Asparagus

Hey GWN, glasses required! 1st and 2nd pic, right down the middle, next to the compost bin! :fall: :fall:
Found a use for my favorite emotion!
Jo

GWN - There's leaf coral and then there's leaf corral. I think we're talking corral here.

GWN
Leaf corral is the fenced in enclosure that holds leaves. Btw it was fun to learn there is something called leaf coral too!

OOOOOOHHHH so it was a case of a MISSING R......

Rs are important :lolsignwave:

You bet, or else my formal name would be: egina!

You bet, or else my formal name would be: egina!

:lolsignwave: ... OK well now lets all remember our Rs :lolsignwave:

Ah, a typong error.

Kay

Hey!!! I never claimed I could type or spell either for that matter

I think I do pretty good with only one finger.

I did get the asparagus planted today.... YEEHAW!

bnoles wrote:I think I do pretty good with only one finger.

Double your speed, use one finger from each hand!
GG

speaking of fingers.... now my bed is a mixture of plants I grew from seed in early 2011, and other plants I bought as 2 year roots in 2011, and other plants I bought this year.
Also several of mine turned out to be female plants and had babies... those very cute little red balls hanging down
SOOOO to know what I can eat this year, I am thinking of going for the ones that are finger sized ??

This will be my first year of supposed harvest... any thoughts out there?

Finger sized or bigger. When you go to break it off, if it snaps easily it's ok, but if it won't break, seems woody, has to be cut, then it won't be good to eat. if, when it comes out the ground, if it starts spreading out at the top of the spear, then the fronds are going to come out. That one won't be good to eat.

Here soon, when you can see the ground, you can get lots of leaves and pile on the asparagus bed. This will 'blanch' the spears and they will be whiter and more tender.

Here soon, when you can see the ground, you can get lots of leaves and pile on the asparagus bed. This will 'blanch' the spears and they will be whiter and more tender.

It will be a long time coming here... as I recall we got the first signs of asparagus last year towards end of april.

Thanks Littlejo, do you lots of asparagus?

I have a 4 x 8 bed in SFG, and we have a few plants out in the old garden area that we didn't have room for.
Jo

I had a nice long talk about asparagus with a local market farmer yesterday. Apparently here we are treading a fine line between deep enough to protect from cold and mid winter thaws, and rotting in water logged soils in early spring if planted too deep. You do not see wild asparagus here on irrigation banks like I did as a child in Western Montana (a full zone warmer).

I learned that the local growers are successfully growing Jersey Knight, with much care about bed drainage. One of them is getting roots grown in Minnesota that do well here, and I can get some from her. My friend has done that and also grows from seed to get heirloom varieties. She warns that Mary Washington just rots out here. She has heard of Viking but been unable to try it, it seems that variety is easier to get in Canada. It is a hardier improved Washington.
I find it interesting that none of the growers are willing to sell their own local grown roots. Too much effort invested in them it seems.

The one place I have had any success growing asparagus was an old iris bed that I had dug gravel into the soil to make sure it drained well. SO my idea this time is to do similar with the soil under the bed. Plant the asparagus in that with crowns just a little above soil level. Then fill the raised bed above it as needed over the season. This realization reminds me that growing sweet peas there is going to be difficult the first year.

Darn it, I might have to build a new bed just for sweet peas this year.

Each year our sparra grass gets a 2 inch thick layer of spent & some new composts not only to help protect it from frosts but to also give it a feed up once the tops have been cut back for winter. OK the UK's winter temps are not as cold as Canada etc but we do often get minus 10 o C for a couple of weeks or more each winter plus several sharp penetrating frosts of a couple of days duration .

The crowns are set in about 6 to nine inche deep , ( makes sure they are set the correct way up ) laid spread out on a ridge of soil then covered over.

We tend to have our sparra grass in a raised bed that is at least 18 inches or more deep above ground level . The contents are usually well rotted animal manures in a light sandy loam that has been run through a 1/4 inch garden sieve . Each year it also gets a light spring dressing of cooking salt to keep the weeds down .

The reason for the deep sieved soil is so that you can cut the spears below the surface which not only helps bug infestation it means that a 6 inch long spear showing above ground can now become a 9 inch long of stick of delicious tender sparra grass.

