can you make all asparagus come up with chunky white stems or do i need to get something special?
of the seed savaliable which is thebest to grow? (i'll wait 4 years :) )
lbb
I think it is actually harvested before it breaks through the soil so it sort of self blanches but how you find them under ground ??
just found thishttp://gardening.about.com/od/vegetablepatch/a/AsparagusFeatur.htm
personally I love white asparagus
read this! LBB !
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1603.html
rgds, Tony
I showed a Frenchman my asparagus bed and carefully explained the difference between French and English treatment of asparagus, and that I was growing and cutting it the English way. Then I started to cut off my green spears level with the ground.
He gave a cry of anguish, seized my knife, and proceeded to devastate the whole bed by burrowing down to the crowns and cutting off everything he could lay his hands on. We ended up with a pile of white and green spears and a bed that produced nothing more for a couple of weeks in the height of the season.
He said he had been brought up on an asparagus farm in France and had been cutting since the age of 5. He insisted that the way I was doing it (leaving stumps below the soil surface) would lead to rotting and disease. His way was THE way, and the only way.
This is all nonsense, of course - we all leave stumps in the ground and none of our asparagus rots. But in answer to the question of how the French and Germans get their white asparagus, I offer this story as an answer. Gently scrape the piled up soil or mulch away, and at the slightest sign of a tip, burrow down and cut it off and feel around for any other developing spears of a useful size.
It is bound to do a certain amount of damage to developing buds, which is supposed to explain the expensiveness of white asparagus.
I have not tried a deep mulch over crowns, but I am imagining it would both blanch them and be easy to pull aside to look for spears. I guess you could put some permeable black plastic over the mulch to increase the blanching effect, and pull it aside to check for spears every couple of days.
I much prefer green asparagus, so I grow in shallow mounds.