To add to Dorothy's comments:

1) Strawberries...if you want to move the plant and its offsets, now is a great time as being moved now will give the plant time to settle in before our awful summer heat arrives.

2) Asparagus can last for a couple of decades, so be sure it is exactly where you want it because it will be all but impossible to move it later. You dig a trench, plant it, and fill in the trench first with just a couple of inches and then, over time, you fill it in the rest of the way. On the attached OSU fact sheet, you'll see much more info. However, keep in mind that the most common varieties it references are out-of-date, and more commonly now, you'll see the newer male hybrids that produce more spears and fewer seeds, like UC-57, Jersey Knight, Jersey Supreme, etc.

In the first few years, you will only get a few spears per plant, but as the years go on, you'll get more and more. We get so many that we often have a hard time keeping up with them. (They do freeze well, though, and I even eat the young spears raw in the garden while working.) My intention was to plant 10 plants per person to keep our family fed, but I think I ended up planting a lot more than that, based on the theory that "too much" is better than "not enough". I think we ended up with 40 or 50 plants for a family of 3.

Dorothy's point about getting the bermuda grass (and any other perennial grass) out of the area first and about never letting it invade is about the most important thing anyone ever will tell you about asparagus. Dig out every bit of grass that tries to invade your asparagus bed the very second you see it. If you let a perennial grass, especially one that spreads via runners or rhizomes, invade your asparagus bed, you'll never get rid of it once the grass is established, so never let it stay long enough to get established. I fight Johnson Grass constantly, but each year I get less and less Johnson Grass regrowth in and near the asparagus so I think I'm winning the war.

OSU Fact Sheet on Asparagus in the Home Garden

3) Without knowing exactly how you started the dill seed, we can only guess what went wrong. My best guess is the seed was old and incapable of sprouting. The smell? Maybe from rotting seeds, maybe from keeping the growing medium too wet. Another possibility? If you are using an organic soil-less seed-starting mix, then something in the mix wasn't fully composted, likely chicken litter. In the first or second year that Miracle Grow had an organic soil-less mix on the market, it was too high in chicken litter content and stunk to the high heavens (and killed everything people planted in it).

Be sure you aren't overwatering your young sprouts. Being too wet leads to rot and rotting leads to stinkiness. I don't even use the domes on flats, but back when I did, I removed the dome the very instant I saw even one tiny sprout. I have 10,000% more success without the domes than I ever had with them. I probably also was overwatering, something which I have worked hard for decades to overcome and, in fact, if anything, I keep everything on the drier side almost to the point of letting it get too dry. Note that I said "almost", because letting plants swing from too dry to too wet is not good either, and I know that, so I strive to keep things evenly moist, but never sopping wet and never bone dry. Little newborn roots need consistency and they do not need extremes in their moisture level.

Hope this helps.

Thanks! That's a lot of help, but I have a couple more questions. Sorry. :(

The strawberry and it's off-shoots are connected by a vine thing. Is it okay to sever that when I move them? I've always wanted strawberries like my Dad had, but last year was my first real year gardening and it wasn't the best year for gardening and many things like asparagus and strawberries got put on hold. For my strawberries, I really want to get one of those round, tier bed-things that I'm sure you've seen in the gardening magazines. They're not too expensive.

Okay...so for asparagus, I really should get a bundle of 12 per/ person. Of course by the time it's really producing I might be an empty nester. BUT, I love me some asparagus and our college aged daughter eats healthy--lots of veggies and she can take some to her apartment or wherever she's living in the future. And the boy isn't a big fan of asparagus, but he's coming along in his food preferences. He was the pickiest eater I've ever seen, but since becoming a vegetarian, he's much more open to different textures and flavors. Maybe his taste buds developed? Okay...back to the planting of asparagus. I dig a trench, put the crowns into the trench, cover with a couple of inches of dirt and keep adding dirt as the plant grows? Maybe I should find a youtube vid--sometimes a visual is helpful. I think my bed is good. I dug all the grass/weeds out last year. It was still bare dirt when we put the bed down. I did place some cardboard under the soil...just in case. I wonder if a 4'x6' bed is big enough for 36 asparagus crowns. I'm so not good at determining things like that.

The dill seed was a couple of years old. The same starter mix was used as the other seeds. It must have been the dill seed. Dawn, I read on another thread that you take the domes off as soon as the seeds sprout, so I've followed your example on that. I've resisted over-watering. Usually the seeds do fine...except for rosemary and lavender. Picky things.

