Contributed by Harry

The asparagus crowns are in! Next spring we may taste; the following year we’ll eat a full meal! Yum.

While being serenaded by robins and red-wing blackbirds, ‘we’ dug a trench about 12 feet long by 12 inches wide by 8 inches deep (and had to extend it 3 more feet when we found our bundle of ten was a baker’s dozen). [Ha! Explain the origin of the probably archaic ‘baker’s dozen’ to your little ones.]

Next we shoveled about an inch layer of compost into the bottom of the trench and laid out the crowns like little octopi, the centers 12 inches apart.

Then more compost, unloaded by Deb, and alternating layers of dirt and compost to fill the trench. Lastly a good watering.

Some instructions say to only fill the trench half-way until the spears are up. We are expecting rain (The remnants of the terrible deluge that hit Houston, TX?) and we did not want the trench to fill with water.  I wonder how important this half-filled trench step is?  I cannot remember if I did this to the last asparagus bed I planted, but it produced for more than 16 years.

        ‘Help’ from Eomer.

The next step is to mulch the new asparagus bed, which should produce for at least 15 years, if we care for it properly.

The last step is to wait: for the crowns to put up this year’s ‘fern’ growth to rejuvenate the buried crowns, for summer, fall and winter to pass and for the first spears to emerge NEXT spring!

One question I have is this: in North Carolina, the Cooperative Extension Service information pamphlet provided the above depth for setting the crowns. But what about areas that have colder winters (like we do) or areas further north? Should the crowns be set deeper if it is more likely to freeze more deeply into the soil?

(By the way, very thankfully (?), there were few large ‘cobbles’ to remove from the new bed!  But a few definitely turned out to be ‘flagstones’.)