Asparagus: Early, Easy and Excellent

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4. Plant in trenches. After the days have warmed to about 50 degrees, plant asparagus crowns in trenches, 6 to 12 inches deep, and about 12 inches wide. (Use the shallower depth for heavy clay soils, Ngouajio says.) By starting your asparagus crop with crowns, you’ll be able to harvest them a year earlier than if you plant seeds. Spread finished compost in the bottom of the trench, then space the crowns about 12 to 18 inches apart inside the trench, mounding the soil a bit beneath each crown. Cover the crowns with about 2 inches of soil. Gradually add more soil (mixed with compost, if available) over the next four to six weeks as the plants grow, until the trench is level with the surrounding soil.

5. Resist the temptation to harvest spears the first season! For the best future harvests, allow the underground crowns to become well-established during the first year or two after planting. If you do not harvest the spears (which are actually the plants’ newly emerging shoots), they will develop into tall, attractive plants with lacy leaves.

“The vegetative part of asparagus — the tall, leafy growth sometimes called ‘ferns’— is the part that captures sunlight and energy, which is stored in the crowns. The more energy stored in the crowns, the better your crop will be the following year,” explains Thomas Orton, extension vegetable specialist with Rutgers Cooperative Extension in New Brunswick, N.J.

“It’s important that a gardener look at their asparagus plants and not push them before they are ready,” says Robert Dufault, professor of horticulture and vegetable physiology at Clemson University. For instance, if the plants’ ferns grew lush and tall (about shoulder-height) the first year, it’s OK to harvest the spears for about two weeks the second spring (instead of the usual six to eight weeks), Dufault says. He also recommends waiting one more year before harvesting if the spears did not grow that tall, or if new emerging spears look spindly, to ensure robust plants the following year.

6. Stop picking when spears grow spindly. By the crop’s third season, you should be able to pick a full harvest — that means you can pick all the spears that emerge over six to eight weeks. (To extend your harvest by a couple of weeks, see “Stalking Summer Asparagus.”) To harvest asparagus spears, simply snap them off by hand where they naturally bend; a knife is not necessary, and can actually spread disease from one plant to another. Plus, by snapping off only the tender stalks in the garden, you’ll save a step in the kitchen by avoiding the need to remove the fibrous stems.

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