Hazel, Yes, just sever the runner and move the new plants where you want them. I did that with my strawberry plants just a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, that is how you trench plant asparagus. By only covering it with a couple of inches of soil initially, you encourage it to make better and faster growth, and then you keep filling in the trench as it grows.

I bet your son's taste buds are adapting to more veggies---that happens when folks increase their vegetable intake and add a wider variety of veggies to their diet.

Cardboard decomposes after a few months, so keep your eye on grass sprouts. Maybe between all the rain and the cardboard any existing grass rotted away before the cardboard did.

A 4' by 6' bed is not big enough for 36 crowns. It isn't even close. Asparagus plants are huge monsters. Mine usually are 6-8' tall before summer even begins, and spread out as wide as the neighboring plants allow. You're supposed to plant them in rows as the plants get too large for block planting. Space the crowns 18" apart in the rows, and space the rows 4 to 5' apart for optimal growth. My asparagus bed is 40' long and has two rows of plants in it, and I only planted them 3' apart because I was determine to have two rows in that one raised bed. I grow a purple variety that is extra early and then one of the standard green Jersey hybrids. The asparagus plants greatly add to the wild jungle look in my garden because they get so large and try to take over not just the entire world but the whole universe. I love them in spring when the constant harvesting is keeping the plants relatively contained, and not quite so much the rest of the growing season when the plants are intent on world domination. Your asparagus plants should be on the north side of your garden so they do not shade out smaller plants that have the misfortune of sitting north of them.

Rosemary and lavender can be grown from seed but they are picky. They can take a long time to germinate, and they (especially the lavender) really like a very fast-draining soil-less mix. I grow my rosemary and lavender plants in a soil-less mix to which I've added quite a lot of sand and they do much better in that than in even the most well-amended clay. While well-amended clay can drain well enough for them in an average year, it doesn't dry out fast enough in a rainy year, so I just use containers for them. I have lavender in bloom right now and it is a magnet for the lady bugs and other little critters. I do so love the scent of lavender. Oh, and I noticed a couple of days ago that the rosemary is in bloom. It is an oddly warm winter.

Dawn is right about spacing. A 4x6 bed is quite small. I wouldn't put over 8 plants--4 to each long side with only 2 feet between the rows--and in a few years they will be crowded. My original patch held 6 100 ft long rows with rows 4 ft apart on the north side of our 1/3 acre garden. This produced much more than our family ate. It was meant to be a project for our children to make a bit of money--and they did, weeding, picking and selling for several years. We have gradually reduced the size of the patch over the last 7 or 8 years and this year will keep only 3 50 ft rows as I am tired of maintaining enough to sell. The plants are 25 years old and are starting to decline, but they will produce enough for the two of us for a while.

Yikes! My raised bed is not going to work for the asparagus. Maybe I can talk my husband into making another one this weekend. He did build one yesterday too--it's very tall and not very long or wide, so it won't work either. We're building them out of scraps from the construction of our shop/garage. BTW, what plant would appreciate a 2 1/2 foot tall raised bed? Our others are only like a foot tall.

The pole beans and the okra are on the north edge of the garden--or they were last year. I can move them though. The bed I planned for the asparagus is on the east edge. It's alone. We just put that one bed down last weekend. There were no grass/weeds coming up in that area, so that's why I chose that spot. Plopped the bed frame down. Put some cardboard under it and...it's not going to work. I can use it for it something else.

I had no idea that asparagus got so big! I like a wild garden look, though. 25 year old plants! I'm so impressed by that!

Hazel, In a bed that tall, I'd grow root crops that like a deep bed...potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, salsify, parsnips, celeriac, sweet potatoes, etc. You could grow alliums like garlic, leeks or onions in it, but they don't need soil that is quite that deep. Still, I bet they'd love it. One advantage of a raised bed that deep is that you will have filled it wiith a really nice enriched soil that is soft and fluffy and has great tilth, so root crops would grow like mad in it. If you have voles or gophers, line the bottom of the bed with quarter-inch hardware cloth stapled to the framing of the bed and it will exclude the voles or gophers that surely would like to eat your root crops. Otherwise,if I didn't need it for root crops, I'd grow tomatoes in that bed because they'd love, love, love a bed that deep.

Several years ago, a gardener in our county passed away. His health had failed and he had more or less stopped gardening several years before that. His asparagus is there still. It may be there a decade or two from now. So, even though he is gone, I always think of him when I see his asparagus plants ferning out. I imagine someone is harvesting the asparagus and using it because it doesn't fern out too early, so I know it is being cut by someone. I'd like to think that maybe my asparagus will outlive me (though hopefuly not anytime soon).

Dawn