Asparagus, From Crowns to Cropping

Charles Dowding

Asparagus, From Crowns to Cropping takes you through the whole process. No dig apart from making a hole large enough for the spreading roots of your crowns.  The big differences between my easier approach and what you see recommended usually, is : 1 You don't need to deep dig at the beginning,  2 There is no need for ridges, just grow them in normal beds. This reduces weeding and makes them easy to look after, year after year. I know from experience - asparagus plants are long lived and need little time input after the first year.  00:00 Introductory music 00:04 Which variety to choose - I recommend modern hybrids 00:46 Info on planting asparagus where there are weeds 02:31 Timing of planting  02:53 Growing asparagus from seed 03:12 What is an asparagus crown?  03:55 Showing an asparagus spear 04:38 Showing the bed I will be planting on, already with peas for shoots, and some perennial weeds - I demonstrate how to remove them with a trowel 06:20 Planting the asparagus  09:13 More on weeds especially the difficult couch grass and bindweed 09:52 Planting asparagus (time lapse), and a list of planting steps 10:52 Even more on dealing with weeds! (perennials) 12:59 The benefits of using a (copper) spade for planting 13:37 Explaining how I used soil, cardboard and compost in the bed 14:19 Compost quality 15:49 Timing of asparagus growth each season, and the period of cropping 17:09 8 weeks later - growth of asparagus (and some weeds!) 17:57 Using supports for asparagus ferns 18:41 Showing my 9 year old asparagus bed, planted Dec 2012 19:11 Harvesting asparagus from this bed 21:41 Asparagus beetle.  Filmed by Edward Dowding at Homeacres May, June and October 2021. Zone 8 climate, southern UK.  Check out this video, filmed in 2018 and showing the 6th year of my first asparagus bed: https://youtu.be/FM_SJJ95k8g  Module 6 of my Skills for Growing course teaches more on perennials and can be purchased from my website shop: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/skills-for-growing-online-course-module-6-containers-perennials-and-herbs-and-going-further-new-skills-for-new-energies/  To buy my collections of super informative video garden guides with an encyclopaedic search function, visit Retrieve with whom we partner https://charlesdowding.retrieve.com/store/#/  You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join

Transcript

00:03Growing asparagus, there's a lot to decide before you actually get to the point where I'm showing

00:09you today planting some crowns. Like what variety you'd like, and generally I'd recommend the modern

00:18hybrids. This is a plant that's going to be in the ground for a very long time. As much as

00:2325

00:23years of cropping, hopefully. So the decision you make here is going to influence your results

00:30for a very long time. And some of the older varieties like Conoverse Colossal that I've

00:36used, they don't give quite the results of some of the modern hybrids which have bigger yields

00:43of fatter spears. Then you need to decide where to plant. And I'm asked often, you know, can

00:52I grow asparagus or can I plant asparagus where there's a lot of weeds at the moment?

00:57And it's not ideal unless you're really confident that you can cope with those weeds and get

01:02rid of them, particularly perennial weeds. Now I'm close to the limit today. You're going

01:07to see planting in quite a new bed. These beds here did not exist three months ago. Three

01:14months ago, all of this area, which is now covered mulch, this is no dig, so none of this

01:20soil has been dug or disturbed in any way. It was all right behind me over there. It's

01:25pasture with dandelions and buttercups and a lot of bindweed actually, and some perennial

01:32vigorous weeds like hogweed as well. We'll see examples. So I'm going to need to be removing

01:38some of them before planting and also ongoing, including the bindweed. So it's a bit of a challenge,

01:44but I'm confident I can do that. I've had enough experience of bindweed to know that if you keep

01:49on top of it, it eventually gives up. It's not an invincible weed. I think marestail would be

01:55different. I would really hesitate on that one. That's more difficult than bindweed. But we'll

02:01see. We'll come back here in the middle of June in just under two months' time. We'll see how the

02:07asparagus is growing, how we're coping with the bindweed in particular. And you'll get an idea of

02:13the start. And we'll also, during this video, we'll visit my established asparagus patch, which is now

02:20in its ninth year coming up. We've been picking it for five years. This will be the sixth. And that,

02:26all being well, that's cropping nicely. It's just starting now, actually. This is late April.

