Have you been fertilizing/feeding it regularly? With what and how often?

Gus is a heavy feeder, routinely fed at least 3x a year or more (early spring before emergence, after harvest is finished, and in late fall when putting the bed to rest). What you use to feed it is your choice as long as it is a well balanced source of nutrients and micro nutrients.

Dave

First, it good to hear testimony of an asparagus grower who experienced thicker than wire spears the first year after planting. Make a note of that, Dave.

What you are experiencing, Betsy, is more common among new asparagus growers and the road to recovery in you case may be longer than you think. You likely either did not get root crowns at proper depth, did not get proper fertilization at planting, or you could have just over harvested that first year.

The truth of asparagus fertilization is that if you don't work in adequate Phosphate fertilizer at planting time your plants will be in deficit of P for years since that element moves very slowly through the soil. Followup surface fertilizer applications should be much higher in Nitrogen, a highly mobile element.

Definitely start a fertilizing regimen but also cut back on harvesting spears; I would not harvest at all this year from weak plants. If crowns are too close to the soil surface and drying then irrigation would help.

The area where I planted the asparagus was nothing but clay which I removed down about 18 inches, then filled with good soil and lots of compost. As I said the first year the spears were very thick. I did not harvest any. Now they are spindly. Is it OK to fertilize now? I have lots of compost. What else should I add? Thank you.

Just a thought, but did you dig down into the clay and back fill with good soil? Or dig a little and then build a raised bed? The problem with digging out a bed in clay is that you create a bathtub. It rains and fills the area with water that does not drain out. Evaporation may seem fast on the top of the soil, but water from a heavy rain sits in the basin for several days starving roots of oxygen. You may have rotting roots deep within your bed if proper drainage is not provided.

Usually on impermeable clay it is best to do a raised bed. I made this mistake my first bed on a new property and everything died a slow rotting death. I converted it to a raised bed above the "bathtub". I raised the bed 10" the following year, and increased another 10" year three. Go out right after a thunderstorm or long period of rain and check the moisture level. Step on the bed with some weight. It is spewing water like a sopping wet sponge? Is the bed completely filled with water and soil like quicksand? After a rain the bed should drain water through the soil. It stays moist but drains to allow oxygen to continue to penetrate the soil. I bring this up because you said "nothing but clay which I removed down about 18 inches".

Betsy - how old where the crowns you planted and how deep in that trench did you plant them? Was compost the only possible source of nutrients you added to the soil before planting? It is a good soil amendment but it only provides nutrients to the plant if there is an active soil microherd to provide them. That doesn't exist in a new bed.

Yeah it is ok to fertilize them now but compost isn't going to cut it. Use it to top dress the bed and bury the crowns deeper but you need an actual fertilizer of some type, preferably one of the many liquids so it will be fast acting and readily absorbed. Organic or synthetic is your choice but I agree with barrie that it needs to be high in P (the middle number).

And as linux said, you may very well have created a pond below the bed and will have a chronic drainage problem.

For best longterm results I'd dig up the crowns, redo the bed correctly to fix the lack of nutrients and the drainage problems, and then replant them. No harvest after than for a couple of years.

Dave