The Advice In Growing Asparagus

A few years ago I saw a bed of asparagus that had been growing and supplying food for table for over 50 years.

The person's grandmother took a local man's recommendation and located the bed on heavy clay soil, out of the limestone area, because it was more fertile and the moisture supply was better. The beds did not thrive. Later I was asked why it did not grow well. I told them they probably had too little lime in the soil.

I examined the bed carefully. It was located on a sandy limestone soil. It had been given a good coating of manure every year for the first 25 or 30 years and after that it was given some fertilizer every year or so, "not too regularly", as the lady explained its care.

Furthermore, she said the bed was not cut off completely during the growing season. She cut the large spears and left the small ones to grow up. Usually by the last of June they had stopped cutting any spears. In spite of considerable grass and some weeds, the asparagus still looked thrifty.

Several years ago we established a bed at our test station, and being "well informed" on asparagus, as I thought, I did not anticipate any difficulty. We put on limestone in strips across the field varying from one to 10 tons per acre. The soil is naturally acid. Last Summer I noticed our plants were not doing as well as some wild plants that were growing among the weeds along the railroad track some 50 yards from our demonstration plots.

I dug up one of these plants and found it was very difficult to dig because of the gravel and the deep rooting of the plant. Instead of the roots spreading out, these plants had their roots almost straight down and I never did find out how far they went. I dug up several of the plants in our experimental plot and there were no roots over a foot deep, in spite of our heavy limestone treatment. I looked at the gravel ballast along the track, which was six feet above the ground level and to my surprise found limestone pebbles.