by johnah on November 17, 2020
Asparagus Companion Planting: What Grows Well With Asparagus?
Cucumbers are very popular companion plants with asparagus. They provide shade and water retention, they grow well together, and their leaves are edible too! Cucumbers have been known to thrive with asparagus, but some varieties don’t do so well.
If you want to grow cucumbers with asparagus, then it’s best if you start out small. If your cucumber doesn’t like the soil or is just getting into the habit of growing, then it might take awhile before you see any results. You may need to try different types of soil or even switch from one variety of cucumber to another.
The other thing to keep in mind is that some varieties will tolerate being grown in hot weather better than others. So, if you’re going to grow cucumbers with asparagus, make sure you have a way of keeping them cool during the summer months.
When it comes to strawberries, there are many varieties that will work well with asparagus. Some are hardy enough to survive the harsh winters in which some people live in while others can handle the heat. Here at Asparagreen we only sell varieties that are considered “as good” as their non-green counterparts.
Strawberries are easy enough to care for, so they shouldn’t give you any trouble. They like fertile soil and like most plants do better with added compost rather than straight up garden soil. If you want to have a continuous harvest, then make sure you stagger your plantings so that you don’t end up with bare rows. You can also go with a continuous row planting and then interplant with beans or peas.
If you plant them all at the same time, then you run the risk of your entire harvest rotting on the vine if you get an extended stretch of rainy weather.
Rhubarb is a great companion to asparagus. They have similar nutrient needs and they both like well-draining soil. The only problem is that they don’t play well with one another if you’re growing them in a small space. They have large roots that can easily compete with one another for nutrients.
Your rhubarb is also going to be huge and because it’s a perennial, it’s not going to want to be moved.
If you have the space, then there’s no problem with planting them together. If you don’t want to deal with moving your asparagus every few years, then you should either plant them along a fence line or even better yet plant them along a path that leads somewhere. That way you can easily move away from the area every few years.
If you’re looking to plant along a small path, then strawberries are the way to go. You can easily move them without worrying about breaking their roots. They can take full sun or light shade and they won’t mind being moved every couple of years.
Asparagus Beans and Peas: Asparagus Beans and Peas are a great choice when it comes to companion planting with asparagus. The reason being is that they’re short enough that they don’t shade out the asparagus and they have similar nutrient needs.
Asparagus Beans and Peas are fast growers. They also provide a good cover for the soil so there’s less chance for weeds to get started. You can grow these in a well-tilled and prepared bed or you can simply broadcast these throughout your wild asparagus patch. Either way will produce good results.
Asparagus can be started by seed but the process is very slow and the yield pales in comparison to woody roots that are started in the spring. You can also take a clump of asparagus that has at least one growing tip and dividing it into smaller plants. This is called a division and this is typically done in the spring as well. If you want to plant a bed of asparagus, then starting with division is your best bet.
You don’t want to be too ambitious when it comes to your first planting of asparagus. It typically takes 3 years before you can start harvesting so it’s a long term investment on your part. Don’t plant more than a row at first because you’re going to be tempted to harvest and all of those sad little sticks poking up into the sky are going to be pretty depressing!
Asparagus doesn’t like its roots to dry out, in fact over-watering is just as bad as underwatering so make sure that you only water the area where the roots are and not the leaves. You want to keep that bed well-drained so excavating the area to mix in some sand or gravel is a good idea if you have the time and equipment. In addition, it’s important when planting asparagus to plant them tightly together. You should be able to fit no more than a finger between the roots.
Because of their tight spacing and long roots, asparagus plants need to be kept out of the way of heavy duty equipment. You don’t want someone driving over them or worse yet, riding over them with a lawn mower! The best time to plant asparagus is in the spring. Make sure you remove any mulch so that the sun can warm up the soil.
After it’s been tilled, rake the bed so that it’s nice and level and spread your asparagus roots out evenly. You can also plant asparagus in the fall. Fall planting takes a bit more preparation because the soil needs to be turned over. If you’re planning on doing this, then you should double dig the area so that your bed will be well aerated.
Asparagus doesn’t need much fertilizer but if you are going to use one, don’t put it down until after you’ve planted your asparagus. This is a good time to add some well-rotted manure or compost to the bed.
Harvesting Asparagus takes patience. Pick a stalk and every day another one will grow in its place. You can start harvesting in the third year though the spears are typically small. By the fourth year, you should be able to enjoy asparagus on your dinner plate.
Once you have your asparagus established, it needs very little looking after other than you keeping up on weeding and making sure that it’s kept well watered.
Asparagus will regenerate so if you do over harvest, no worries! It will be back next year. If you want to learn more about asparagus, try visiting some of your local growers. They may even let you come and look at their operation so that you can see how it’s done.
You can typically find these growers in the phone book or on the web.
A Few More Tips
There are a few more things that you should know about growing asparagus. You need to keep your bed free of any vegetation for two years before you even plant a seed there so that means keeping the weeds at bay. This can be time-consuming but is really not that hard to do. As long as the weeds don’t go to seed there will be no problem.
You can even let them go to seed if you’re really lazy because the seeds won’t grow if they are close to an asparagus bed.
You should also keep grass away from your asparagus because it tries to take nutrients that the asparagus needs before the asparagus can get them. The good thing is, weeds can’t grow under asparagus so there’s no need to waste your time weeding. Just let the asparagus do its job.
Asparagus is a vegetable and a fruit, depending on how you look at it. Usually, it’s referred to as a vegetable but because of the fact that it has seeds on the bottom, it can also be classified as a fruit.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, if you’re on a low-carb diet then you can safely eat all you want since it doesn’t really count as a carbohydrate!
Return to A Beginner’s Guide To Growing Asparagus from Growing Asaparagus
Return to Destination Urban Gardening from Growing Asaparagus
Sources & references used in this article:
Asparagus IRX9, IRX10, and IRX14A are components of an active xylan backbone synthase complex that forms in the Golgi apparatus by E Gibbons – 2020 – Rowman & Littlefield
Asparagus racemosus (Shatavari): an overview by W Zeng, ER Lampugnani, KL Picard, L Song… – Plant …, 2016 – Am Soc Plant Biol
Structural and Sensory Characterization of Bitter Tasting Steroidal Saponins from Asparagus Spears (Asparagus officinalis L.) by AK Sachan, DR Das, SL Dohare… – Int J Pharm Chem Sci, 2012 – researchgate.net
Phases of the anatomy of Asparagus officinalis by HA Jones, WW Robbins – 1924 – University of California Print. Office
Methods used in breeding asparagus for rust resistance. by C Dawid, T Hofmann – Journal of agricultural and food chemistry, 2012 – ACS Publications
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