"No-till" Asparagus and Strawberry Update (end of second season) 

Nothing wrong with a few female asparagus plants I manage to harvest about a few thousand seeds each year from only 3 plants . Great way to keep expanding you garden and give away seedlings as gifts

I planted my asparagus even "more wrong" then you did: I just plonked the crowns into a hole (without making a nice hil in the hole to spread the roots over - I did not even spread the roots out. Filled the hole back in, coverd the bed with woodchips and shopped straw and planted some strawberries. The asparagus came up nicely and the strawberries attempted to conquer my whole garden 😂 Can't wait for their second years growth.

There is a place for disturbing the soil in nature too. animals like hogs occupy that niche and help disrupt the established and stagnant ground so other plants have a chance to grow

We got mostly male asparagus crowns. We save berries off the females and plant them out in new places. Many don't germinate... But a few do. This way we are expanding our asparagus crops for free. It is a long wait but worth it. Our baby asparagus is out competing the grasses.

I forgot this existed, finally good news for 2020

Just want to mention we started a Ruth Stout garden a few weeks ago inspired by your RU-vid channel. We have no idea what we're doing. But a few garlic sprouts are coming out of the hay. And there's other stuff coming out too because we planted seeds of random stuff like carrots, turnips, cucumbers, and whatever else was sitting in my Mom's garage for a few years. Thank you again for the inspiration!

I did a similar thing...flipping sod... when I planted my fruit trees in a former cultivated hay field. I used the flipped sod as a burm around my newly planted trees to keep the water from running down the hill and bypassing the trees. I figured why buy more soil. The sod had nutrients because that where the worms were hanging out and I didn't want to lose good soil or the worms. Or any rain water that matter. My thought was if I flipped the grass over and exposed the roots, the roots would die thus contributing again to the soil's nutrients and I would keep the native soil. Not sure if that helps at all. So far so good. It holds in the water quite nicely and the roots have died. Now I just wait and see.

I potted up 140 runners last year, kept a bunch and increased my bed and gave the rest away. I was also given a very sad looking white strawberry plant that had survived in a 4” pot for two years. I dumped it old horse droppings and as if by a way of a Thankyou she’s produced 40 babies ! Asparagus have gone in Charles Dowding style and look healthy. The garden, because of no dig and you guys giving us inspiration is still expanding rapidly. This has extended further to my daughter taking on an allotment which is fantastic so if ever you guys feel despondent with a failure remember there’s success happening over the pond because of you 😊

When I was about 25, a friend offered me some perennial flower plants. I chose one that she said was a weed. I told her "I didn't have a weed like that." Then I pointed to another plant & said "now, that's a weed." She informed me that was asparagus ... all grown up. I realized the "weed" along our property line was the same. That was 50 yrs ago. I now have an established bed that started as 25 plants. "Babies" have come up from seed that fell. And this yr, I planted cherry tomatoes among my strawberry plants. The strawberries weren't doing well because of little green worms that attacked them 2 yrs in a row. They look much better this fall. It seems to have worked. The worms weren't back.

Hey guys, love your channel. Thought I'd drop a quick little comment for you on no work asparagus. We are in the Okanagan in Western Canada and have tons of wild Asparagus. One year, I harvested the berries... thousands of them probably, and threw them where I wanted them to grow. Not in a bed... in a waist high grass (weeds one might say) area... Year 1, I had 200 spears come up... though, you have to really know what they look like, and no one could really understand my obsession or thrill with them. Only work... I chop down some of the grass to favour the asparagus to outcompete. After experimenting successfully with mulching a few of the wild patches, I now cover the asparagus beds in the fall with grass.. Oh, and they now get water because they are downhill from a veggie garden. So... we are going into year 4 (2021) I believe my first harvest will be this season... and last year I counted a total of just over 500 spears. I've also just started throwing asparagus seeds into my strawberry beds and other random places... They all germinate well, and grow much quicker with water.