02:30So it's just coming to life. So this is coming close to the end of possible time for planting.

02:36You can plant crowns at any time in the winter. If it's spring like this, I'm going to need to

02:43keep

02:43it watered because it's going to start growing pretty soon. But if you get them in in the winter,

02:47they root a little bit and often get established before the spring and they look after themselves

02:52pretty well often. You can also grow asparagus from seed. And again, if you want to do that,

02:57do it now, do it in the spring. I would raise the seed under cover. You'd say start modules and

03:02pot it on.

03:03And then you would have the equivalent of a crown. It doesn't look like a crown,

03:07but it's ready to transplant the following late winter, spring.

03:12So I'm using this word crown. What is a crown? Here, here's an asparagus crown,

03:20spidery roots. And what you do is you spread them out when you plant. They want to be fairly

03:27superficial. They're not going deep. You know, you don't plant it like that. You spread them out.

03:32But they look, you know, you could say almost weed like the roots themselves. And there was a time

03:38when I was growing up teenager and my brother didn't really do much gardening, but he thought he'd

03:44help out, help the mother. And he weeded her garden and he found these roots. Oh God, you know,

03:51they thought there were thistles or something. Dug them all out. That was her asparagus patch.

03:54So you can see also here, the first little spear. So that's an asparagus. So an asparagus is the new

04:03growth. The bit we eat is the new growth called a spear, which then grows into a long stem if

04:10you don't

04:10pick it and opens out into a fern-like mass of leaves, which is appreciated by flower arrangers,

04:16actually. They're very pretty plants. So we're planting this and this is going to be growing

04:21for three years before there's any thought of taking a crop because these roots have got to get big

04:26and established. Otherwise, if you start picking them when the plant's too young, you just exhaust it.

04:31It would be rather like weeding. You used to tire out the root. So I'm going to put these in

04:36a shade.

04:37Well, I'll do that in a minute actually. What I want to show you first is the bed because this

04:45has been planted already with pea shoots or peas, four shoots that is.

04:53And what we're seeing is not only the peas, the pea plants, but weeds.

05:01Yeah, I'm giving myself a tall order here actually. There is. I'll get my trowel, let me show you.

05:16Yeah. So that's couch grass, which is coming from a deep root below.

05:26So this is bindweed, likewise coming from a deep root below. What I'm doing is levering

05:32to extract as much of the root as I can. So that's new growth of the bindweed root and

05:41they're coming easily out of the compost. So this is roughly 12 centimeter compost. Actually,

05:47there's about three centimeter of soil below it as well that we put on, had spare.

05:52There's a dandelion, same story. What one is doing here is levering out the surface growth.

06:00This is the most difficult one actually. It's hogweed because the root's so vigorous in it.

06:07Quite hard to see where they originate from as well, come out at an angle.

06:13So all of those I need to remove. Then I'm going to,

06:20I'm looking to line it up along the middle of the bed. What have we got here? We've got one,

06:25two, three, four of this. There'll be a few pea plants I need to remove to do this. If I

06:32make my

06:32first one here, I'll take out this pea plant. I know it's a shame to do this, but sometimes

06:41looking at the longer picture, we'll lose a few pea plants. We can keep cropping the

06:46pea shoots around these plants. Then what I'm going to do is make a

06:53horizontal hole, hole with a level bottom. Add a certain depth. The question is how deep.

