New asparagus, take 2

Around this time last year, Brian and I decided to replace the asparagus crowns in our secondary asparagus bed, the one just outside the fenced part of our garden. The first set of crowns we'd installed in that bed, way back in 2014, had been a big disappointment, producing next to nothing for the first few years and eventually nothing at all. So when we went to the Belle Mead Co-Op to stock up on mulch and saw some asparagus crowns for sale, we grabbed a batch and planted them.

Unfortunately, the brand-new crowns proved no more productive than the old ones. True, you're not supposed to actually harvest any asparagus the first year you plant it, but there should at least be a few shoots to show that it's alive, and we didn't see any. We guessed that we'd probably waited too long to buy them and plant them; by the time we got them, they'd already been sitting in the bins at the co-op for over a month, so (a) we didn't have much of a selection left to choose from, and (b) they may have been past their prime. Or possibly (c) it was too late in the season, so they didn't take very well.

Regardless of the reason, we decided not to make the same mistake this year. As soon as April rolled around, we headed out to the co-op to pick out some new asparagus crowns and get them into the ground early. This time, we had three varieties to choose from, including a purple variety that was supposed to be particularly tasty and another that was touted as a highly prolific producer. However, as soon as we read the label on the Jersey Giant crowns, which said "Also performs well in heavy clay-like soils," we knew that was the variety for us. Getting loads of asparagus or extra-delicious asparagus would be nice, but our top priority was making sure that we got some.

Yesterday it was a bit too wet for gardening, so we waited until today to get the new crowns into the ground. First, we weeded the bed, then Brian excavated the trench he'd dug for the crowns we put in last year. He lined it with compost, then laid out the new asparagus crowns in the bottom, about a foot apart. The instructions on the packet thoughtfully noted, "The roots will grow no matter how they are placed in the trench," so he didn't worry too much about spreading them out, just put them in and added a couple of inches of dirt on top, as required. He didn't water them right after planting as instructed, since it looked like rain was imminent, but it hasn't actually started falling yet; if there's nothing coming down by the time we're done with supper, I'll run out and give them a quick once-over.

Since we only had room for eight crowns in that bed, Brian decided to stick the other two in our old asparagus bed on the south side of the house, which has also been underperforming of late. (We have harvested about a dozen spears from it so far this year, but they were all really skinny.) He didn't want to disturb any of the existing plants that were still producing, but there was a section on the far right of the bed where nothing at all had popped up for a couple of years, so he dug out that section and tucked the two new crowns in there, one in front of the other.

If this variety is everything it's cracked up to be, and if we actually managed to get these into the ground soon enough this time around, we can hope to start seeing shoots from these new crowns over the next few weeks. All we have to do is keep an eye on them and and add more dirt as they grow, until the trench is all filled in. Then we can hope that by this time next year we'll actually have at least a few spears ready to harvest, and a proper crop two years from now.