I saw Charles video before I planted by asparagus and it contradicted everything else I read. Mostly because he did not talk about trench or depth or anything. However down in the comments he mentions you could dig a trench and I read somewhere, that the spears are more stable a couple of centimeters under ground. So I ended up in the middle: Dug a trench, make tiny hills, put in crowns, flip the sod on the roots (making sure to put loose soil at the center), cover with grass clippings every seond week all season. Result: From the 25 plants I ordered and the 27 I received all 27 came up AND all of them produced at least 3 spears, in their first year. Some as many as 6 up to 1,2m tall. As soon as the foliage dies off, I will give it a few centimeters of compost and cover it with leaves and cardboard over the winter like my other beds. By spring the cardboard is so soggy and weak, the asparagus just pushes through. Side note: I love using cardboard in the garden, especially since I know EU regulations mandates that the glue is starch based on the printing is soy and soot.

I've always suspected the overly complicated traditional advise on how to plant asparagus crowns was not a must-do. I planted my crowns in deep large tubs, just like any other plant would be set in soil (but at least 3 inches of soil on top of the crown), with good results. I did this because I wanted to start my asparagus bed but I knew I might want to move the plants a few years later. Taking them out of the tubs is a lot easier on my back and the crowns than digging them up out of the ground. And YES, I have gotten Jersey asparagus female plants. If you look at the fine print of seed packets and website pages that sell seeds and crowns, it usually says they send up "mostly" or "predominately" male plants. Good to see this update. Thanks.

Working in a seed company on Asparagus I know that under stress conditions male plants can produce some berries although this is still way less than a normal female plant would produce. The male chromosome has a female suppressor gene that can get bypassed sometimes. To prevent that, seed companies are trying to develop "super male" hybrids which have two male chromosomes but even then it's not a 100% guaranty.

Your asparagus is doing really well. I had to wait 5 years before I was able to consistently harvest a good handful of thick spears from each plant per season. I harvested once and then let the later thinner ones shoot, to feed the crowns. They love LOTS of well-matured compost, so apply liberally if possible. As far as my strawberry plants, meh, not so... hey, is that a ladybird. 😁

I think flipping the sod was the best option in your situation. 👍🏻🤠💪

Here in northeast ohio, asparagus grows wild along the edge of farm fields next to the ditches along the country roads. We had two volunteer plants come up in our front beds and we have just picked enough spears for a few meals every spring. They are spreading and getting thicker every year. I am sure anyone can dig up some wild plants and put them wherever they want them and they will grow. I think they are hard to kill.

There is so much to be discovered and it is likely that nobody will know for sure how best to grow these plants on your specific property in your microclimates as good as you after a few seasons. Please keep giving us updates!

I mulched my strawberries with 2-3 inches of leaves this winter, 95% of plants survived and I had not long transplanted them into the bed. Most had green leaves even though they were covered for 2-3 months.👍🏻🤠💪

I love💗💗💗💗 your style like really PBS quality producer! Your talk so smooth I keep waiting for you to start reporting the NEWS 😜

After several years, the asparagus in mid summer to fall looks like a low growing fir tree, and shades out a lot of the ground in spots. You want them to lay their cane down so the air and light gets through. Let the asparagus take over and keep starting new areas for the strawberries. Soon you'll have a lot so they mix with all the other plants. We started both asparagus and strawberries from seed, so we have asparagus plants going to seed for the last few years.

Asparagus needs some time. In another year or so it will grow like crazy. You're gonna love it.

I got crowns and planted them 3 years ago. I was very excited to harvest them last year. I also enjoy letting some of them go and those produce ferns and red berries... which I figured may seed. I didn’t know that the berries were anything other than red. Interesting video. I’m putting in an asparagus and strawberry bed in another area. 20 x 30. Cardboard smothering like Charles Dowding, adding stumps and small logs and then soil. We will see. Fresh Air and Iodine Farms

Started a huge Asparagus garden myself earlier this year, planted 51 crowns. 37 sprouted and have one too several ferns between 12"~30" each. Many of my crowns looked kinda dead like your strawberries, so I imagine they were probably dead, but gives the others plenty of room to expand. Have many large raised rows between the asparagus and may as well plant some strawberries there this fall if I can find some or next Spring. Thx for the tips, didn't know they were companion plants.

