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Vegetable Gardening

New house, clay soil, asparagus bed

16 years ago

message says it all. I like asparagus, and I particularly like big, one-time jobs, which are productive for many years. But the soil is fairly gummy clay. The home I just left had beach-sandy soil.

So, should I go ahead and plant asparagus, perhaps digging a deeper than normal trench and backfilling with organic matter, or should I accept that this is not the site for asparagus?

I have unlimited access to leaves, wood chips, manure, and wood ash. Presumably, I will use the leaves and manure as the main compost material initially, the chips as mulch in the later years, and the ash as the soil sweetener and part fertilizer throughout. I can probably build the bed with a little slope so as to shed water. There are two large trees immediately to the north that will probably pull out a lot of moisture. I can not think of other steps to take except perhaps asking the new owner of my house for a load of sandy soil in exchange for a load of clay.

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Comments (4)

Belgianpup
16 years ago
Maybe this site can help with info:
http://www.farm-garden.com/growing-vegetables/asparagus

Sue
paveggie
16 years ago
Asparagus is a 20-30 year crop. Any improvements made up-front will pay off for you. Like preparing the $25.00 hole for the $5.00 tree!!
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naturegirl_2007 5B SW Michigan
16 years ago
Go ahead and plant and see what happens. I figured the heavy clay at my home would not be good for asparagus, but I planted anyway. That was 20 years ago and the planting continues to yield well. Sometimes spears are crooked or weird looking, and I assume it is because they had trouble getting through the heavy soil. But most are okay and all taste good. I did not amend much and have often wondered if doing so would have allowed water to sink in more quickly instead of running off the slight slope of the bed. Perhaps amending would have given me a permeable bed that fillled with water and would not drain from the clay bottom...but I don't know. So I'm not sure if I should encourage you to amend.....or not. But I think there is a good chance you can grow asparagus without making major changes to the soil.

If you do want to amend alot perhaps you could go with raised beds.
sfallen2002
16 years ago
Soil in my garden is river bottom clay. I dug a hole (I'm not a trencher), put some composted manure and straw and mixed a little soil in it, planted the crowns. Have been regularly mulching with grass clippings, etc. but the asparagus comes up and does great (4th? 5th? season this yr). I think you do as much as you feel you need to do to get those crowns off to a good start, then treat the bed right every fall and you'll be glad of it.

The "bed" next to one of my outbuildings has the best soil ever - layered wood chips on it 3 years ago - 12 to 16 inch deep - and all the wood is gone now, just fluffy soil. Great stuff.

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