Mark the femal plants and dig them out replacing them with non flowering male plants you grow yourself from seeds off your female plants .

Those female plants have a lot less crop production ( anything up to somewhere in the region of 30 % )than the male plants. As they use valuable energy producing seeds . You can buy 2 yr old crowns which are male plants that are about 90 % guaranteed to be males , You can also buy high probability male seeds .

Those are a lot of good pointers, David.

I guess I am trying to imitate the 18" raised bed but sinking it about 6" for extra insulation. It commonly gets to -30*C here and spikes down to -40*C. Or it did, who knows what winter is anymore?

Sinking the bed down can lead to wet feet and they don't like that.
Perhaps go high on the beds so the possibility of wet feet is almost eliminated and insulate with a big thick blanket of straw and net it over for winter .
Use the straw as part of the compost come your frost free days .


Even the sparragrass growers of Kent , East anglia and Worcestershire
tend to grow then in six foot wide 18 inch high ridged beds unless there is real good drainage such as a quality sandy loamed stone free soil .

Once you sort the bed out it can be harvested for 20 years or more , so it's usually worth going the extra mile in setting it up.

There is a decent splurge in Wikki about asparagus but I can't find anything about temperatures of growth germination or hibernation etc.
I'll play in search engines for a while and see If I can find your freezer like temps .

found the cornell university words on the subject of asparagus

still no cold weather info though
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/factsheets/AsparagusInfo.htm#Asparagus


Just found that some cultivars of asparagus can survive minus 30 o F but they don't say which brand

Eureeka !
Guelph Millennium F1 hybrid all males .... developed in Ontario Canada excellent cold resistance better than all else . Good cropper as well

I have now also found a Canadian growers forum stating that so far Millenium is hardier than Viking or Jersey Knight, and seems to yeild very well. I have now even found a US source http://noursefarms.com/category/asparagus/

You know I have an old established 4x8x1 foot bed that is at the back of the garden. It would be really easy to add another 6" for mulching and plant it in 25 crowns. That wide a bed would be safer for freezing than the narrow bed I had been planning on.

Course I would need to build another bed as well for the corn and beans that are now getting displaced....

Dave
The cornell article was great, so much info and the pictures were exactly what I was looking for.
Turan For comparison in prices, Daisy Farms in Michigan carries that variety among several others around page 14. Also, it is the place I ordered Purple Passion from:
http://www.daisyfarms.net/DaisyFarms2013-web.pdf

If anyone finds disease resistance info on Purple Passion, please share because I can't find any. Thanks! I will ask daisy farms but I was hoping to find another source...(y'know, trust but varify!)

llama momma wrote:

If anyone finds disease resistance info on Purple Passion, please share because I can't find any. Thanks! I will ask daisy farms but I was hoping to find another source...(y'know, trust but varify!)

Here are a few article and pdfs that touch on asparagus diseases and how to limit stress that increases risk of infection. I'm not sure these articles contain the type of info you are looking for.

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/438/438-102/438-102_pdf.pdf

http://www.academia.edu/1918010/Asparagus

http://njveg.rutgers.edu/assets/pdfs/ppg/12recomm/12-Sec-F%20.pdf


http://aesop.rutgers.edu/~iact/asparagus/iact.html

http://extension.usu.edu/files/factsheets/asparagus.PDF

Thanks a bunch, and wow, I sure got an eyeful and more. But zippo on disease resistance specific to purple passion. Ill have to believe whatever they tell me and see for myself how purple passion works with personal best effort and care.

It was very interesting to read of International asparagus symposiums and intern'tl cultivar tests etc. Also didn't know the ongoing international testing involves nearly 40 varieties of asparagus, wow. And there are three varieties of "purple" -- purple passion, sweet purple, and pacific purple. All these exciting studies quietly going on out there just to satisfy our asparagus desires. So interesting.

I read in a few of those links that the purple passion is resistant to the fusarium, but not immune. The gardener, if intending to reduce disease risk, would eliminate the environmental conditions that promotes plant stress and fusarium bloom in asparagus.

LM, do you have a more specific question about 'disease resistance' in the purple passion?

I'm brand new when it comes to asparagus, just exploring and learning all I can. Hope to have a little more confidence by time the order arrives.