Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Transplanting Asparagus


In an earlier post I commented that most of my asparagus germinated at the three week mark, as might be expected.  I looked at my calendar again and realize it was only two weeks.  The problem I am having is I didn't get a good enough light, nor get it low enough, and I am ending up with leggy asparagus.  This picture shows where I have piled up some dirt around the stem to help support it.  It really doesn't look too bad in this picture, it was really drooping prior to my efforts.

I decided my best course of action was to transplant.  As you see in the picture above, I used a pretty deep container for my seed starting.  Turns out, the root as all the way to the bottom.  I didn't think asparagus had a deep root system, but I could be wrong.  This shot of McDonald's cups is the result of my transplanting.  I put the root pretty near the bottom of the cup to allow room to bury a decent amount of the leggy stem.  I even buried some of the ferns.

I am hopeful that this will help strengthen the plants and that the larger container will give it more room to properly root.

My concern is that this seems a lot like the corn I started last year that didn't end up doing well at all.  Their wasn't a real root ball on most of these plants when I transplanted them, so I am afraid of shock too.

Fingers crossed, as this is a project I really want to turn out well.




Thursday, March 13, 2014

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

My elation over my first, and early, asparagus was misguided.  As you can see from the picture, now many asparagus seeds have germinated.  That first sprout doesn't look like the others.  I'm thinking we had a rogue seed in our potting soil.  Anyone have any ideas on what it may be?

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The Future of Asparagus is Brighter

I put light on the newly sprouted asparagus last night.  During the day yesterday we had a lot of activity and have a dozen sprouted so far.  There are 6 from the 2013 crop and 6 from the 2012 crop.  The germination rate is much higher so far on the 2013 crop.

I'm looking forward to seeing if that trend continues over the next couple weeks.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Asparagus Germinates In Record Time

When I planted 60 asparagus seeds on Feb 25th, I was sure I would be watering nothing but dirt for three to six weeks.  Then after just two weeks I saw this!
Now on the 20th day I have three more that poked up.  I need to get light on them soon, but expect many more everyday now that we have hit the three week mark.