My son left me an asparagus patch. Probably thirty crowns and its been about four years. They seem to be hanging on, but not really flourishing. I think part of the problem is he used sterile stuff like pine bark and soilless mix.
How do you harvest? I take off the shoots that are the size of my pinky and larger, but I am getting lots of them that are smaller than a pencil. Do I take those off? Or leave them to grow and feed the crown.
I think the problem was I misunderstood the Instructions....(Imagine, I know it's hard to believe, but there is something I misunderstood)....I was taking all the shoots but I think I should have been leaving the small ones to build up the crown.
Yes, don't harvest everything. After I get some harvested over a month or so when they first appear I then let the plant grow out for the rest of the summer. I do not continually harvest all year long.
The plants should be well below the surface and I sprinkle some manure over the bed every couple of years or so.
Apparently, the asparagus is native to the Mediterranean shores and may benefit from some salt sprinkled on the bed.
I was raised from birth through high school with my Father - after his passing my mother, managing a commercial 7+ acre commercial asparagus field near Demotte Indiana. I spent many days watching until I started working in the fields driving a tractor pulling a picker at 11 or 12 years old!
Typically when it is first planted it is left to go to "seed" for about 4 to 5 Years. During this time no stalks are removed until the last year or so, then very few.
At 5 years it becomes crop bearing. Then ALL stalks of a certain length (dependent on the temperature) are snapped off and sent to a cannery. This was a Dutch immigrant community so no work was done on Sunday!
The fields typically continue until they are about 25 years old then the asparagus is plowed and an alternate crop is planted.
On Saturday the harvested stalks were taken off quite short as it will grow on a hot day/night 4 to 6 inches.
The soil in the area was quite sandy and very "rich", as the Dutch had "diked" the creeks / ditches and pumped water to the creeks in the spring and if a dry season, pumped it into the field. So much of the soil was silt from centuries of being a swamp.
Typically harvest started in Mid to late May and lasted until the first week in July. During the harvest season when weeds would become thick, the field would be picked very short and then disked flat on a Saturday to clear the field. Picking would resume Monday morning!
After the last harvest the plants were left alone and allowed to grow and seed.
An asparagus farm? Who knew? Brings back memories though, I grew up on a dairy farm and like it or not, cows get milked on Sunday. I was driving a tractor trough a hay field when I was about 9 so the adults could walk along and load hay bales. 300 acres of corn some years to feed the cattle silage. My Grandfather who was "retired" grew a five acre garden and Planted more crops one the farm. He would wake me up very early on a Saturday and tell me to get him a hundred dozen ears of corn. Fills the back of a pickup completely. I have forgotten how many cantaloupes it took but we filled the truck with them too. He would take the stuff to town and sell it. Actually, I think he gave away more than he sold.
My Dad would find it growing wild in the fence rows and clean up around it a little and harvest it in the spring.
So, Pick the bed clean for a couple of weeks and then fertilize with manure?
Exactly my experience Larry. As a kid growing up we used to have an hour delay in the morning school hour so the asparagus could be cut and sent to market in Boston- -a 100 miles east. We cut each stalk below the dirt line with a V shaped knife and put in the basket. Regret to say my town lost the crop due to a fungus a decade back. P.
It likes a rich soil. Fertilize now with general fertilizer 10-10-10 or something similar where each number is similar. The numbers are in order- nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Who knows what your soil needs so add them all. How much....hard to tell you by email. Enough that there is a pellet every square inch or so. Too much will kill the plants.
If the stalks are pencils or straws the soil is poor. Don't pick pencils and straws for the plant is telling you it is desperate for nutrition.
In a typical bed the early stalks will be 1/2 to 3/4" diameter. Pick until they begin to be smaller and then quit. Season is about 1.5 months.
On a new bed we lightly pick 2nd year and normally pick 3rd year and later. We are picking a 1 year old bed right now (planted 2 year roots last spring)
Bill, I went through a flower Gardening phase and also grew up on a dairy farm. My father was college educated farmer and Soil Conservation Agent. I have fifty Japanese Maples and twenty varieties of Dogwoods and a similar number of
Redbuds. (I have an arboretum, now I just need the land to go with it.) My son who has a degree in Horticulture (To quote Dorthy Parker, "You can lead a whore to culture, you just can't make her think.) planted the Asparagus. Not my idea, I don't even eat it, but I can't bring myself to kill it, I give it away.
I am thinking I am going to enrich the soil and just pick the larger stalks and let the smaller ones go to seed.
It does not make sense to me to just cut off the tiny ones.
Yep, during the 1940's, the field I worked in was also cut with "asparagus Knives" as you describe. After cutting it was moved to a packing shed. There was a wood cutting table that had a number of wooden pockets cut into the table and the asparagus was packed into the pockets and a curved blade fastened to a wooden block slid across the top of the table cutting all the stalks to a given length.
Then it had two rubber bands placed around each bundle from the pocked and was packed into a crate and the crate nailed shut. This was when the crates were shipped directly to each market. Curved stalks were discarded to containers and sent to a cannery as I remember. It was a real bad day when the wind had blown strong overnight as very few stalks were straight!