We're going to plant asparagus today.
It's one of those crops that not a lot of people in the south are aware of.
I know when I was coming up, we never had asparagus.
We came up kind of poor.
We had a lot of salmon patties, chicken and rice, things like that, and I thought asparagus
was something only the rich people ate.
As far as I know, I never ate any until I got grown.
But we seem to like it, we like it grilled, sauteed.
I planted some about four years ago, about a 40 foot bed and we've really enjoyed it.
So I ordered some more and we're going to plant some more today and I'm going to show
you how that's done.
A little misnomer is here in the south -- a lot of people don't think about growing asparagus.
Asparagus grows fine here in the south.
I haven't had any problems whatsoever.
We gather it for about a four week period during the spring time and about every other
day we get plenty for two people.
Now I like asparagus but that's a lot of asparagus so we have plenty to eat and plenty to give
away to family and friends.
The rule of thumb is about 20 to 25 feet of row per person and we're going to plant 50
feet today and that will be plenty for two people.
Now if you've got a family of four, probably plant a 100 foot row.
But after about three years, it grows and you can cut it at least every other day -- sometimes
every day.
Now the way I would recommend planting it is through crowns.
And I'll show you here what we got in.
You can plant by seed or you can plant by crowns.
And take my advice, go ahead and spend the money and buy you some crowns.
These came in yesterday and they come in a bundle like this right here.
And what we'll do -- this is the crown right here and we'll plant that up with the roots
down and you kind of let them spread out.
Now what we ordered was 25 crowns of Jersey Supreme and then 25 crowns of Pacific Purple,
and that's a purple variety I've never planted before but I thought I'd give it a try.
So we're going to take the Wheel Hoe and we're going to knock out a little furrow there and
we're going to take a shovel and we're going to make a trench about 8-10 inches deep and
as wide as what that shovel is, and we'll show you how we plant it and then how we cover
it up and go from there.
So we've got 50 foot of bed here and I've got it trenched out to about 8 inches deep.
And we've got 25 of the Jersey Supreme I'm going to plant first and then I'm going to
finish up with my purple ones on the end.
We're going to plant these crowns 12 to 15 inches apart.
Now here's the crown and as you can see there, that's the top side.
Put it down there like this right here and kind of spread them roots out like that.
Some of them are bigger than others.
Just want to make sure that crown is pointing up.
Now when I get through planting these, I'll come back and I'll rake in about two inches
of soil on top of that.
That's still going to leave a pretty good trench.
When they start sprouting or coming through that, we'll take good compost and start filling
in our ditch.
Now we'll put about 2 inches in at the time until we get it back up to ground level.
And that will help to cover up any weeds that's coming up in there and give a lot of nutrients
for these crowns.
Now normally what you would want to do is you want to make sure your pH in your soil
is around a 7.
So you want to take soil sample and see.
Now mine is around 7 so I don't have any problem there.
If your pH is low, you'll want to add some pelleted lime to get it up.
It takes about three months for lime to be activated, but realistically you could do
it a week or two before you plant.
Another thing too is phosphorous.
Asparagus crowns like a lot of phosphorous.
So organically you could add bone meal in this trench here if you're low on phosphorous.
My soils are very high in phosphorous so I'm not worried a whole lot about that.
But you could put bone meal down there and that would help give them a boost.There you
have it, it didn't take us long to plant the asparagus.
Remember, you need your pH around 7. Make sure you order some good crowns off the internet.
Now we ordered from this company right here and that was my first time ordering from them.
They came when they were supposed to, everything looked good.
So it's a good company as far as I know, the dealings I've had with them.
But find you some good crowns.
Now you want to plant asparagus after the first frost.
This is the first of March here in south Georgia.
We're supposed to be around 32-33 degrees tonight, so we should be fine.
But you normally want to plant those after all the frost is gone.
And this should be our last little cold spell.
Asparagus is one of those plants that is overlooked in the garden a lot.
It's probably the one we enjoy the most out of the garden.
So give it a try.
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