asparagus crowns and they take root asparagus typically produces for 20 years so all you have to do is plant this vegetable once and you can feed your family for two entire decades so in my hands right here i have some beautiful asparagus crowns that i purchased from a local veteran-owned north carolina company which i have linked in my amazon storefront if you're interested in this hand right here i have a green variety of asparagus called jersey supreme and in this hand right here i have a purple variety of asparagus called pacific purple and i like a little bit of variety so i want to grow both colors of asparagus so what i'm going to do is it's best to soak your crowns first for about 30 minutes before you plant them so right here i have two five gallon buckets that are half full of water so i'm going to dump my jersey supreme asparagus crowns in one bucket to let them soak and i'm going to dump my purple pacific asparagus crowns in the more purple bucket so i remember which one is which and while the asparagus crowns are soaking i'm going to prepare my beds for planting when planting asparagus crowns it's typically recommended that the crowns are planted with a spacing of at least 12 inches within an individual row generous spacing between each crown is required because asparagus grow from an underground rhizome and its very advanced and extensive root system needs ample space to grow when it comes to spacing of each row traditional planting methods require a minimum three foot row spacing however this spacing is geared towards field planting so this generous spacing is designed to both give the underground rhizome ample room to root and provide a walking path between each row for ease of harvest for the backyard gardener growing in raised beds we can plant at a higher density because we don't require a walking path in between rows in raised beds row spacing can be reduced to a minimum of 18 inches this will give each asparagus crown a generous 12 inch by 18 inch growing area for sufficient rhizome development and allow us to plant more crowns in each raised bed because we can eliminate the extra spacing required for a walking path when selecting a plot for your asparagus it's very important to remember that this is practically a permanent installation whatever ground you choose for your asparagus crowns they're going to grow for the next two decades maybe even longer so this bed right here i built specifically for my asparagus crowns it is six feet by four feet and this is going to be a permanent location for those crowns this bed will never house any other fruits or vegetables of any type when preparing your bed for asparagus crowns the first thing that you want to do is you want to remove any mulch that may be on top of your garden if you mulch your garden so the first thing i'm going to do is pull this back and expose the soil so now we've removed the mulch layer and we've exposed the soil let's talk about trench size and depth so we are going to space our trenches 18 inches apart like i showed on the previous diagram we're going to make each trench six inches wide which will be long enough to sprawl out the roots of the crowns now let's talk about depth asparagus can grow very long roots we're talking about three or four or maybe even more feet deep the root systems can become enormous because they live for such very long times so it's important that you plant your crowns sufficiently deep in a good loamy soil now if you are planting your asparagus crowns directly in the ground in a field you should probably plant them about 12 inches or so deep and then spread a three inch or so layer of compost forming a hill or a berm to plant the asparagus crowns on so you can kind of weave the roots kind of like they're plopped up on a hill we're not doing that right now we are planting them in raised beds so the soil is unnaturally loamy because we never walk in here it's very light so because i'm planting this in a raised bed i'm only going to dig down probably about nine inches and like i said normally i'd place a compost layer on the bottom this bed right here is 100 turkey compost so because of that i'm not going to add any compost at all to this bed if you're not growing in pure compost you're going to want to add a compost layer now if you have hard soil under here where the roots are going to be difficult to penetrate you're going to want to grow this in a very tall raised bed something that's like an 18 to 24 inch tall raised bed this is especially true if you put some kind of bottom on your raised bed like concrete wire or something or some kind of weed barrier underneath it you're going to need a very deep raised bed at least two feet deep or more but my beds are bottomless they go right into the soil and i am lucky to have a very sandy loamy soil so the asparagus roots are going to have no problem penetrating the native ground underneath and because of that i'm not going to have to dig as deeply so keep that in mind the harder or rockier your soil is or if you have bottoms on your raised beds the taller your raised beds will need to be because asparagus roots need a lot of depth so now i'm going to dig three trenches in this four foot wide raised bed and right here you can see i dug my trenches probably closer to more like nine or ten inches wide and i dug them down to be about eight inches deep and then i placed that berm of soil underneath which is basically pure compost and that is going to allow me to orient the roots so the crowns stick directly up and the roots drape around them and that is going to help my crowns establish more quickly now let's talk about fertilizer in front of me i have bone meal which is an organic source of phosphorus and calcium and a more all-purpose organic granulated fertilizer and asparagus roots like phosphorus and calcium in order to establish because they are a root and phosphorus and calcium is critical for root development now asparagus is not the world's heaviest feeder but they're not light feeders either they like a good moderate amount of regular fertilizing so when i bury my roots i need to give them enough fuel for them to wake up from dormancy protrude out of the soil and get a good jump start on the spring as i mentioned bone meal is going to help assist in that root development and when it comes to an all-purpose granulated fertilizer anything around a 555 npk will work this is a 356 npk as long as the numbers are smaller and low strength and fairly close together and all of npk are represented you should be fine if it's a four five four a three four three that's all good just don't use something like a thirty four zero twelve make sure that they're all low numbers and the n p and k are all represented so now that we gave our trenches a moderate dusting of bone meal and all-purpose fertilizer we are ready to plant our crowns now we have all of our asparagus crowns placed the manufacturer recommended