Aw, man. I'm still jealous you inherited an asparagus plant instead of going through several years of establishment. LOL Nah, sorry to hear that happened to the asparagus plant. I hope it had enough time to soak up the energy it needs to store over winter. According to Dawn's suggestion of old, if it still has some leaves on it, that's good. Plants are amazingly resilient with even minute resources.

Dorothy, At the rate they are going, they're going to start chewing on your house and vehicles soon because there won't be anything else left to eat.

Today we have significantly more grasshoppers than yesterday and that's been true the last 3 days. I thought our population already had peaked and was beginning to decrease, and then suddenly they are popping up out of thin air. Between the blister beetles and the grasshoppers, both of whom recently discovered my container plantings by the garage, everything around here is getting pretty leafless. They're even eating the leaves of my lemon tree and mandarin orange tree. If it wasn't 109 degrees out there right now, I'd be out there with a fly swatter or a pesticide or something, trying to kill them or drive them away.

Bon, Dorothy's plants weren't inherited. She planted them and has carefully tended a huge patch for many years--likely longer than I've even been in OK, if my memory is correct. I think she and Glen may have raised the initial plants from seed, but maybe I'm confusing them with someone else on the forum who has raised asparagus from seed.

Y'all, one thing that worries me about hoppers is that their population goes up, up, up each year until it peaks, and then it slowly falls. Last year was so bad that I thought it was the peak and that this year there would be fewer. Well, they are so bad now, that maybe it is this year which is the peak. Or, even worse, what if they don't peak until next year? This reminds me of the late 1990s and early 2000s when we had bad grasshopper issues for 4 or 5 years before the population really fell.

Dawn

Dawn is right, Bon. We planted our asparagus patch from seed many years ago. The first seed was planted at our former home even before we moved in here over 30 years ago. We transplanted them over here as year old plants. We took that patch out to build a greenhouse and more garden beds, but the other patch--6 50 ft rows--we started from seed bought after we moved here and it is still in production after all these years.

Ten year old granddaughter is here with us this week and she spent quite some time this a.m. catching grasshoppers and stepping on them. She also threw one into the Golden Orb Spider's nest.

Aw, I'm sorry mulberry. I just confused ya with someone else on the forum. :) I LOVE asparagus. For the time being I can only dream of having a couple of those luscious plants. I'm grateful to have available advice when I choose to get them started. Really, it's the heat that has been putting things off. Hard enough under normal times to get things well established.

bon

True, Bon, the heat can kill young plants. And when I said we never water it, I mean after it got established. I watered the seedbed the first year andt the transplants for two summers. After that, though, no water.

Dorothy, sorry for your asparagus, i hope they will come back as usual. My defoliation reduce their water stress? Here my asparagus are crazy... they are tying to shoot new spears in this crazy heat. I yet to find what making them to produce new shoots. -Chandra

Chandra, Sometimes mine will put up new spears in midsummer after a good rain. So if you are watering your crowns deeply, you may be encouraging them to put up new spears. I quit picking in midmay this year and my crowns were still putting up new crowns in June because we got 5" of rain in early June.

Dorothy, I just figured it out why asparagus are putting new shoots. One of the soaker hose was not closed, so they got plenty of water... -Chandra