How to Grow Fat Asparagus

Growing Thick Asparagus

• 1

  Tilling your garden with the cultivator before planting asparagus removes weeds that compete with vegetables for nutrients and water. Weeds hurt asparagus production, quality and thickness.

• 2

  Improve soil with compost, manure and fertilizer before planting asparagus crowns. Add 1 lb. of a 5-10-5 fertilizer to every 100 square feet of soil.

• 3

  Dig trenches 12 inches wide and 6 inches deep with the spade. Plant 1-year-old male asparagus crowns from the nursery spaced 12 inches apart in the trenches. Spread the roots out and loosely cover them with soil. Asparagus crowns lift out of the ground as they grow, so do not fill the trench to the top with soil and cover the crowns. Add topping off dirt in small amounts, as the crowns rise through the growing season.

• 4

  Feeding asparagus with a 10-10-10 fertilizer at the beginning of each growing season for the first 3 years promotes stalk development. Apply 2 lbs. of fertilizer for every 100 square feet of soil.

• 5

  Allow asparagus spears to grow through the first three seasons. Do not cut or harvest the stalks. Let the spears die in place at the end of the growing period. The dead, decaying stalks provide nutrients for next season's spears, helping future stems grow thicker and larger.

• 6

  Harvest asparagus beginning the third year after planting the crowns, but stick to taking spears just once a month in the first harvesting season, so that the plants continue growing root systems for thicker, stronger spears. To harvest, hold the spear near its base and bend it. The stalk will snap off where it turns tough and fibrous. Avoid cutting spears with a knife, which damages stalks just emerging from the ground.

• 7

  Delay feeding the asparagus plants until June or July in the fourth growing season and beyond. Waiting to fertilize boosts nutrients available to plants during the winter, which in turn produces fatter spears in successive seasons. Feed plants the same 10-10-10 fertilizer using 2 lbs. per 100 square feet, as in earlier growing seasons.

• 8

  Leave the spears that emerge after early July in every growing season, allowing them to mature into ferns. Full-grown ferns draw energy for storage into the roots and encourage fatter and more abundant spears next year. Remove the dead ferns at the beginning of the next growing season.