07:01And I don't want to go too deep. Asparagus do quite like some

07:09air around their roots in winter. They don't like to be waterlogged, which is why traditionally it's

07:13often said you need to grow them on ridges. That's a lot of work and it usually results in a

07:18lot of

07:18weeds because you're moving soil around a lot. Then you spend a lot of time weeding. So this is about

07:23finding an easier way to do that. Here I'm just reached the bottom of the compost layer. So that's

07:32how much compost we had. It's only now about seven or eight centimeters. Then there's a layer of soil

07:38on top of the original pasture. So anyway, in my crater. This is roughly how it's going to look

07:46when one puts in the crown. I think it needs to be a bit wider actually.

07:56So the idea is you're putting this in like that. Gosh, it does need to be wide.

08:01I haven't done this for a few years. And yeah, this is not the sort of thing you need to

08:06do often,

08:07thank goodness. There's also a layer of cardboard there, which is encouraging. It's

08:12partly there. Weeds are already rooting through it from above. And as we can see the weeds are coming

08:20up from below through the cardboard. Cardboard doesn't last more than maybe three months.

08:31You spread the roots out a bit and I'm going to tuck one in there.

08:40Actually to make a hole wide enough for these roots would mean a massive amount of digging,

08:47much more than I want to do. So I'm just tucking them into the side there a bit.

08:55That, I'm happy with that. So I'm going to put compost on top.

09:01Probably what would be a good idea is I'll need to get some stakes just to mark the position of

09:06each

09:09crown. But they, they will show soon. I mean, that's not vital. The beauty of using compost like

09:14this is what we call green waste compost. It's hot, hot made compost, which means there's no weed seeds in

09:20it.

09:21So if this was soil and I was moving it around like this, this would generate a lot of weed

09:25seeds

09:25as a result. This won't. So at least I won't have the annual weeds. That's not going to be an

09:31issue.

09:31It's just keeping on top of the perennial weeds regularly until they die. So next year,

09:40there'll be some bindweed here, but the couch grass should all be gone. The burdock, I think,

09:45and the hogweed will be gone. We'll just keep on bindweed for another year and after that,

09:50there should be no more bindweed. So I'm going to carry on now. I need to first of all remove

09:55the fleece and then carry on weeding, followed by planting.

10:47I'm going to carry on weeding. So I'm going to carry on weeding. So I'm going to carry on

10:55a little bit. And I must admit, I feel I've taken on maybe a bit more than I knew in

11:04terms of

11:05perennial weeds that I found while making those holes. And this ground is full of them.

11:12There's a bit more couch grass than I expected. And that's, as you know, that's bindweed. This is the

11:17couch. I kept back some of the particularly juicy ones because I wanted to show you how they work.

11:24It's a good example that you've got the new shoots of the perennial weed coming out of the more

11:32horizontal parent root below is one thing. And then the real, the real find, which you don't want to

11:42find in a way. And I wouldn't normally have tried to get this out. This is parent root of bindweed,

11:49which happens very deep down. Well, very deep and not in this case, not so deep, but deeper than one

11:55normally goes in terms of removing the regrowth. So the, the regrowth are these white bits which come

12:01out of it. And they're the bits that you normally find and they can be quite long. So like this

12:07one,

12:07you know, it's coming out quite a way. So they'll be coming up through all the compost mulch

12:12while the parent roots sitting quietly there down below. And the reason I made a bit of a more effort

12:17than usual to actually get this one out is because it was right under one of the crowns. And this,

12:22this is the difficulty with doing a perennial planting where there's already perennial weeds

12:29because they're going to compete with each other or they're going to coexist if you like. And

12:34my aim anyway, I know it's not everybody's. My aim is to get rid of perennial weeds altogether

12:39so that life is then much easier. And I can get rid of bindweed. I know for two years of

12:45persistent

12:46removal of that gets rid of that. It is possible. But in this case, it's just complicated because

12:54there'll be the asparagus roots traveling through the bed easier at the moment this summer. This summer

12:59will be pretty vigorous and we'll probably use a spade again, like I did. That was another thing

13:05you might have noticed is I was using a spade, not a trowel. I decided with what I had to

13:09do,

13:09it would be a lot simpler. Also in terms of the video, I wanted to get it done quickly.

