It is far too early for it to have been up yet anyway. This much further south and mine is just now beginning to poke through and my beds and crowns are years old.

Sorry but I can't understand why you would have even expected crowns planted only 2 months ago to have sprouted this soon. If the book claimed that would happen then it is way wrong.

If the crowns you dug up are salvageable - probably not - replant them and leave them alone other than feeding and keeping them well watered until May at least until next year. If by June you don't get any sprouts then you can give up.

Dave

What kind of temperatures have you had lately?

I agree with digdirt that you didn't wait long enough.

BUT: my success rate with the crowns that I buy at the nursery is about 10%. Here is a quote from my old garden encyclopedia: "If the roots are exposed for a long time and are allowed to become dry, they will start into growth slowly--if, indeed, they start at all."

As far as I can tell, buying dry crowns from a nursery is a complete waste of money and time. This is a big problem for me, since the seeds also refuse to germinate, no matter what treatment I give them.

I have hot and dry summers and I have asparagus, it just took a little longer to get them going than other places with more favorable conditions. I have bought Purple Passion asparagus from Wal-Mart and had reasonable success compared to ones I have ordered. I also have another bed I started from seed (bought from Baker's Creek) and while it seemed to take forever to germinate, I do have some that have survived a couple of winters (hoping to taste a few of that variety this year).

One thing on nursery roots, I start casing out places like the garden departments and the nurseries early in the season so that when the things come in, I can snatch them up and store them under the appropriate conditions. Because my climate is soooo dry, I also like to soak the roots for 1-2 hours before planting them. Good luck, asparagus is worth the trouble.

I am in Zone 6A and asparagus starts poking out around April 27. It will be a lot later this year due to the brutal winter.

And where are you that you could plant asparagus in mid winter and how on earth did you get any at that time?

Lillydude wrote:

As far as I can tell, buying dry crowns from a nursery is a complete waste of money and time. This is a big problem for me, since the seeds also refuse to germinate, no matter what treatment I give them. >>>>>

I'm surprised your success rate is so low. Maybe it's your source? I've gotten a couple batches of crowns from DeBruyn seeds and my success rate is something like 99%. They also sell them at much cheaper prices than any other place I've seen so you can order more than you need and just use the fattest crowns and still save a ton of money.

Their prices on potatoes are also great.

Here is a link that might be useful: DeBruyn Seeds

Thanks everyone. For someone new to asparagus, I really don't think it was THAT unreasonable of me to expect to see some signs of life. Just a sign of life, even a wee sign that the roots I planted were viable. Everything that I read about asparagus suggested that it's supposed to be one of the first plants to emerge in early spring... and well, it's been spring for a while and we've been having a really warm spring, here in the "banana belt of Idaho." Bareroot asparagus was available at the beginning of February and that is when I snatched up my crowns. I waited several weeks, until my existing rhubarb patch came up and started growing strong, until planting my asparagus (at the same time, I also planted some more bareroot rhubarb and that came up within a week). I know that much of the world is still in the depths of a harsh winter, but we had a mild winter and a warm spring with lots of sunshine and lots of nice rain. I expect to begin harvesting some snap peas this week and I have some broccoli that I planted over a month ago that are forming nice heads. Just considering how well everything in my garden is growing so far this year, and because I have no previous experience with asparagus, I just thought that they would have shown some sign that they are alive by now. ...But life would be really boring if everything behaved as one expected and if one never learned anything new. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?

I know this probably was a waste of time and back-breaking energy (but at least I got some good exercise and was able to spend several lovely hours enjoying my garden in the sunshine!!!), I ended up redigging and replanting all of my asparagus crowns over the weekend. My plan is to just see if any of them make it and try to do the best for them, and then just replace crowns next spring for those who don't pull through.

Anyway, catch ya' later!

This post was edited by fern1knits on Mon, Apr 7, 14 at 10:32

no, no, fern, you were unreasonable. but we all were in the beginning.

Well, lookey what we have here.

We planted our first asparagus last spring and it did take a while to send up the first shoots. By the fall, it was a forest of ferns! I cut them all back and now that it is spring again, we have lots of little shoots. My dog helped harvest a few spears (dumb dog!) but mostly we are going to let it go this year and plan to harvest next year.

It takes three years after planting for asparagus to produce.

It's been three years now so, hopefully, they are up :P

Linda

And no it doesn't take 3 years to produce. It produces spears from year one. It often takes 3 years of crown growth before one should harvest the spears - depending on the age of the crowns planted.

Dave

I take the seed pods and scatter them to the places that don't produce and eventually they grow.