My personal opinion of the all-male strains is that they aren't that major of an improvement as to merit the excess trouble and expense. I'm personally very happy with my old fashioned MW, and I like the bonus seedlings that pop up and I can then transplant to enlarge the patch. I know others here who do like the all male Jersey strains, and the production yield differential would no doubt make a difference to a commercial grower. I bought an ounce of MW seed 3 years ago for $7.00 and ended up with over 200 transplants, sowing the seeds about 3 per large cell pack. They should make their first real crop this year. Hard to beat that many plants for $7 plus the cost of the potting mix to fill the cell packs.

I'm not quite sure I understand your question, but I guess you're saying that you ended up with 9 female plants (berry producing) out of the 10 Mary Washington roots you planted. I think that would just be random chance. It is an open pollinated, seed grown strain, so there wouldn't be any "culling" of plants based on gender, as the grower wouldn't have any way to tell the difference in plants young enough to sell to the consumer anyway.

If you ended up with 9 out of 10 of one of your "all male" strains actually being female plants, I'd say yes, you were probably "ripped off" -- maybe not intentionally, perhaps the crowns were actually MW that was mislabeled by accident or something.

I agree with the above info about the MW if that is what you are asking about. But your question isn't really clear. Could you clarify what is at issue for us please?

MW is an OP cultivar and if you got 9 females out of 10 that isn't a rip off but is common and one reason why many of us who grow asparagus don't bother with MW any longer and why many rip out the berry ferns. Also, yes, they are marginally less vigorous and MW produces fewer ideal edible spears since its energy is devoted to plant reproduction.

Dave

I should have said "if I bought 10 of the *Mary Washington* plants and 9 turn out to be female, should I cull the female plants?" - I've read that the male plants produce larger spears since they don't put energy into seed production. However, I've also been told that MW produces just as well on female plants as male plants. I don't know which to believe.

My Mary Washington are a big disappointment, 7 years & still have very small( smaller then a pencil)spears. I am composting & going to dig a trench to fill with compost & soil to plant all male crowns in. This is so I can have some real spears.
The small MW may be my fault, but I am going to go all male to see what they will do.
The all male should be bigger, by the third year.

Hi Guys,
This is my second harvest in the second week of my second year
(I planted 2-18-2010), so far everything is awesome, but to answer your question,
Dennis said "I know others here who do like the all male Jersey strains, and the production yield differential would no doubt make a difference to a commercial grower."

That is the most likely scenario, a commercial grower bases his cash crop and profit on very small margins, so it really matters to them, but to a home gardener who tends his crop and bed properly, you would be hard pressed to notice any significant difference.

That being said, if you are just starting,then by all means ,plant and harvest the king/purple/hybrids, they are designed to be awesome, but if you already have stuff planted enjoy what you have and be blessed.

{{gwi:38377}}