Allotments 4 All

I  bit the bullet this year and ordered some new crowns as 2018 really savaged my old ones. They are due to arrive any day now, but the allotment is still too thin to drink but too wet to farm - any suggestions as to the best way to look after them until it's dry enough to get them in, please?

Ta!

Adrian

Create a raised bed ?, drainage is by gravity!

That's just it - this is the side that's already raised (it has a neighbour who, over the years, dug her half-plot into a sort of swimming pool by throwing all the weeds, roots, soil and all, onto what is now my half plot, so it's the best part of a foot higher than the surrounding paths, plots etc), and at the mo it is still like sh1t underfoot. 

Short term, the books advise storing crowns cool and damp, being careful not to allow them to become wet.

But asparagus is very much a long term project.  A bed can crop for many many years. Provided your new crowns  survive and get established, a bit of a slow start this season should not have any long term impacts. You will probably not have much to pick from your new crowns until spring 2022.  They certainly prefer good drainage if you can find a suitable position.

I'm not sure why you are giving up on your old bed. Given a bit of TLC, maybe a season without picking, they might well recover and go back to full production.

Hi Beersmith, my old crowns were a mix of blow-ins and bargain-bucket rescues, none younger than a decade, so were never the world's greatest croppers (funnily enough, the best cropping crown I ever had was a blow-in... on the other plot to the asparagus bed!). But if anything is salvagable... well, there's no such thing as surplus sparrowgrass, is there?

Well after a decade I'm sure a fresh start will serve you well. 

For many parts of the country, especially England and Wales, a few fairly dry days may be in prospect. Perhaps you will get a chance to get the crowns planted in a few days.  My soil is fairly well drained.  After rain, I can often work the following day. Even after prolonged heavy rain two or three dry days is enough to leave the surface workable. Of course in summer it can dry out quite quickly.  Swings and roundabouts!!

Good luck with the new bed!

Thanks, I think if we really can (I won't believe it until it happens!) get a week without rain, I might be able to get on there without doing too much damage. Fingers crossed...

Adrian

Quote from: gray1720 on March 17, 2020, 09:46:25
Thanks, I think if we really can (I won't believe it until it happens!) get a week without rain, I might be able to get on there without doing too much damage. Fingers crossed...

Adrian

I have a barrow sieve, wooden frame 3ftx2ft with weldmesh(1"),  this spreads my weight, and barely leaves a mark.

I might well use one of the pallet-beds that serves as a door on my compost bin... assuming they arrive, of course!

I work off a scaffolding plank... whatever you have to hand to keep you out of the soil, spread the weight and reduce compression on the soil.

Thus far I am still waiting, which isn't a bad thing, as the soggier half-plot is now dry enough to be nearly diggable, so the other should be pretty good. Just need to still be able to get out there without being locked down, otherwise my home garden may disappear under a sea of asparagus!

Adrian

Finally, today, I get a message telling me it's being shipped out. The allotment is dry enough now... but will I be allowed to get onto it? It's going to be a turkish keeping the stuff cool in the current weather.

There are worse things in May than drowning in a sea of asparagus!

That is very true!

Well, they arrived on Saturday afternoon and it went in yesterday. As I was splitting the crowns with a fellow allotment holder I was worried about mixing the two varieties (we bought 10 each of Greenic and Burgundian to keep the cropping going), but the Greenic crowns had roots on like I've never seen before. They were a good 18" long! "Dig a trench wide enough that you can fully spread the roots out" was the instruction - well, I haven't enough space to dig a three foot trench! So they got two spits wide, and spread out like an X. Hopefully that will do...

My first dozen spears were showing through yesterday.... yum!