I recently bought a place out in the country and moved. I've had a garden at my house in town for over 10 years and am starting to plan for my new garden here next month. One thing i had at my old place was asparagus I got from Producers Coop. They had the crowns in a bucket and you just bought them by the crown, i dont recall them having any details about variety and such on the bucket. They grew very well and sometimes were harvesting more than we could eat per week.

I've been doing some googling of varieties and sources but was curious what variety the avid gardeners are using these days and where they are getting them. I talked to someone at producers but they didnt know if they were going to have crowns this year.

https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/03/EHT-066.pdf

Ask the Agronomist (TM) confession, I didn't know there were "male" and "female" asparagus varieties.

We got the crowns in a bag at walmart over 10 years ago. The harvest has been great and they taste better than any asparagus I've ever had at a fancy restaurant.

SunrayAg said:

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We got the crowns in a bag at walmart over 10 years ago. The harvest has been great and they taste better than any asparagus I've ever had at a fancy restaurant.

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Pleasantly surprised the Dumas Walmarts had a good one. Normally the Walmarts has crap for good varieties since they just get what's sent. It drives me nuts seeing East Texas pine trees and Thompson seedless grapes at the local Corpus Walmarts.

I've grown asparagus for 20+ years in Texas in middle of the gulf coast bend.

UC157 works well but spears tend to be small.
Very easy to find crowns.
Womacks Nursery in DeLeon Tx sells it.
https://womacknursery.com/products/asparagus-crowns?_pos=1&_sid=6fe08f12a&_ss=r


Jersey Giant & Jersey Knight did extremely well with large spears but may be hard to find. The grower that owns the patent decided to quit selling them. Go figure.

Millennium is a replacement but I haven't grown it.

Summit did well also for me.

Get all male variety if possible so you don't have a bed crowded with seedling plants.

Simmons Berry Farm in Arkansas had Jersey Giant
https://www.simmonsplantfarm.com/product-page/jersey-giant

Nourse Farms was a good mail order source.
https://noursefarms.com/product/millennium/

I had a great batch growing in raised bed but this last freeze killed it
in houston.
had a crown planted in spring growing like crazy so can't wait to get it going again

Used to buy mine by mail from Gurney's. They have sell varieties for your particular growing zone.

https://www.gurneys.com/search?keyword=asparagus

I have a 20' row I planted 5-6 years ago I bought from Guerneys. They have been excellent but I want more. I ordered some crowns from Johnneys select seeds and the they are due to ship in early March. Home grown asparagus is quite tasty raw or steamed.

I have found that some years the year old crowns are extremely hard to find. If you have a little spot in your garten you can dedicate, I would highly recommend

Hehateme1 said:

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I have a 20' row I planted 5-6 years ago I bought from Guerneys. They have been excellent but I want more. I ordered some crowns from Johnneys select seeds and the they are due to ship in early March. Home grown asparagus is quite tasty raw or steamed.

I have found that some years the year old crowns are extremely hard to find. If you have a little spot in your garten you can dedicate, I would highly recommend

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You must really like asparagus! I wish The Wife wasn't such a picky eater.

Hehateme1 said:

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I have a 20' row I planted 5-6 years ago I bought from Guerneys. They have been excellent but I want more. I ordered some crowns from Johnneys select seeds and the they are due to ship in early March. Home grown asparagus is quite tasty raw or steamed.

I have found that some years the year old crowns are extremely hard to find. If you have a little spot in your garten you can dedicate, I would highly recommend

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The obligatory "that's what she said"!

B-1 83 said:

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Hehateme1 said:

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I have a 20' row I planted 5-6 years ago I bought from Guerneys. They have been excellent but I want more. I ordered some crowns from Johnneys select seeds and the they are due to ship in early March. Home grown asparagus is quite tasty raw or steamed.

I have found that some years the year old crowns are extremely hard to find. If you have a little spot in your garten you can dedicate, I would highly recommend

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You must really like asparagus! I wish The Wife wasn't such a picky eater.

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We both really look forward to it, we only harvest a couple months out of the year. May stretch it a couple more weeks occasionally.

I do have a serious need to grow way too much stuff. I give away veggies year around to the neighborhood and folks at work. Also sell to the local produce store.

Everything except for asparagus, lol

So as not to totally derail the thread I'll address the OP, I have found asparagus to be a little unusual, some years suitable crowns are difficult to find. I have purchased what's available a few times and have generally had good luck regardless of variety. I try to be selective as I can as far as varieties suited to my gartening zone. Looking for the perfect fit can leave you out of the game some years.

If your wife would eat raw asparagus out of the ground, she would change her mind.

If most your asparagus actually reach's the kitchen, you are doing it wrong.

Question as I'm new to growing asparagus. I have raised bed garden and live in Humble.
Last spring I bought a crown of asparagus from local independent garden place. No idea what variety. Planted it and it started growing. I had been told to let it grow the first year and not cut anything so I just let it go.
Now I can't recall if what first grew were spears and then they kind of "leafed" out in this thin wispy leaves or if it just grew as thin stalks and then "leafed" out. But throughout the summer I had lots of thin shoots growing up that were about 2 feet tall that all were "leafed" out. I just let them go. Then in late fall early winter I noticed these started dying off. I figured I'd just let it go as not hurting anything and eventually all of them died. HOWEVER, when we had that hard freeze I did NOT cover them. They appeared to be dying before that though so not sure if that matters.

Now, I haven't gone back to my garden in 3 days as I harvested some broccoli then. Just now I go back there and see I have about 11 shoots growing and a few look just like the asparagus I would harvest but some are already tall and the top is starting to branch out. Those are at least a foot tall.

I had thought I killed it with the way the stuff "died" off but guess I didn't.

what am I doing right?
what am I doing wrong?
can I harvest these shoots now or better to let go another year?

Go another year.

General tip I've used - Next year you can harvest any larger than a pencil for 2 weeks and stop. The next year...the same but up to 3 weeks of harvest. Stop if nothing larger than a pencil regardless of weeks. The next year you can harvest until they are small or bolt quickly.

Add more crowns to get more asparagus.

Thanks
The ones last year were really thin in diameter
These are all much thicker like what you'd buy at the store