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I planted 1 year old crowns this year & as expected they are throwing up spindly spears - about 1 per crown - trouble is some of them seem to be getting their tops nibbled off before they can produce ferns.  My question is how long will they carry on producing shoots?  Are the ones there all they will produce cos if so I don't think they will produce very strong plants for next year.

The first year when I  planted my 1 yr old crowns they also put up thin spears I think in the end 2 or 3 per crown and the final spears came up mid June. The following year they threw up around 4 spears per plant - a little bit thicker and then last year a good half dozen or so each. This year - first year of harvest they threw up monsters. After advice from others on the site i restrained myself but still took a couple of spears from each plant. They don't seem to haveminded this as they are now throwing up lots of thick spears which I am leaving alone.

I haven't noticed anything eating my spears (apart from me), so I don;t have any expeience of what may be chewing the tops of your plants - maybe slugs?

slugs, snails and asparagus beetle nibble these guys. The plants should still be ok if they get one or two fronds up by summer. incredibly resilient things and almost impossible to kill, so dont worry too much.

They will carry on producing new spears until well into the summer. When the bed is in full production you stop picking at Midsummer's Day; but they still produce. It's obviously dependent on temperature. Everyone's started early this year because April was so warm; now they've slowed down a lot (and there is quite a large proportion of thin spears), but as soon as the weather warms up again we should be back on course.

Yes, look out asparagus beetle: they like the tops. And we've had bird damage this year. I had to net mine at first. (And yes, it was birds: I caught them at it!)

On another note I put in some one year old crowns last year and had a few tiny spears.  This year of the ten plants in there I only have spears from about 3!  If they haven't speared by now or this year does this mean the crowns are dead?   :'(

Have you checked recently as many of my plants have just produced their first spears.. I'd given them up for dead too!
Are you sure the birds weren't eating Asparagus  beetle grubs?
:-\

I pick mine until the spears coming up are the thickness of pencils then I stop whenever that is.It has always been fine for any bed I have grown. XX Jeannine

I put mine in last year as 2 year old plants I put in 12 about 7 of them have put up about  3 really good sized shoots no sign of anything else.  The thing I cannot understand is they have not come up where I set them but about 1ft away which brings them close and under a path. (they had plenty of room the other way. :o

Thanks for the reassurance - I noticed another shoot today so maybe it is the cold which stopped them for a bit.

A bit of warm weather after the rain will get them going. We've just had a HUGE meal of them, need to check daily, methinks.

Thanks for this - I hope the others are just sitting there waiting - also agree about where - I'm sure I had them all in a beautiful straight line but one of my spear is nearly a 18 inches away!   :o

I'm happy if they are dormant for the moment as it makes resisting cutting far easier!!