Hello Dianne -- I'm also looking into having asparagus next year; if I find out any info about sand amendments, etc. I'll let you know. :)

i have asparagus in a raised bed filled with the square foot garden mix, which i think is 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 vermiculite. it's coming back really nicely - lots of yummy little shoots. the level sinks maybe an inch a year and i fill in with compost - doesn't seem to bother the plants any.

I'd hesitate to add sand. I'd try to mix in lots of compost and peat the first year, and add compost on top there after.

Here, the wild asparagus comes up anywhere there is enough moisture.

I way agree with skipping the sand! My brother back in Illinois grows lots of asparagus in good, black Illinois soilÂwhich naturally has a little bit of sand in it, and when it rains, sand splashes up into the little "flaps" on the asparagus spears and itÂs almost impossible to wash it all out. Biting into sandy asparagus is just about as bad as scratching your fingernails on a blackboard! Eeeeeeee! Just add lots and lots of organic matter like David and Mutajen recommended, and with enough organic matter, if it were me (wish I had room to grow some), I donÂt think IÂd even bother with the vermiculiteÂbut thatÂs just me. I donÂt use vermiculite for anything anymore since I always keep things too wet if the soil has vermiculite in it. Perlite would help with the drainage (which is presumably what the sand would do), but with enough organic matter, you shouldnÂt need itÂand itÂs not cheap!

It takes a few years to get a good crop, but.........
Enjoy it when you get it!
Skybird

Okay, so I'm nixing the sand then! If you had to guess, how many large bags of organic matter (or cubic feet if you prefer) do you think I should mix into a 12x3x2 foot bed?

And it sounds like sinking shouldn't be a problem - at least not for the plants themselves. I just don't want it to end up looking like all the other beds though - like they haven't been filled up completely (which bothers me since I am a perfectionist). I always need to add a good two inches every year it seems. I guess I could fill it up a little bit high to start with so it will settle to about the right depth.

Thanks for your replies!!

Dianne

I agree with the others. I don't have a raised bed. But my natural soil is sandy. I mulch heavily every year and if anything my level has raised some. The mulch on the bottom rots and I add new on top. And anything I want to add like cottonseed meal of alfalfa pellets I just scatter and then put a layer of mulch on top. Jay

I just went back and reread you original post, Dianne, and youÂre describing the soil you already have as "really good loamy." If you already have a soil thatÂs "light and fluffy" when itÂs moist, you probably donÂt need to add a whole lot of anything. I was just thinking about sand when I first replied, and was assuming that you, like most of us, have some version of clay. If your soil sits for a few months without being worked, does it pack down hard, or does it stay pretty workable so you can dig into it easily with a little hand trowel? If it stays very workable even when itÂs been sitting unused for quite a while, you may want to dump a few bags of a good organic compost on top and work it in, but you may not even need to do that. From what youÂve described, it sounds ready to go to me. If itÂs sinking some every year, there must already be a lot of organic matter which is causing the sinking as it decomposes further. DonÂt worry too much about the sinking soil. Asparagus can be buried pretty deeply, so you should be able to just add a little more soil on top if it sinks slightly. You canÂt do that with perennial flowers, of course, but it should work ok with asparagus. Based on your original description, I say, go for it!

Skybird

Skybird - sorry, I think I completely confused you! The soil that sinks every year is a container mix we had delivered from a nursery when we built the first four beds, so there's no native soil in those at all. Just organic stuff, so it's constantly degrading. I just didn't want to add SO much organic matter to our native soil in the asparagus bed that it would end up doing the same thing, but it seems like I would need to use at least 1/3 or more organic matter for that to happen, and I don't think I need nearly that much. I'm probably just obsessing anyway (what a shock!) ;)

Our soil is good...kind of a heavy loam I guess. I wouldn't quite say "light and fluffy," but it usually crumbles fairly easily. It really only gets hard when it's been compacted. I find clay once in a while when I dig around but there's not much at all in the first foot or so. Many wise and hard-working homeowners before us have brought in good stuff. But it must have been all clay a looooong time ago - we're about a mile or less from what used to be an old brickyard.

And believe me, we WILL certainly enjoy the asparagus - it's my favorite veggie. :) I guess we should expect to be able to start harvesting in the third year, which seems far away until I realize we've been in this house more than five years already.

Thanks again!

Dianne

Raised beds with manufactured soil should be expected to have shrinkage. The important thing is that if you purchased soil to go behind them they are already good for asparagus. The only thing you should add is manure at the bottom of the trench (yes, yes I know, even here). An alternative would be mushroom compost.

I didn't get approval from the fam for doing another raised bed this year (into which will go ~84 sf asparagus and the rest raspberries). But when I do get approval, the bottom of the bed where the asparagus will go gets a mushroom compost/humus mix that I'll mix myself, and the rest a manufactured planting mix. Plenty of tilth and structure for asparagus. This will be my 5th or 6th asparagus bed for me or clients/friends. Never a problem with doing it this way.

Dan

Thanks, Dan - sounds like you're my go-to guy for asparagus! The 12-foot bed just got built last weekend and hasn't been filled yet - but there is a huge amount of pretty good dirt around it that really needs to go somewhere. I plan on using that to fill about 70% of the bed, and the rest will be compost. If I suggested to my husband not using any of the excess dirt that's already there, he would absolutely flip out.

Wow, 84 sq. ft. sounds like a lot! We'd been planning on using a 6 ft. bed but unfortunately I hadn't done any research into how much that would produce - and two rows of 6 crowns each would only give us about 6 pounds total I think, since what I've been hearing is about 1/2 pound per crown. Does that sound right? There are only two of us, so I'm hoping twice as much (24 plants) will be perfect, given that I'm not into preserving and just want enough to eat every few days while it's in season.

Sounds about right on the yield, tunny. I should say that my editor failed to see my typing error, and it is ~48 sf for asparagus, apologies.

Nonetheless, we eat a lot of asparagus, and fresh asparagus from the garden is so much better than from the store (esp around these parts) you'll eat more than if you went to the grocery. Asparagus spreads, and the more you buy now the more you'll get sooner, but if you can have patience you don't have to buy as many crowns. Make sure you buy an all-male variety(ies) as the females take up too much production space. These are fairly easy to find these days.

And we also give food away - you can guarantee a lot of party invites if you bring fresh-picked asparagus with you as a gift for the hostess, esp if it is in a little water in a nice jar/little bowl to keep.

Dan

If you mulch with shredded leaves then the soil is not a problem, glad you told me about the sand. I had no ideal it was a problem, because I mulch my gus bed with pin oak leaves
(pin oak leaves are 2inches long & 1/4 -1/2 inch wide, no need to shredded). You should be able to pick up all the leaves you can haul every fall, some nice people will bag them & set them on the street for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: jon's raised beds for gus.