Asparagus in TEXAS; is it possible??

[Garland Grower]

Is it okay to try Asparagus in East Texas; zone 7-8?

-- Rita Garland, TX

7a-8b

[Frogleg]

Not until you've purchased your Asparagus Permit and had the planting site inspected and certified. :-)

Asparagus is hardy all over the continental US.

[Dwayne]

I would suggest planting it in a raised bed, with some method of keeping crab grass from getting into it. I had an 80 ft raised bed in Arkansas and it did great until the grab grass took over. It didn't kill it out, but it did make it look bad and robbed the nutrients from the asparagus.

I bordered mine with landscape timbers. two and three high. I should have dug out the grass for 4 to 6 inches on either side of the bed and mixed up some concrete and filled in those 4 to 6 inches. That way you can mow the weeds away and the crab grass cant get in unless it goes under.

I would also have made it a little taller (4 to 6 inches tall doesn't keep the grass out very well). Other than that we had a lot of good asparagus. Get the hybrid that is all male and gets big. If you are going to go to all that work, you might as well get the best you can.

Dwayne

[Fritz von Herbenfeller]

It does great here in Fredericksburg so I imagine East Texas would be better. Take no shortcuts on the planting do it by "the book". Which is, dig a 18" w by 18"deep trench, lay out the roots, which will be a foot in diameter or more, cover to the crown with mostly compost and gradually fill in the trench with compost/dirt mixture as it grows. You better be sure to have all bermuda grass within ten feet of killed before you start and keep it out. Broadleaf weeds must be pulled or killed with salt water spray. Yes-salt water. It will not hurt the asparagus. But don't overdo as it will have to go somewhere. Lay out a soaker hose on it when trench is filled, and keep the soil damp until it is well out of the normal soil level.. Then you won't have to use it very much in East Texas I imagine. You won't be able to put the soaker hose down after it is grown and filled out. It will grow at least 6 ft high if done right. Don't harvest the first year and just a little the second year. Harvest by cutting with a sharp serrated knife an inch or two below the surface of the ground. Mow or otherwise remove the dead tops after a couple hard freezes. Add a couple inches or more of sawdust or compost every winter. Fertilize with high Nitrogen every spring after it strarts growing. I repeat-unless you have 2 feet of rich top soil already you will be wasting your time if you shortcut this procedure.

[Susan K. Wehe]

It does great here near Seguin as well. However, I may have planted by the book, but I sure don't maintain them by one. We mow the patch in the fall and pick in the spring before the weeds reach any height. Any weeds that get too high during harvest are removed by hand. Once the harvest is over, we let the bed naturalize. We get far more than we need and we've had the bed for at least

10 years now.

susan

Fritz v> It does great here in Fredericksburg so I imagine East Texas would be

[Fritz von Herbenfeller]

Naturalizing is fine once the asparagus is mature it makes so much shade hardly anything but some bermuda grass and a few very persistant weeds will grow under it. But here they will creep up to it and still rob moisture and nutrients I fear. In the first year or two before growth was full I needed to knock the weeds out to give the asparagus it's best shot.

[Stan Goodman]

If that means "hot, dry climate", I can only say that here I have wild asparagus growing around the house, and it is very hard to fight. This is a plant with stalks about 2mm in diameter, and its only use that I have found is to be added to soups to give an asparagus flavor. Still, it IS asparagus, and if it can thrive in this hot climate, in which rain falls (if at all) for only three or four months a year, domesticated varieties will probably succeed where you are.

[Thomas]

[Fritz von Herbenfeller]

Had the same problem with grasshoppers 2 and 3 years ago in Central Texas. The asparagus did come back tho. Amazingly the first thing the grasshoppers attacked was Bay Laurel. Devasted every leaf on some. But they all came back too-in a year. Now I have Guineas to help keep the grasshopper population bearable but they haven't been the problem this year as in the past.