Flipping the sod works very well in my area. My dad always dug the sod and set it aside, dug down another foot, flipped the sod in the row, buried in the loose soil from lower down and did the entire garden that way and those gardens were very productive compared to the larger tilled gardens done in later after we moved

After watching your initial video, I also companion planted asparagus and strawberry this spring (2020) without any amendments and with mulching with straw. They both did well. As I type (Nov 2020) the asparagus is big and bushy. I know I cannot begin harvesting until spring of 2022 but I’m so excited this first year went well for them. The strawberries also did fabulously and made many babies. Thanks so much for the inspiration! Keep up with the excellent videos.

I also discover a female plant with my male plants and as the bees were loving the flowers, I got a load of fruits. I am trying to dry them now since around 30 plants don't seem enough for me...hehe!

I get plenty of berries on my asparagus and still get good harvests. I would caution about cutting the plants down at the end of the season however; the berries can harbour pests and worms that you may not want later. The berries are prolific however, and tossing/dropping a few casually to the side has resulted in asparagus growing in just about every bed I have now. HAHA. Good luck!

One thing about strawberry 'roots' /starts, is that it is important to plant 'not too deep', and what I mean about that, is that the crown of the plant is not covered, but the rest of the plant ( roots) are. And then, they will benefit immensely be getting some water at least a couple of times when they are just beginning to grow. And, my thots on your berries that didn't grow, was the mulch. I'm not sure about after they are up, and thriving, but I never have covered any plants when planting them ! ( While we will never know for certain about the condition of your new plants ( roots), I would guess that they were alive, and well, even tho they showed no signs of life ) ! And lastly, you tried, even tho your strawberries didn't make it ! As I have to learn in life, everyone makes mistakes ! And, hopefully, we all can learn from those mistakes !

I've 'wondered' about asparagus' ! I would not like to have to worry about the weeds that can so often sneak in along with the plants, and this is something I am even presently working to learn about !

Great news on the Asparagus and the Strawberries. I planted Berry plants 2x this year from store bought bare root since they are more economical and all of them did not grow. I'll be ordering fewer live plants over the winter to arrive in spring. I would love to try growing berries from seed, that would be the most economical. As to the Asparagus, we have been growing them for decades and one plant will send up a few stalks with berries but all the rest do not. This year I planted all the 2 year old seeds I collected from the berries and not have allot of new plants. I'll leave them in place for next growing season and then dig up and transplant into a new row. A person cannot have too many Strawberries or Asparagus.

Thanks for the update!! Always lovely to see

I started a big new asparagus patch this year and inspired by you, gave them strawberry companions. I didn't fence the patch b/c I knew deer don't care for asparagus. Boy do they ever like strawberry though.

Thank you. Appreciate the update and the encouragement, I am going to try asparagus.

Om Ah Houm If only our educational system could inspire others to play around and learn at the same time... enacting more abilities to learn and advance the system and society as a whole... lol, who would of thunk that... lol (🤣😂 thunk) Man these episodes are pure gold!! Lol Onwards to the next showing!!!

You're right, plants and nature do it by them selves, and it is some much fun growing vegetables. I really enjoy your content that you share. Thank you Lockdown2020. It took 47 years to start. (Should have started earlier.) Waiting with a baited breath for your next video. Respect from Africa 🇿🇦

I’m trying back to Eden style asparagus and strawberries as part of my apple tree guild. I was inspired by your video to do this but didn’t have space to do the full ruth stout method so just found space under my existing apple tree bed which was already mulched with wood chips. Fingers crossed it works 🤞

Excited to see yalls ups for this year! Happy gardening!

I just stumbled on your site and love your explanations. Thanks for all the time you put into your videos!

I have recently moved and are starting over with, among other things, my asparagus patch. I had planted my patch where I lived before just like you without all the amendments. I had excellent results as well. Oh by the way, my asparagus are my children. 👍🏻

Thank you for the update! I started growing asparagus a couple years ago and next year I expect to harvest. I'm really excited to follow your journey as it parallels mine

This was an incredibly helpful series as I prepare to companion plant coming crowns!! I love your style. Thanks!

We've grown asparagus for decades - didn't know there were male and female plants and we've never seen berries.

