How to Grow Asparagus (and Plant Crowns)

Asparagus is a perennial vegetable crop suitable for cold climate gardens. I’ll show you how to plant crowns (living roots) and get your asparagus patch established. With proper care the plants will provide high-yield harvests for years to come.

For more tips also see How to Grow Your First Vegetable Garden (Right Now).

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Getting Started with Asparagus

New to asparagus growing, I ordered my first crowns by mail-order years ago. I had read a lot of information about problems with growing asparagus that set my expectations low, but it was actually really simple.

As a perennial vegetable, you pretty much plant it and provide minimal care like other perennial plants. Planted in early spring, asparagus grows rapidly right away and returns every year. 

I had heard you shouldn’t harvest the plants in the first year, so the crowns can get well-established, but my stalks were large and abundant in that first season, so I harvested them anyways. They were delicious! This is my favorite roast asparagus recipe. Since then, the crowns have produced large crops year after year.

Each year, I harvest as much as I need, and leave the rest to continue growing.

Besides the food they provide, these are really beautiful plants. Some years mine grow over 6-feet tall, forming a lovely privacy barrier in the back of the garden.

I would grow them just for this purpose, even if they didn’t provide delicious food.

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Contents

• Asparagus Growing Tips
  • Varieties To Try
  • When to Order Asparagus Crowns
• How to Plant Asparagus Crowns
• How Asparagus Grows
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Resources

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Asparagus Growing Tips

• Choose a variety of asparagus suited to your growing zone. Most are suited to hardiness zones 3 to 8.
• Plan ahead. You may need to place your order in late fall or early winter to ensure spring delivery of the crowns. Each year suppliers run out of stock so order early to avoid disappointment.
• Prepare your garden bed in fall so it’s all ready for planting in early spring.
• Asparagus likes pH-neutral soil. My soil is quite sandy and the asparagus grows rapidly here (zone 6). You can buy soil pH test strips here at Amazon to test your soil.

Varieties To Try

• Eclipse Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis ‘Eclipse’) | Zones 2-8
  Early season, male dominant, high yields, thicker spears
• Jersey Knight Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis ‘Jersey Knight’) | Zones 2-9
  All-male variety with high yields. Rust-resistant.
• Millennium Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis ‘Millennium’) | Zones 3-8
  Green medium-size spears with purple tips, high yielding, long-lasting. All-male variety.
• Purple Passion Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis ‘Purple Passion”) | Zones 2-9
  Large, tender purple spears with high sugar content. Some rust resistance.
• Sweet Purple Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis ‘Sweet Purple’) | Zones 5-9
  Deep burgundy spears with a nutty flavor.
• Viking KB3 Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis ‘Viking KB3’) | Zones 3-9
  Vigorous, high-yield grower.

When to Order Asparagus Crowns

Asparagus crowns (the root system of a young asparagus plant used to start new plants) can be ordered by mail in late fall or winter, depending on the supplier. I used to advise late winter but demand is so high in recent years that you may have to order in late fall or early winter to get the varieties you want.

Garden nurseries will ship them when the time is right to plant them in your area around last frost. You need to have a full-sun garden bed all ready.

It’s best to do this prep work in the fall (digging and adding mature compost) so you can get the crowns in the ground as soon as they arrive.

I started my asparagus at the same time as cold-loving spring crops like peas.

I ordered ten Jersey Giant crowns by mail and planted them at the end of April (zone 6b) into a new raised bed. This is around the time of our last frost each spring.

This lists organic seed and plant mail-order companies in the United States and Canada. You may want to contact one local to you and enquire about crowns.

How to Plant Asparagus Crowns

These are my notes from the first year I planted asparagus.

I found some contradictory planting instructions (welcome to the world of gardening!), so I opted to follow the plans that came with the plants:

• Plant 18″ apart in trenches
• Dig trenches 15″ deep
• Fill bottom 3″ of trench with compost and then add 3″ of soil
• Plant crowns and cover with another 3″ of soil
• As the crowns send shoots up, add another 3″ of soil
• Keep free of weeds, water when dry

The ‘crowns’ are really roots (to my way of thinking).

You plant them over a little mound of soil with all those little pieces aiming down, like a wig of long hair over a head. 

I wish the instructions had said this because I initially tried to plant them upside-down.

How Asparagus Grows

Asparagus Sprouts

Here’s the cool part. After planting, I kept checking the crowns every other day, unsure of how long it would take for shoots to appear.

On day seven, there were no shoots.

On day nine, the shoots were suddenly 7-10 inches tall!

It’s like they read the instructions…

Some of these photos were taken in different years so that’s why the garden bed appearance varies.

One Month After Planting

There are many skinny spears from each crown and some are up to 2 feet tall. So far, so good. According to the instructions, “next spring a light harvest of shoots can be taken.” The plants are mature after three years.

The squirrels are obsessed with stashing walnuts in this bed.

This bed gets a lot of weeds, so straw (or other) mulch is highly recommended.

Four Months After Planting

The plants are around 4 feet tall, full, bushy, and…tipping over.

They all lean to the south.

I’m not sure if that’s a coincidence or they like bowing to the sun:

This was the first year. After this, I started using straw mulch to keep the weeds down.

Mature Asparagus

It doesn’t take long until the asparagus thickens up top and becomes both an edible and ornamental plant.

This next photo is from a garden tour.

After a few years, mine started growing 6 to 8-feet tall each year.

Follow Up

After the first year, I started harvesting the spears in mid-spring. Popular advice says to wait a few years but I do not.

Now, a few years later, I have more than I can eat and share the surplus. Absolutely delicious.

And, as I mentioned, asparagus is a very pretty plant. I’d grow it even if I couldn’t (eventually) eat it.

It does, however, seem to be a magnet for weeds. My sandy soil around the asparagus patch needs constant weeding. I have slowed the problem somewhat with a thick layer of organic mulch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Resources

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