that for this purple variety it's so vigorous that you actually plant them a little bit closer than the recommended 12 inch spacing because of their vigor they recommend trying to almost crowd each other out to keep them under control so i have a little bit more of aggressive spacing with the purple ones and here you can see how the hill i created in the middle of the trench is supporting the crown and letting the roots hang lower so i recommend this type of installation to keep the crown high and the roots a little bit lower so they take root deep in the ground if you've watched my previous video on how to plant bare root strawberries you know when it comes to planting bare root strawberries you cannot bury the crown because if you bury the crown it will rot and the bare roots will fail with asparagus that's kind of half true when it comes to asparagus you will have to bury the crown but you should only bury the crown with about two to three inches of soil now if you're planting this in an in-ground field and you dig your trenches twelve inches deep what most people do is they bury the crown three inches which is only about halfway back filling the trench then they wait for the crowns to wake up send a shoot to the top of the to the top of the soil they let it get a few inches tall and then they backfill it with the rest of the with the rest of the dirt i'm not going to be able to do that here because these are a shallower installation i'm only going to bury them once to be three inches so i'm just going to take my trenches and i'm going to collapse them and i'm going to place the three inches of this soil slash compost on top of my crowns and now that my beds have been filled in and lightly compacted i'm going to lightly water the crowns in however they don't need a lot of water because the crowns are buried pretty deeply and recall the deeper the soil the damper it tends to be so these aren't something that you need to come out and deeply water every single day i would not water these unless you get a prolonged dry spell for probably four or five days and since you're supposed to plant asparagus crowns in the winter or very early spring usually it doesn't get hot enough to really evaporate moisture from the soil so you don't need to water these much at all now asparagus is a cool weather loving plant so the best time to plant asparagus is in the late winter or early spring after your ground has thawed and is no longer frozen but before the warm temperatures start setting in and for me i live in a location where the ground never freezes so mid-february to early march is when you want to plant your asparagus crowns in the southeast or other warmer zone eights if you live in the northeast or the pacific northwest or the midwest where you have cooler temperatures than me and spring comes a little bit later and your ground freezes you're going to want to plant your asparagus crowns as soon as the ground is workable and the really severe freezes are done so here we are on saturday february 27th it has been 11 days since i planted the asparagus crowns and already almost half of the crowns overall have broken the surface the pacific purple asparagus variety began breaking the surface as soon as seven days from planting and i'm not surprised by this at all because this variety is known to be extremely vigorous and it grows very strongly and quickly as for the jersey supreme variety i see multiple locations where it has begun breaking the surface and i'm very happy to see that as well it's not known to be quite as vigorous as the pacific purple but it's still doing a great job only 11 days in now one thing that you will notice about this asparagus bed is that it's about two to three inches low in most locations so once the asparagus crowns all break the surface and the asparagus is about four to six inches tall i'm going to come in here and i'm going to top dress this entire bed with about two inches of cow manure compost in order to backfill the low areas and that will further bury the crowns and give them additional coverage and we will have no concern at all about any of the crowns rotting because they already broke the surface and we will also add a wonderful additional layer of nutrients to the soil with that additional cow manure because asparagus are moderately heavy feeders now one thing that is critical when growing asparagus is that you do not harvest any of the asparagus at all the very first year your very first year you need to just let these grow naturally and let them take root and develop those roots because those roots are going to be the foundation of your plants and you want them to live and last a very long time at least 15 to 20 years so first year don't touch them let them grow naturally their second year you will be allowed to have a very light harvest of your asparagus plants they will still be in the establishment period so you don't want to harvest them too heavily again just a very light harvest it is that third year that you will actually be able to have a full harvest of your asparagus because at that point the roots are going to be well established and you will be able to give a full harvest of those plants so everyone i hope that this video was very informative i'm hoping that taking the time to give you a before and after planting of the asparagus is worth your time that way you can see this method does work and very successfully as well so everyone thank you all so much for watching this video if you found it helpful please hit that like button and if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please subscribe for future updates and more videos like these if you're curious about where i purchased these asparagus crowns from or you're curious about any of the products that i used in this video or in my garden in general they are all linked in my amazon storefront in the video description thank you all again so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video okay dale let's show everyone how good of a catcher you are we have some bacon bear bites right here which unfortunately contain no bear at all but they do contain real bacon stay ready catch oh that was a very good catch dale say we have another one for you very good let's go for two oh number two okay dale one more sit and three for three

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 108,745

Keywords: planting asparagus, planting asparagus bare roots, planting asparagus crowns, planting asparagus roots, how to plant asparagus, growing asparagus, how to grow asparagus, asparagus roots, plant asparagus roots, grow asparagus, asparagus bare root, asparagus crowns, asparagus crown, fertilizing asparagus, how to fertilize asparagus, planting asparagus in raised beds, asparagus, pacific purple asparagus, jersey supreme asparagus, complete guide, gardening, The millennial gardener

Id: FtDoPyIrqL0

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021