13:14And I was using copper spade, really nice one that I don't use a lot because I'm not digging,

13:19but when I do need a spade, it's really nice to have. And for all of your tools, it's worth

13:24investing in

13:25good ones as much as you can afford, at least, because it speeds the job up and it gets it

13:30done

13:30better. But that spade is really nice and sharp. It keeps it sharpness, doesn't rust. So it slices

13:34through soil compost. In terms of the planting holes, I was getting right through the compost layer and

13:41most of the crowns are now sitting on top of a little bit of topsoil. We had a spare heap

13:45of soil

13:45over there back in January when I started here. So this was just empty. And the first thing I thought

13:52was, well, I didn't need all that soil. So I thought, well, we'll use that as a base layer,

13:55if you like. We didn't use any cardboard. I was short of cardboard at the time. So

14:01it was later that we put on cardboard. So that's why some of the holes, I was finding cardboard kind

14:06of halfway down and below that a bit of soil and below that the original soil. So it's a bit

14:10like

14:10doing archeology. It's all there. And then the crowns were some of them not quite as deep as I'd have

14:16liked. And I thought, well, this is compost. The compost I was finding, it's not brilliant quality.

14:22It's what I could buy in January. And it's what we call green waste compost made from people's

14:26garden waste and they make it outside. So it's the reason I have a roof on my compost base. All

14:32the

14:32rain was going on it all through the winter. We had quite a wet winter here and it goes very

14:36soggy.

14:37And when I knew when he delivered it, oh God, we got trouble here. You know, it came out of

14:41the

14:41lorry as he was tipping the two tonne load in great wet lumps, almost like rather than.

14:47Oh, so that's why I was finding still some of those lumps. We broke them up quite a bit while

14:52spreading the compost on top here. It's not the end of the world. It's, you know, if that happened

14:57to you, well, you still got carry on, melt your ground. You just have to deal with those lumps

15:02over time. They gradually break down. It was more that here I came across them because I was actually

15:06planting into it. And the other thing about that compost is it was still pretty warm at the time we

15:11spread it. So it's not like finished compost and the nutrition in there, which is in there,

15:16it's quite nutritious compost, but it's got quite a bit of woody stuff that's still breaking down that

15:20delays release of the nutrients which are taken by the wood. So I think that's one reason these peas are

15:27still quite a bit yellow. You know, there's not going to be a fantastic crop of pea shoots here.

15:31I can put up with that. You know, I'm trying things basically. We've got still the main garden.

15:36There's some lovely plants for pea shoots down there. This is partly about trying things to see,

15:41share it on videos and see what happens. I'm reasonably confident that I'm going to get

15:46rid of these prenyol weeds here, but it's going to be a challenge. We'll probably put more compost

15:50here in the winter. We'll watch out for new growth and weed carefully around it. And the roots,

15:57I would estimate by the end of this summer, they've finished growing mostly towards the end of

16:03September. They don't grow all through the autumn, start to die off mid-autumn and the tops go yellow. And

16:08the roots probably won't have used more than half of what's here in terms of possibility of compost and

16:14soil. So they're going to grow, get established this year, grow a lot next year, grow even more. The

16:19following year, we might pick a few spears. And by 2025, we should be well into cropping this ground.

16:28And I'll put these down. The prenyol weeds that I was removing there,

16:34they're all going on my compost heap. I'm totally not afraid to compost them. I know they they break

16:39down that whole thing if they're not invincible. So have I said everything? I think so. We'll catch up in

16:46June with the next view of cropping.

