My asparagus plants are in full sun until shade from the pecan tree starts hitting the western end of the asparagus rows around 4 or 5 pm in the summer months. They do fine there in full sun, but I expect they'd do just about as well in partial shade. I base that partly on the fact that my plants wilt sometimes in summer. Since asparagus is native to places with cooler weather than we have here, I think it wouldn't mind partial shade at all.

I agree with you that there isn't much that doesn't appreciate afternoon shade in August. I often put some of the late tomato varieties at the western end of the garden where that same big pecan tree begins shading the far end of the garden shortly after noon. I still get a really good tomato harvest from them, and feel like the afternoon shade keeps them producing late into August after other tomato plants in full sun have been dropping blossoms for ages already. I bet asparagus would like that shade in the same way, although of course it isn't producing young tender spears then. I don't think the shade would prevent the plants from soaking up enough sunshine to store energy for the next year's crop.

I've also had broccoli and cabbage remain very happy and stay in production without bolting for a very long time when they get mid-day and afternoon shade. I kinda think that full sun in our typical summer weather is just too brutal for many plants traditionally thought of as full-sun plants.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn.

Our first garden here was on the east side of the house. It was shaded from 3:00 on. It went years with tomatos and peppers in it that did fine despite never being rotated and being in the shade. But the site was right on top of the buried cables. It is a miracle we didn't cut one sooner than we did.

I just have to decide where to put the bed.

You're welcome, Amy.

I never rotate. Most of my beds have either potatoes, tomatoes, or peppers in them ever year so rotating nightshades isn't possible. I add compost every year so presumably it helps keep the soil and plants healthy enough that disease doesn't build up in the soil.

Buried cables. Oops. So, I'm guessing you didn't call Okie 811 to get them to come mark everything underground (free of charge to you)? I'm mentioning that here for the sake of newbies who didn't know that you're supposed to check and have things marked before you dig. I'll link the Okie 811 website so anyone not aware of its existence can see what a fine service they provide.

When our house was built, we got to watch all the cables and pipes being put into the ground which, before we bought it, was farm land, so we know where everything is buried. So far, we haven't cut anything, but as our brains get older......well, you never know.

Our first garden, which I put in up here about 18 months before construction of the house began, was west of the building site, approximately where our detached garage sits now. It was just two raised beds crammed with flowers and veggies, but it made me happy to have it. Of course it had full sun all day, it was a drought year, and I had to haul water up here from Fort Worth with me in buckets and jugs just to water it. I think that garden was there at least a year before we had the water line put in. I had a fence around it, but looking at how easily deer scaled 4' tall fences after we moved here, I'm surprised they didn't bother that first garden.

The most important thing about asparagus is to prepare the soil well and plant the asparagus knowing you'll never be able to amend the soil again, except by layering stuff on top of the ground, and you'll never be able move it. Mine is just a big thick mass of underground roots and there's no way it is ever going anywhere, until after it is dead and the roots have rotted. Even the Johnson grass and bermuda grass don't mess with my asparagus bed now that it has been there a few years and is well-established. I bet the voles couldn't eat their way through it either. It is nice to have something as tough and resilient as asparagus.

Dawn

I want asparagus. I haven't planned for it. But I'm intent on moving the existing compost pile that rests along side the chain link fence. i've had one there for a couple years, now.

I'm thinking it would be a good spot for asparagus, but there's trees nearby. I would need to keep some of the limbs trimmed so it would get 1 or 2 hours of direct sunlight.

Still thinking.... Maybe next year.

Good to know that about asparagus, Dawn. The plan is experimental strawbales over the spot with potatoes and or tomatoes, followed by cow peas, followed by daikan radishes.

DH cut the phone cable when he pounded in a T post by a new bed we had year before last. It never occured to him they were that close to the surface. And they charged us $250 to fix it. We moved all the beds away from there last year.

I have Asparagus seeds. I hope to grow them in a nursery bed this year and move to perm spot next year. Another experiment.

