Asparagus Started From Seed
by John Yazo
Starting your asparagus from seed takes a little patience. Growing your own plants will delay the establishment of your beds by an additional year. It is away to ensure you that you will have a healthy plant to start with that has not been stress or lost it's vigor from being dug, stored and ship to you or your local garden center. Another benefit of starting your own plants is that the choices of the varieties you can plant are much larger. When purchasing crowns at a nursery the choices are usually limited.
In the North you will need to start you plants indoors in late February to early March. If you anted to start them outdoors the soil temperature would have to be at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit. This wont be possible so you will need some peat pots to start them in. So a single seed in each pot and place the pots in a sunny window and use a heat pad to warm the underside of the pots keeping them around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Once your seeds sprout you need to lower the temperature to around 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. When the danger of frost has past you can transplant your seedlings into a nursery bed. A nursery bed is just a bed similar to a raised be that the planting media is a soil that is blended with plenty of compost or leaf mold for easy root growth. Once the transplants are planted you will need to keep the nursery bed shaded from hot direct sun so the plants wont get burnt.
When the plants start to form small flowers you want to take a magnifying glass and observe the flower. The female flower will have a well-developed three-lobed pistil and the male flowers are larger and longer than the female flower. You will want to weed out all of the female plants. The male plants will produce a higher yielding crop than the female plants.
Once the following spring allows you to, transplant you plants to there permanent location.
If
you would like to comment on this website or have any suggestions
please feel free to contact us
