A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Need Help w 3rd year Asparagus bed

I planted the one year old crowns 2 years ago and followed every instruction and they grew lovely ferns or fronds.

Well so far this year I thought was the year I would pick a few spears for just 2 weeks. But only 6 shoots have even come up and now they're looking pretty sad.

I read about how to do this everywhere and couple places said to cut down the plant when it turned brown in fall and one said add to compost. I took that to mean compost it in compost pile. But I read now on this forum an article about asparagus that I should have left them on the bed and not cut down. I also added 1 inch of leaf mold and 2 inches of compost in the fall. So did I just bury the poor things and they can't find their way out? We've had a very dry winter but even after 4 weeks of good rains no change.

I was going to add picture of how they looked last year and this year but I'm new to this and haven't figured out how to add a picture yet. I can point you toward a blog entry from today where I'm putting the pictures. Ember's Garden


Thanks for your help!

Hopefully someone here will be able to help you. When I had asparagus, we harvested it until a certain date and then let the rest go to seed. I just left it go until early spring when I cleaned off the dead stuff and waited for the asparagus to grow again.

Did you cut it off before it went fully to seed??

I don't think so but I did try to remove the seeds from the females because I didn't want the crowns I had to be further crowded and it was recommended to remove them. I'm worried that I messed up by removing the wilted plants before they were dead enough, they had turned brown mostly but not entirely. Or perhaps it was cutting them down too far?