Last year my asparagus bed was 3 years old and I had my first harvest. Twenty-one plants yielded almost 300 good-size spears. This year I have only a few spears coming up and they are skinnier than a pencil. I also have had tunnels and holes this past winter I think I've got VOLES and they have just about decimated the root systems. I should have put wire mesh down while I had the beds dug out to plant the crowns 4 years ago. The daffodils this year disappeared also. And I pulled up a dead rose bush today that had no roots at all. But the critters have left some nice size holes that will be getting either hot sauce, castor oil stuff, or mouse poison tomorrow. I'm annoyed (to put it politely).

My asparagus is on the south wall of my house in a raised bed. This is year 2. I will not be cutting any spears this year (and did not cut any last year). I have some sprouts that are almost 50 inches tall already this year. It is CRAZY!!!!! I will see if I can get a picture loaded!

So sorry. I know Dawn has trouble with them, roo. I think I will do the hardware cloth thing before planting. I planned to start seeds, but none have germinated, so maybe roots next year.

Amanda, are those worm towers?

Tom, I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with voles. I gardened here in southern OK for over a decade with no vole problems even though we're surrounded by woodland and the voles were here before we moved here, obviously. During the drought of 2011, they moved up out of the woods and began eating garden plants and I've battled them since then. Every year I try to find time to dig out one raised bed (most of my raised beds are 4' wide x 40' long so it is a lot of digging) and add quarter-inch hardware cloth to the bottom of it. I've been doing that for three years now and have only three beds done, but that allows me to grow potatoes and carrots without the voles feeding on them.

It is frustrating to lose a crop like asparagus to the voles because of the way we have to let it grow a couple of years before harvesting it heavily, but if you redo your asparagus bed with a hardware cloth lining, that should keep them from eating the roots of your plants. I've had the same daffodils growing in the same place since 1999 and the voles have never touched them, so I had assumed that voles don't eat daffodils (though they apparently eat everything else under creation) but maybe it is just that the voles on our property haven't really noticed the daffodils yet.

So far, neither castor bean oil-based repellents nor hot sauce have deterred the voles from eating what they want in my garden, so I try to outwit them by rotating crops to new areas each year. When I find holes or tunnels, I grab the Furminator cat brush and brush the hair of one of our cats and then I pull the hair out of the brush and stuff it down the hole. I don't know if it helps, but I'd like to think it makes the voles think there is a cat around.

I think a combination of factors led the voles to begin "shopping" for dinner in our garden. While the exceptional drought of 2011 likely drove them out of the woods searching for food, we had raised our garden fence from 4' tall to 8' tall to keep the deer out not too long before that year. Unfortunately, the taller fence keeps out the bobcats and foxes that used to frequent our garden at night, and occasionally in broad daylight, which seems like a good thing as I no longer have to worry that one of our pet cats will encounter a predator in the garden. However, I do think the reason the foxes and bobcats were there in the garden was to prey upon the voles, so in that regard, I wish the predators were still regular garden visitors.

Amanda, Your asparagus looks nice. It is asparagus-harvesting season here at our house and we are getting tons of it. Our plants all are older and well-established now, but in their early years, I didn't harvest at all and it paid off by giving us very large, dense, thick and robust plants that produce huge yields now that the plants are older. I think my asparagus plants now are 4, 5 and 6 years old as I planted them in three consecutive years, though they might only be 3, 4 and 5 years old. Once your plants are large enough that you get to harvest from them daily, you'll have more asparagus than you know what to do with. It is fun in the beginning, but after a few weeks of constant asparagus, I start getting tired of it. Of course, the minute it is gone, I wish it would have stayed in production a while longer. Having gotten used to fresh asparagus, I won't even buy it at the grocery store because it just isn't as good. Growing your own produce spoils you that way as nothing tastes as good as food harvested from your garden hours or even minutes before you prepare it and eat it.

We always break off the first few early spears, which sprouted here this year during a hot spell in either late Feb or early Mar, and eat them raw in the garden. It is sort of a celebration of spring to nibble the first, fresh asparagus spears without leaving the garden. Nothing shouts "Spring is here!" like the appearance of the asparagus spears poking up out of the soil.