Asparagus growing

So, you decided to grow asparagus in your garden, but you don’t know which seed to choose.
Today we present you some popular asparagus varieties and explain what are their characteristics, their pros and cons.
We hope that, after reading this, you will be able to choose the seed you need.

Jersey King

This is an all-male hybrid, and as such it is a great choice for home growing.
All-male hybrids produce more harvestable spears and they show resistance to some common fungal asparagus diseases.

- all male hybrid
- adapts to almost any climate
- best harvested when they are around 7 inches tall.
- stalks are not thin, they have medium size diameter at harvest time
- easy to grow in humus composted soil

Jersey Knight

- all male hybrid
- Grow in poor salty or alkaline soil
- highly productive
- stalks are more thiner than the Jersey King
- longer than Jersey King
- hardy even in sub zero weather

Jersey Giant

- all male hybrid
- good choice for cold climate, but will adjust easy to others
- large spear size, thicker than the Jersey King or Knight
- resists fusarium wilt, crown rot and rust
- prominent flavor
- produce few less spears than the Jersey King

Purple Passion

- adopt well to any climate
- thicker than the Jersey King, Knight or Supreme, but smaller than the Jersey Giant
- generally much more tender than the green varieties
- spears are purple at harvest, but when cooked they loose thier purple color
- This variety has a 20% higher sugar content and is often eaten raw
- mild, nutty flavor

Mary Washington

- standard variety for home or commercial planting
- female variety
- resistant to rust
- excellent taste
- tasty spears are dark green with purple color at the tips
- it does not do well if summers are extremely hot and long and winters are mild

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This book from Charles Ilot is a classic. It is written in 1901, but information it provides is still relevant and useful.
It covers cultivation of asparagus and related vegetables, as well as chapters on the history, decorative uses, and cookery of these vegetables.

You can check it out online on google books.
Here is the link:
http://books.google.hr/books?id=EE0_JQAh-UsC&lpg=PA33&ots=0nlR7W10pw&dq=%22asparagus%20growing%22%20book&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=&f=false

If you like it, you can order a hard copy on Amazon!

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Part 7 - Using Fertilizer for Growing Asparagus

Using Fertilizer for Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“Now that we’ve got our asparagus fern planted and watered, you may consider after they germinate, you see some green growth coming which will take as much as 10 weeks consider some fertilizer. It can be a foilier soil treatment or transplant type fertilizer. This is an organic that I use. It is liquid and it is easily mixed with the water that you water the plants with. All you are going to do between the time we planted these and the time they actually come up is keep the soil moist. You don’t need to keep them wet. But I wouldn’t worry about putting fertilizer on them until you actually see some green growth because your fertilizer is really not going to do a whole lot good until the plant is putting up green growth. It is making conceivably headway under the ground but it is not going to make much use of fertilizer especially additional fertilizer until the plants goes to putting up green leaves and performs a photosynthesis that is when fertilization becomes more important. “

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Part 6 - Watering Seeds in Soil for Growing Asparagus

Watering Seeds in Soil for Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“Since we’ve got the seeds for the asparagus fern in the cells and covered up, we are going to water. These plants don’t have a light seed that is likely to float. Those asparagus fern pods you might call them, peas or whatever you call them are quite heavy so we are not going to have so much trouble with them trying to wash out of the ground as they would with a dry tomato seed or something. But watering still needs to be done fairly carefully so that you keep your soil in the cells where it needs to be and you need to get good soil and seed contact.”

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Part 5 - Planting Seeds in Soil for Growing Asparagus

Planting Seeds in Soil for Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“All right in this segment we are talking about the propagation of asparagus fern from seed. And coming off the vine the ripe seed is going to be red. They are green up until they become ripe and they turn red. If you squeeze this one, you will get that little BB size seed out of there. The rule of thumb for planting seeds is to plant them about 3 times the diameter of the seed. So this one being about a 16th or so of an inch, you are going to want to plant maybe as much as 3/8 of an inch deep. These here, this particular asparagus fern seed is laying right on top of the potting soil. I am going to push it down with my finger. That is about the depth that you want it and this one too, that is about the depth that you want them. What I am going to do now to cover them up is take my hand and kind of knock down the sides of the indentation that I made. As a matter of fact, I may just put a little rather than do that, put a little extra potting soil over the top just to cover them because it looks like when I rub my hand over and try to knock the corner down, I am actually kind of knocking some of them out of the socket. “

