[Laura]

being my favourite vegetable it was always going to be a priority on my plot.  i sent away for 20 mature crowns the autumn after i took the lottie on - they weren't cheap either.  i planted them all according to the instructions, i have fed and watered the asparagus beds, didn't cut any for the past two years. i have done everything possible to make sure i was in for a bumper crop...
...ONE blooming spear
 :evil:  :cry:  :evil:  :cry:
oh should i steam it or char grill it

[woodburner]

Just checking, this is the second spring that you have had them? One spear is not really worth picking and if that's all there is, cutting it would probably be taking too much away from what is clearly not a big plant :o Did they have much foliage on them last year? I worked in a garden next to an asparagus field for a couple of years and they were really big and bushy in the summer.

Except for the couple of wild ones in Mum's garden I have no experience of growing them, but they are high on my list of priorities, (for the garden rather than the lottie as they are so pricey in the shops - don't want to tempt the local 'light fingers' back into his old habits!) so I have done a lot of researching.
 They dislike being transplanted so why they are sold as crowns so often baffles me, unless this means they are guaranteed male? Most people say buy crowns leave them so many years harvest til second week in June etc. but Bob Flowerdew says grow from seed, and somewhere else I came across the 'four year cycle' method. With the seasons being so unreliable I don't see how they can be so precise about the date to stop harvesting and what about effect of latitiude, soil, etc? So I don't trust that advice for starters, but then how can I tell if I'm cutting as much as I can without risking next year's crop? So I'm going to try the four year method, and hopefully avoid some of the problems associated with asparagus.

[gobs]

Did they do well last year? Any chance something is eating them?

[muntjac]

sparrow grass is still only just starting laura you may get some more spears .yet .when they have finished make sure you cut all the remains down and then lime them 1 oz a sy yard ( 9ft row ).then allow them to grow on  leaving them alone till spring then cut down all the foliage and give a top dressing of manure juice .or growmore rake this in before the spears  show through tho    " werk for me "... see my tips on growing sparrowgrass

[Laura]

many thanks for all the info but it seems that my carefully tended crowns have been:
a. eaten
b. rotted off
c. thought it was funny not to play gardens!

that's it for the asparagus beds for me, i'm going to dig it all over and plant squash.  i shall jump up and down for as long as i can cursing and swearing (then plant the squash otherwise i'll have none of them either)

[pushrod]

or D) still underground and all about to come leaping up (well there
is always hope   )

TBH i have just started a small bed this year  and i thought that a couple of plants had failed as the others came up more than a month ago and the other day i noticed that the two missing plants were sending up a spear each  

[cawdor2001]

i planted 10, 6 came up fairly quickly and another 2 aout 6 weeks after that, 2 not emerged yet but think they will this or next year.  Keep watered and manure mulch in the Autumn.


Cawdor