Depends upon how often you want to serve it, but sure. Give yourself options to expand because likely you'll want to.

Dan

If you're buying your plants(crowns) from a seed company, I think most send about 20-25 per order. I planted mine about 15-18 inches apart in a row, and about 3 foot space between rows. So, I would think you'll need more room allotted for them to grow.

I know asparagus grows wild in Michigan and Colorado so I would think the same for Massachusetts. If so then I would be planning on looking around my yard and seeing just about anywhere I could find to plant those roots even against your fence area. I know it is nice to have raised beds but in the wild they grow almost anywhere. We use to pick them along the roads, under trees, most anywhere. We learned at an early age to be able to find the plant by looking for the last year stalks that were still there in the spring. Most of what we found were in weeds that were about 3' tall at the time we were picking.

I planted 10 crowns of Jersey Knight & 10 crowns of Purple Passion in 2009, plus I planted some left over crowns (maybe 12 or so) in my parents garden the same spring.

This year was the first year we could eat the asparagus, and we did. All of it! Maybe it was the joy of eating super fresh homegrown asparagus, but we never got tired of it.

BTW, the Jersey Knight was earlier and more productive than the Purple Passion for both my parents & me. The Jersey Knight tasted awesome, but the Purple Passion was even more awesome!

Another thought, since this was my first time growing asparagus & all my knowledge came from books/internet I had this vision of asparagus stalks shooting up rather uniformly like the stuff you see all packaged in the stores. Well they didn't (of course!) They shot up at will, so I'm glad I planted a good sized bed so I would have enough shoots for a meal every 2-4 days. If I had only 5 plants, I would be eating a stalk or two every now and again.

denno's right. Asparagus crowns usually come in bundles of 20. Plant 20, in a couple of years you'll be so glad you did!

Asparagus mature after three years and I am writing this post from my experience of three plants that are four years old.We harvest enough for four people to consume twice a week from these three plants.The interesting part is we have to keep an eye on crowns shooting from the ground to harvest every two to three days.They grow rapidly and if we don't harvest about a foot tall crowns then taller ones become fibrous and useless for consumption. Now harvesting season is over here and the plants are growing like a small shrub.These plants have crowding habit.

We have three plants has become like small bushes.They were planted at 2 feet apart center to center.I am posting the pic. of these plants just get an idea about their growth habit after harvesting.
Asparagus.{{gwi:95131}}