Green Asparagus in Your Garden
Growing Green Asparagus in Your Own Backyard
Growing Asparagus in the Garden
Fresh asparagus is on the market only for a few weeks during the year and relatively expensive. So why not cultivating this excellent crop in your own garden? Whatever your taste, you can choose between white and green asparagus. However, the cultivation of green asparagus is less complex than it would be with white asparagus.
As a starter, you need to have a sunny spot in your garden for your asparagus. Keep the soil loose as the plants don’t like being waterlogged. Light and sandy soils provide the best conditions for excellent growing results. PH values between 5.5 and 6 are ideal. As asparagus fields can be harvested for a period as long as 10 years, taking care when selecting the location of the patch, especially for white asparagus on ridges. If the patches run north to south, harvesting will be balanced during the asparagus season, that is, the plant develops equally well at both sides of the earth wall. Quite differently, laying out the patches from east to west will start the harvesting at the southern side of the ridges at an earlier point in time.
Cultivating Green Asparagus
Asparagus is usually planted in April, which requires beginning with the preparation of the patches in March. Green asparagus is best planted in two rows. For this end, you start by digging a 25 cm deep and 1 m wide furrow. Then dig another furrow no deeper than 25 cm and smooth its surface. Apply a 10 cm layer of fertilizer or rotting manure as well as a supplementary fertilizer (depending on the soil analysis!) of 100 g superphosphate and 100 g kalimagnesia. Intermix this layer with the soil by using a bar spade.
Plant the seedling as soon as they have arrived. But when being stored in a dry and cool place, you may keep them as long as 14 days. Put the plants carefully on the loose ground with the root spread out. The distance between the single plants in a row should be 40 cm, and between the rows 50 cm. If a second double row is laid out, space the seedlings 1.5 m apart from it. After that, fill the furrow with the dug out soil. Take care to have placed the top of the roots 15 cm below the ground surface. Take great care to control the weed and keep the surface loose during the next few months. No harvesting takes place in the first two years. In November, remove the old fern growth by cutting or mowing or by using a spade. Burn it or put it into a bio-waste container to prevent asparagus diseases from being spread. During the spring of the second year, fertilize the asparagus patch with 2 kg compost/ sqm and loose the ground surface. Make sure not to damage the root tops of the plants. If possible, keep the patch free of weed and again remove the old fern growth in November.
Continue fertilizing the patch in the third year the same as you did the year before. The asparagus patch is ready to be harvested from May to mid June. Once the spears have reached a length of 20 cm, you may cut them off slightly below the surface. Even thin spears are excellent food and should therefore be harvested as well. At high temperatures, you will find that the asparagus is growing very rapidly, so that you can harvest every day. Although the shoots of green asparagus are fine with temperatures as low as 4 degrees Celsius below zero, if you grow asparagus in areas with late frosts, you may want to cover the patch with a fleece or foil before the harvesting commences. This is a good way to bring the date of harvesting a bit forward. From the fourth year onwards, the 24th of June, the St. John the Baptist Day is the last harvesting day for white and green asparagus to allow for the development of sufficient fern, which ensures that the roots are supplied with the nutritional energy they need for the succeeding year.