17:09Eight weeks have passed and the asparagus has grown. So are the weeds continuing to grow. This is some

17:18bindweed, which I just removed and a bit of hogweed and a bit of couch grass. So that's all still

17:25happening. And we are regularly removing the weeds with a trowel. And that's actually pretty much all

17:32we're doing. We've not watered. Asparagus does not grow particularly lush leaves. It doesn't need a huge

17:39amount of water. Apart from weeds, it's pretty easy plant to grow really. As long as you can be patient

17:46and wait for results. So this is now eight weeks since planting. And you can see there's some

17:52reasonable growth of the ferns from the crowns I put in. And they're starting to get to a height now

18:01there, for example, where they'll benefit before the end of the summer from some kind of support.

18:06So we'll either put, we'll probably put a stake in beside each crown actually to start with and tie

18:11the ferns to that. And then over time, we'll see in a minute, we'll put a wider support for the

18:17whole

18:17bed. All being well, within three years from now, this will be quite a lush growth of fern leaves at

18:28this stage after a light pick. And then the main pick will begin four years from now. There will be

18:34very few more weeds growing here. There'll always be sunbind weed pushing in from the side and I'll

18:38probably need to keep a strip of cardboard down. And we'll now just have a look to see,

18:44you'll get a taste from what I can show you to finish of a mature and established bed which is

18:50producing.

18:55It's pretty much exactly eight and a half years since I've planted crowns here, December 2012 at the

19:05solstice. Now it's summer solstice, June 2021. And what you're seeing here is the fifth year of

19:16substantial harvest. Well, substantial. What is substantial? For asparagus, it's never tons of

19:24food, but it comes very nicely spaced out and you've got many harvesting options like this.

19:32This area, actually, normally I get 15 kilos in a picking season of two months. Very close to the

19:38end. There'll be maybe one more harvest after today. This is two days growth and it has

19:45been very warm in these two days, so growth is not so large. I find though that you see that

19:51one

19:51there, I get bigger picks. If I let it grow up a bit tall, this is green asparagus, obviously not

19:57white.

19:58It's quick and simple to pick and by twisting it, bending it like that, I can tell where

20:04on the stem it's tender as opposed to if I go too low. Oh, that was tender right the way

20:10down.

20:10But if you go too low, you get into the woody bit, which is not quite so nice to eat.

20:16Still tasty.

20:19So this is just one way of doing it. And you can see how the crowns are very variable. There

20:25were

20:26lots of different varieties and somehow I lost the labels. Classic really. And the result is a mixture.

20:38I do find that the really fat ones, you don't get so many spears. So in the end,

20:42maybe it's not such a huge difference. But for the amount of work involved now, this is a really

20:47worthwhile vegetable to grow. The amount of space here, 15 kilos during the hungry gap when there's

20:52not so much other green vegetables to eat. They taste fantastic. They don't all come at once. You've got

20:57little and often. And then the rest of the year, these will grow up and that's what the wires are

21:02for.

21:03So just make sure the new ferns, which within three weeks, they'll be up here.

21:09They go between these wires and that stops them blowing over. Our prevailing wind is from there

21:13blowing against them like that. So it's a wall of green. It's a hedge by August. And then

21:20through September, more in October, the leaves start to yellow and eventually drop off. And we

21:28scythe the bottom. This is last year's crowns there. And this is last year's debris, all in the middle

21:36between the two rows of asparagus. This, again, just one way of doing it. What I don't think I have

21:42here

21:42is asparagus beetle, which is the main pest of asparagus. And it's a spotty little beetle that

21:49I hear a lot of people worrying about. Generally, my approach is it doesn't do too much damage.

21:54We notice it more like last week when it was dry. There were quite a few on every spear I

21:59picked

22:00and they were nibbling a bit at the top of each spear, but not significantly. And then they will eat

22:05some of the leaves. But I've found that in general, there are predators that eat them and

22:12their population stays pretty okay. So all of this is a very quick way to look after your asparagus.

22:18And then we put a little bit of compost on every year, two, three centimeters at most,

22:23and that is it. So I will leave you to enjoy that, watching it, and I'll carry on picking.

22:44And I'll catch you later.

22:46And I'll catch you later.

22:46Bye.

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