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Part 4 - Propagating Ferns from Seeds for Growing Asparagus

Propagating Ferns from Seeds for Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“In this segment we are talking about propagating an asparagus fern from seeds so we are going to put the seeds in some of these cells that I use in my growing operation here and we are going to make sure the cells are full of soil but not particularly running over. They need to have enough soil so that when they are watered they will kind of settle down but you need to be able to tell where each of the cells are in order to place your seeds. Asparagus fern when it comes off of the plant, it has a berry. It is green and then they turn red when they are ripe. If you squeeze it, you get a black seed out of the inside which is about the size of a BB. This seed is actually where the plant is going to come from but you don’t want to separate the seed from that fleshy exterior because mother nature has put that there so that the plant will have a little moisture associated with it, maybe stay around it. Even though this seed is going to take like 10 weeks to germinate, it needs to have that little berry around it so don’t peel them like I did that one. Plant the seed, the whole berry one in a cell and like I said while ago, it takes like as much as 10 weeks. A long time for these so you don’t want to get confused to about where you put them because you will think that nothing is going to come up. If you put them with your tomatoes or other plants that take a couple of weeks to germinate, this stuff will be laying there, nothing coming up and you may decide to throw them out. But one seed to a cell is all it takes. The germination on these in my experience is quite high. “

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Part 3 - Selecting Potting Soil for Growing Asparagus

Selecting Potting Soil for Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“I’m Travis Steglich with Steglich Farm Supply in Bartlett, Texas and we are talking today in this segment about the propagation of an asparagus fern from seeds. What we are going to go into right now is potting soil. There are two types of potting soil that are readily available to the home gardener, what’s called a premium type which has no soil constituents. It is peat moss, humus organic matter and vermiculite. This stuff generally holds water, is a lot lighter and it comes to putting it in pot plants that you keep around the house because those pot plants will be a lot lighter, hold more water, less watering on a regular basis and are more easily moved in and out to give the right temperature or light situation for your house plant so they will usually grow a better plant. The cheaper varieties of potting soil have actual soil, have actual dirt, sand and other constituents, some more than others. This is really a fairly decent one that I sell and you can tell that it doesn’t have any vermiculite in it and it does have sand and dirt along with the organic matter the humus and no peat moss is in this particular blend. “

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Part 2 - Collecting Seeds for Growing Asparagus Fern

Collecting Seeds for Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“I’m Travis Steglich with Steglich Farm Supply Inc. in Bartlett, Texas and I am here with Expert Village. I am talking today about asparagus fern, propagation from a seed. Asparagus fern, this cutting is from a foundation planting that I have at my farm supply and you can see these seeds are red and they are very easily knocked off of the stem. They are green otherwise. When they turn red, they are ripe and ready to be planted. Inside each of these red pods is a very small, not really small, a black berry which is very hard which is the actual seed. Mother nature put the coating around there for a reason so you don’t want to peel the seed like I have done and tried to plant this little black berry. You want to plant the whole red fruit and you will get a better germination. “

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Part 1 - Introduction to Growing Asparagus Fern

Introduction to Growing Asparagus — powered by eHow.com

Video Transcript
“I’m Travis Steglich with Steglich Farm Supply Inc. in Bartlett, Texas. I am here with Expert Village to talk about propagation of an asparagus fern that is growing as a foundation plant around my building here. If you will notice that some of these berries are quite red, others are still green. The red ones are ready to be planted out. As a matter of fact, they just fall off when you touch them and these are the ones that you would plant. They take quite a while to germinate but the seeds are readily germinateable if you keep them in potting soil and you can grow your own asparagus fern for hanging baskets or foundation planted like this. “

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Asparagus is normally harvested by hand. The use of mechanical harvesters might provide an opportunity to improve harvest quality but to date a mechanical harvester has not been able to replace manual harvesting. Limiting aspects of the mechanical harvesters were identified as: recovery of spears, damage to the existing spears, and damage to the harvested product.

Manual asparagus harvesting in China

Mechanical asparagus harvester

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