Looks like a very healthy asparagus bed. Congratulations! Next year you can pick the spears until the new ones get really thin... skinny. I wouldn't divide them.

Thank you. Do you know why I am not getting spears anymore?

I will let them be. I am hoping they will continue to grow for another two month and store food in the roots. Should I pick off the seeds so not to waste energy?

I've been growing Asparagus since 1995 with around 200 plants in the ground now. They are a member of the Lilly family but can't be divided and it will kill them. I've tried digging up 2 year plants to relocate and that even kills them. The root ball is huge with the roots spreading at least a foot in all directions for a 2 year plant. For a two year plant the ball (without roots) would be about the size of a baseball.

Don't cut the plants down until they turn yellow, they need all the energy to enlarge the root ball for next year. If you cut spears from the plant to long it will also kill the ball and nothing will grow the next year. (Number one mistake people make growing asparagus.) For your 2 year plants you should only harvest spears for 2 week then let them grow, the 3rd year for 3 weeks and for every year add another week up to 8 weeks. If the spears are smaller then a pencil leave that plant alone.

Right now your plants are dense in the middle and normal, and each year spears will come up farther away from the center. As the root ball gets bigger spears will come up farther away from the center and may not even come up in the center, also normal.

As far

I personally don't cut the dead plants out until spring. Rabbits like to spend time under the snow covered fern umbrella and help fertilize the plants with droppings.

It looks like you have a nice and healthy stand of Gus growing there.

You can pull off the seeds now if you want or pull the tiny newly sprouted seedlings out in the spring. They transplant pretty well if you are careful. Try to keep new seedlings from growing near existing crowns so they don't compete and get overly crowded.

Don't forget to fertilize them one more time this year. Now is a good time and do it right before a decent rain but not a gully washer. That may coax them into sending up a few new spears this fall.

I fertilize in mid to late March before the spears start to pop up and then again after I finish harvesting in early June, again in late July, and finally in mid to late September. They are heavy feeders.

My beds are all pretty mature and I harvest for 6-8 weeks each spring. I really like my latest beds of 2 varieties of purple asparagus that I put in 4 or 5 years ago.

Thank you very much for the detailed answer.

I basically picked only the spears that were at least the size size of a pencil. so I hope I did not harvest too much. my Asparagus in planted in a 4x8 raised bed. Will the asparagus eventually take over the whole bed? What do You usually do with your seeds?

LoneJack, thank you for your advise regarding fertilizing and picking off seeds. I am really very pleased with my asparagus. They are delicious.

You're welcome. I have 4 raised gus beds. One is 6x8, one is 4x10, and 2 are 4x8. I have 2 rows in each bed. Your plants look healthy and appear to have nice, thick fern growth so I wouldn't worry that you harvested too much this spring.

I haven't picked off seeds for several years. You can pick them after they turn red and then plant them somewhere if you want to start another bed. They take several years to grow out from seed before you can harvest. I've saved seeds once and grew them indoors starting in January and then gave the seedlings to a neighbor to plant. I find that only a small fraction of the seeds will sprout the next year so I just yank out any seedling that is growing to close to an existing crown.

The crowns do spread fairly slowly. Did you plant one row or 2 in that bed. If you planted 2 rows then it should fill in most of the bed in 5-7 years. If you only planted one row then it may take a decade or more to fill in the whole bed.

Seeds are considered weeds and grow on top of the original plant that compete for space and nutrients. They become a problem spreading unwanted new plants but not a problem leaving them on for the mother plant.

In the spring I dig up the volunteer seedlings and place them in a nursery patch. I dig up the roots in the fall to replant where I want them in the spring. The ones I don't dig up I pull or hoe.

I started with five clumps from Walmart two years ago. the clumps were only 8-10 inches apart. I will wait a few years before deciding what to do. Thank you.

If you only have 5 crowns in the 4x8 bed you should be able to leave some of the new seedlings grow if they are 10-12" or so from the existing plants. I've let a few grow on that are near the edges of my beds. I've also lost a few crowns over the years and let new seedlings take hold in the open space.

Kevin, thanks for the advise. I planted three seeds. Only one sprouted. In the spring I will Look for the seedlings.

Thanks, LoneJack.

By the way, there is no difference between fern fronds and spears. When they first push up out of the ground, they are what we call "spears" and if you don't harvest those, they will grow taller and branch out to form "ferns." It is traditional to harvest only the spears that come shooting up thick and fast in the spring, but actually if you get spears at other times of year and you think the plant is strong enough to handle it, you can eat those too. Fresh asparagus is sweet and delicious even raw, so if I happen to see a 6-inch spear at an odd time of year, I just snap it off and eat it right there in the garden.

You can see from the pictures, especially the second one, that fern and flowers coming out from the ground. I am just wondering the reason why.

The spears are delicious snapped right off the bed.

Thank you you for your reply.