- Welcome back to "Jacques in the Garden".
Today we are talking asparagus
and specifically how to care for asparagus
at the end of its season and the end of its growth cycle.
And many of you know that asparagus is
a long-lived perennial plant, it can often live
for over 20 years in your garden continuously providing you
that bountiful harvest
of fresh asparagus spears every spring.
So it's really important that you follow certain steps
when you're pruning back your asparagus
and specifically we'll talk about everything you need
to know on how to manage your asparagus
at the end of the season.
Before we get deep into the care
of the asparagus plant itself, I wanted to talk a little bit
about this patch right here.
This patch is now going into its second year,
so it's two full years of age, and this was started
as seedlings rather than transplanted from crowns.
When I read up online about asparagus,
everything I saw seemed to suggest that starting
from seedlings will actually give you a earlier harvest
than the crowns.
Now this is kind of interesting
because the crowns should be a more established older plant
but for whatever reason the seedlings seems
to be more vigorous and to take.
And I'll tell you what, I've had quite the harvest
in my second year and most people usually say you have
to wait two years before your harvest,
but I found that to not be the case.
You could see that this plant has gone quite massive
even though I harvested all throughout the second year.
Now, I did stop towards the end of the spring
and allowed those final spears to turn
into this monstrosity here.
And what you see at the very tip
of the asparagus plant is actually the plant itself.
So this all unfoils from that little fluffily part
at the top of the asparagus and it turns
into this massive fern-like structure
that could be well over five feet.
Like this one here is probably close to six feet in height.
So it's really important that you let this happen
because what this is acting as is essentially
as a solar panel battery bank and this plant is absorbing
all of that sun's energy and shooting it down
into the roots below,
provide you those spears in the spring.
So it's really important that you let your plant grow out
but when do you actually cut it back?
Let's talk about that next.
Before we get into the maintenance and care, I wanted
to point out what these bamboo steaks are that you see.
And they're just acting as a simple floor to weave.
All I've done is wrap some twine
around the fronts and backs of them.
There's actually quite a bit more bamboo in there
that you just can't see behind this massive wall of green
and all it's acting to do is keep my plants upright
so they're not flopping all over the place.
I highly recommend you do that.
I probably did it some point in late summer
and it's really tightened up the patch quite a bit
and allowed me to actually grow something in this bed rather
than having all the ferns collapse into it.
So with that being said,
let's move on to the first care tip.
The perfect time to cut back your asparagus is
once it's fully turned brownish yellow
like this frond right here.
So this is an example of a fully dyed back asparagus.
You could see that it has lost pretty much all of its color
in terms of the green, and you could tell right here
that a large section of this plant has started to die back
into that brown yellowish color.
Now you might be noticing that
over here it's still quite vibrant and green
but what I've noticed upon closer inspection is
that every single part of this plant that is green
like this is entirely loaded with aphids.
So I have a few options here.
I could just wait until the perfect time
which is when it's fully like this, but if I did that,
these aphids would be sucking up all those nutrients anyway.
So I've decided that now is the right time
to actually cut this back.
Why is it so important for you to wait
until these plants have turned brown like this?
Well, because as I mentioned earlier,
this plant is acting essentially as a solar bank
with the battery being the roots down below.
So as this plant dies back, turns brown and yellow,
all that green energy is focused back down
into the roots to feed those roots
to provide you that bountiful harvest come springtime.
If you were to cut this back while it was fully green,
say even a month or two ago,
you would've just handicapped your entire harvest
for the year because all that energy is now lost instead
of being stored in the roots.
Now, as I mentioned, this is fully entirely covered
with aphids, so many aphids that I've never actually seen
this many aphids before.
So I'm making the decision to cut it back slightly early.
If I waited, maybe two more weeks
or three weeks, it probably would've turned
a lot more brown.
But I think those aphids are gonna introduce
more disease pressure and they're also going to be sucking
up all that nutrients anyway.
So rather than let them take that win,
I'm going to go ahead and cut this back early.
Now there is something very crucial that you want
to make sure to do with the cutback asparagus plant.
So make sure you follow this next step.
Earlier in the year, I put up a video
where I actually transplanted some new asparagus friends in.
So I'm gonna go ahead and leave those
because they're still quite green and small.
I don't really wanna cut them back too early.
This is a great time, by the way
to look for female asparagus plants.
It's totally optional to remove them, but I talk
about why I like to remove them
in a previous video that I'll link at the end.
Basically, they produce seeds and those seeds can drop
down, self seed and create a very crowded asparagus patch.
