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Asparagus demands little more than a bit of planning before you plant, weed control, and a dash of patience before you start enjoying eight weeks of delicious spears every spring. Even gardeners in the South and West, where winters are thought to be too warm for asparagus, can grow the new asparagus varieties.
5 Reasons to Grow Asparagus 1. Plant it once, harvest it for 20 years.
2. Organic, fresh and homegrown vs. soaked in chemicals and trucked in from California.
3. Fancy finger food!
4. Have you checked out the price of asparagus in the supermarket?
5. And the best reason to grow asparagus: Hollandaise sauce!
Getting Started
Go with crowns. You can start asparagus by sowing seed, but most gardeners start with crowns (the dormant roots). Crowns will yield the first harvest a year sooner than seed (two years rather than three). And seeds produce female as well as male plants. Female plants produce less than males for they use much of their energy to set seeds and grow foliage, while male plants put all their energy into making spears. (Red berries after flowering means a female plant.) Experts recommend identifying the female plants early on and removing them. With crowns, you can get male plants only.
Start with a dozen. Crowns look a bit like tangled spaghetti. Buy only crowns that look healthy—avoid those that look rotted or dried-out, brown or shriveled. About one dozen crowns will produce enough to feed one adult in a season; plant as many as 20 crowns per adult if you plan to freeze or can spears.
Varieties 'Martha Washington' and 'Mary Washington' are the old standbys, but newer hybrids from Rutgers University and the University of California give higher yields, are more disease resistant, and can be harvested the second spring after planting.
Northern gardeners can try the Jersey hybrids, all-male varieties developed at Rutgers University. 'Jersey Knight' is longer-lived than some of the other Jersey hybrids and is tolerant of fusarium and resistant to rust. 'Jersey Giant' is more productive than 'Jersey Knight' in cold areas, such as Michigan, and is adaptable to a variety of growing conditions, while retaining good disease resistance.
The University of California (UC) hybrids are suitable for warmer, dryer climates. They grow enthusiastically from the southwest up to Washington State. These hybrids are not all male, however. The tips of 'UC72' stay tight in warm climates; 'UC157' spears are tinged with purple, and has higher yields than 'UC72.'
