A crown sort of looks like a spider. It's got a "lump" in the middle with a bunch of "legs" comming off of it. The "legs" are the roots and there can be anywhere from 5 to 25 "legs".

Sounds like you bought a potted asparagus plant....someone planted the crown, waited until the plant grew and sold it.

The cheapest crowns I've found are from De Bruyn. I bought over 100 from them this year and they were fine. See the link below. (But they may be sold out by now. It's pretty late for asparagus planting)

Bart

Here is a link that might be useful: Asparagus....scroll down the page

You bought asparagus plants. Beneath the soil there is also a crown. A "crown" is just where the roots and stems join together. Crowns are sold by themselves for people to plant. The idea being that roots and shoots will grow from it and you will get a productive asparagus plant. All things considered, I'd rather have the plant. It's the same as having a crown that has already grown into a plant.
It sounds like the plants you bought were started from crowns in a pot and grown into young plants. These plants you bought should be just fine.

Although I've never seen them sold that way, I agree with the others that it sounds like you bought asparagus plants.

I'm not sure how you plant them when they're already a plant, but the link below shows a picture of a crown, plus planting instructions for them.

Good Luck.

Rick

Here is a link that might be useful: Asparagus crowns

I think you'd plant the pot all at once. I planted 20 crowns this year in two different beds, but those could be spread around in rows. I also saw potted Asparagus plants for the first time at nursery last week. If you have what I saw, or something similar, you would dig a big hole and plant the whole thing in it. The one that I saw had at least three sprouts in the pot (there were several pots all the same), but there really was no way to distinguish which one from which, and I think that breaking up the clump in the pot might cause more harm than good.

I bought my crowns back in February and planted them. The process of waiting for them to sprout was tedious (or maybe I was just impatient??). They are thriving, but the sprouts are as you describe-- tall and spindly. They were 2nd year crowns. Mine came from Walmart, believe it or not.

Either way, you'll get asparagus in a few years. My family is really looking forward to that!

Hope this helps.

Remove the pot, separate the crowns, and plant them in at least an 8-10" trench: backfill. You want them deep enough so they don't blow over too easily. If you break the plant off from the crown, don't worry. It'll grow back just fine. In the future, stay away from plants and buy crowns. It's just a gimmick for folks to pay ten times what they need to. I market farm and planted close to 700 this spring. It was a real struggle with all the rain and cold this spring, but the little fellers are waking up and doing great. My greatest fear was rot. Asparagus likes dry feet, and my trenches were swimming pools at times. I space them 14" apart in rows 5-6 feet apart. Purples need to be planted closer: 8". They have nice fat shoots but not many of them. I also like to add lime and sand to my trenches along with some super phosphate. Believe it or not, I really don't like to plant asparagus in good soil. Instead, I like to improve the soil AFTER the gus is in. Aside from super phosphate at planting, I just don't fertilize it much. I don't water either. I don't mulch between plants but definitely between rows. I buy my plants from Nourse and absolutely love them. They still have plants but in limited quantities. I tried fall planting for the first time last year, and it was an utter failure. Asparagus also likes tomatoes because asparagus beetles don't. Sorry to drip on so much, but I kinda like asparagus.

Brook

I ordered asparagus online (50 crowns) and planted early February....they are already producing ferns.

Peggy

Here is a link that might be useful: Where I bought gus online