So I personally prefer to remove them
but some people like to leave them.
Now I'm gonna go ahead
and start cutting back and I'll mention a couple things
especially if you're in a cold climate that are important.
If you do live in an area that gets heavy snow,
you will wanna actually consider not cutting it back
because these will act as insulation capturing snow
and keeping your whole patch warmer.
So in a climate like this, obviously don't get any snow,
so I'm gonna go ahead
and cut them all the way down to the soil level.
So that's half the patch removed
and you probably saw all that crazy dust flying.
Those were all the carcasses of aphids.
Like I said, there are a absolute ridiculous load
of aphids in this asparagus and everything here is coated
in almost like multiple millimeter thick layer of aphid.
So I think I made the right decision here.
You can see the stumps of the asparagus here.
But before I trim this down, let's go ahead
and bring down this last patch right over here.
And I'm absolutely covered in aphids,
so I'm definitely taking a shower right after this video.
(upbeat music)
The last thing I'm gonna do here before we move
on to the next part is trim these stumps
down to the soil level using my little hand pruners.
Just make quick work of this.
(pruner snips)
We wanna get pretty much down
to the soil level here because we're going to be amending it
and adding some compost.
Now all the asparagus has been cut essentially
to the soil level, maybe just right above it.
And the other thing you might notice here is
that there are some strawberries kind of mixed
in throughout this asparagus patch.
Strawberries are considered a good companion plant
with asparagus, but honestly, I found
that the asparagus grew so big
that the strawberries never got any light
and never really produced.
But since they're growing so well,
I'm gonna go ahead and leave them here.
I'm just gonna dust off some
of that aphid dust 'cause there's quite a bit of that.
But the next thing we're gonna do is haul this giant pile
of asparagus out into the driveway
and move over to the compost bin.
And it's really important
that you actually pay attention in this next step.
I'm actually surprised I was able to get that all
into one wheelbarrow load.
But this next step is really important
because there is a very particular pest
for asparagus and it's called the asparagus beetle.
Now, the asparagus beetle loves living in the actual growth
of the plant itself and will over winter only to return
in the spring and decimate your asparagus.
So if you are a hundred percent sure
that you have no asparagus beetle, you can go ahead
and chop and drop this right onto your asparagus patch.
But if you know you have asparagus beetle
or if you're not entirely certain,
I would recommend just hauling it off
and composting it separately, which is exactly
what I'm going to do because I'm not really entirely sure
that I don't have the asparagus beetle in here.
I haven't really been that thorough about checking for it.
So maybe we'll throw up a picture of what it looks like.
And if you've seen that before just go ahead
and straight away either dispose of it in the green bin
or throw it in your compost.
I'm not gonna sit here and chop this up painstakingly
and show you you guys that but the idea is
that I'll come through, cut this up into little bits
and throw it into my compost pile.
It should provide a nice little boost of greens
in this late winter season
where that's honestly pretty hard to come by.
So now let's go back over to the asparagus patch
and talk about how to prepare it for next spring.
The compost has now been fully applied
to this bed and I've added maybe one
to two inches across the entire layer.
And basically the main thing I was trying
to do was cover all those cut ends entirely
in compost to make sure that they're totally buried.
And if you are in that colder climate
where you're not cutting down your asparagus
until that springtime, that's when you could
actually apply your compost.
You'll still get plenty of benefit from that application
'cause that'll break out down through that summer
and feed your soil through the winter for that next season.
So you're just going to be doing it
in a sort of different timeline.
You could also add nitrogen fertilizer.
Asparagus in particular does respond
to nitrogen really well.
So if you want a little bit of that early harvest you can
or that bigger harvest I should say, you can fertilize
but it's not totally necessary.
I found that even from a small patch like this,
we get plenty of spears to eat throughout that springtime.
Now, the only other thing I'll say is that in terms
of watering, you wanna just basically keep it moist.
I'm not gonna probably water at all.
This compost is a little bit wet already, not really
that wet, honestly, I might wet it down a little bit.
But you just want to essentially stop this bed
from drying out.
Come springtime that's when you're gonna wanna pick
up the watering and that's also when you're going
to want to mulch it.
You can mulch it now as well.
But I'm going to choose to leave it like this just
because I don't know, I don't really have
that much mulch handy to be honest. (laughs)
So that's it for the asparagus guys.
If you follow these steps, you will probably get
a wonderful harvest of spears.
Just make sure you let your plant grow
into its full maturity to get all
that wonderful sunlight energy down into the roots.
And I'll see you guys
in springtime when it's time to harvest.