Always good to see whats going on with your garden, and different plants you try. Fun to watch anything growing. Have sweet potatoes and garlic started for fall, and cleared all of the summer away. Glad your asparagus and strawberries have taken. Enjoyed the update. 😊👍

This is something I hope to try in spring 2021. I have a bunch of asparagus started in oatstraw and have mulched with some peastraw this fall - hope to get some strawberries started next spring - thanks for your tips! I'm going to go check for berries on the aparagus right now!

After your first asparagus video we planted a few crowns in our own garden bed in 2 locations. 1 didn't go super well, but the other put up 2ft tall ferns and probably about a dozen shoots per crown in the first season. We also ended up with a few berries on our "all male" plants, but after doing research we discovered that sexing an asparagus plan is imprecise and you should expect a few "errors" so those are likely female. Thanks for the inspiration.

I have an asparagus bed it spreads a lot , love your videos. Hello to Paula.

Love your videos, God Bless you both!!

Can’t wait to get ours in next spring!

Waiting for another of your amazing videos..

Thanks for sharing this

We had the same thing happen with all "male" plants. There were some female plants in there and I harvested seeds last fall to try growing new seedlings to add to the bed. Adding strawberries this year along with some herbs.

Thank you for update

Cool that stuff is working out so well and with so little input, which is really the way it should be. I wish we could use straw here, but the woodlice love hiding under it and decimate my strawberries if I use it, so I use compost instead, is more work but works fine.

It's pretty common in 'male only' Asparagus stock that you get the occasional female plant mixed in there accidentally.

Don't beat yourself up about disturbing the soil, i think it'll be fine :-) i've made new beds in the spring by spreading out carsboard, just a little compost because I didn't have much and a third thin layer of mulch. that killed the weed just fine. It's still a lot of work but flipping sods is more exhausting I guess. Love your video Style by the way, it's so relaxing :-)

I liked your Video even before it started because I knew it was going to be great

Welcome back

200k+ subscriber 🙌🏼 please do more video! Always very interesting to learn

You know for MANY years I did the ruth stout thing. But came a point that chopped leaves and heavy mulches were just not enough. I began incorporating blood and bone meals and wood ash. POOF, bigger plants, happier plants, less disease.

My asparagus berries were green for at least 2 months. They did finally turn red and left them on the plant for another month. Birds didn't disturb them. They obviously knew when the time was ripe for harvest. I decided to pick the berries one day after checking them the day before and not one berry was left - in a matter of one day...lesson learned...

Yay! This is amazing!!

My grandfather had delicious strawberries in his garden years ago. He used to give the plants a trim after the first fruiting and we'd get another later in the summer/autumn. Most tasty strawberries I ever tasted, along with the wild ones I used to pick in the forest. Have you considered growing some vertically? It looks like you have plenty of space but I think growing vertically is always good to consider. I look forward to doing it, whenever we'll have our garden.🤗

We just bought seeds planted them all in a bag and when they sprouted, we planted them in a flowerbed.

I do a lot of research on this as I am working on a Moon Greenhouse system for a advanced project. That said something you should think about is if you put the turned soil in a black plastic bag to compost to increase the soil but kill off the vegetation. This will cause a few chemical reactions produce methane and carbon dioxide. The key is that the composting will increase the quality of the soil. The plants in truth breath Carbon dioxide but by doing this composting enriches the soil for the plants growing.This also helps the PH of the soil.

if any of the strawberry plants survived when you planted them, the mulch would definitely have killed them

HooRay! Blessings Abound!

flipping sod is very much like what pigs do. very natural.

I Have had much better results when just buying live strawberry plants as the crowns in my experience tend to be a bit finicky to use

I dont like to dig either so i made a raised bed on top of sod for my asparagus (~30cm or 1 foot deep) in hopes it thawed sooner here in Winnipeg 🥶🇨🇦. Still 3-4feet of snow to melt until i find out results 🤞

That was awesome, ty. Now I want to eat strawberries.

Either digging in or turning over sod is really good green manure my best potatoes was like this

My male plants have a few small berries on them now. I am pleased to know it's not just mine. 😅

Would love to see an update on this!!

I threw a crown of asparagus at the end of my stone driveway and covered it with around 2" grass clippings in spring. I have never watered it or fed it anything and the soil below is a mixture of compact clay and debris from the driveway. Onto 4th year with it now and hoping it will beat the 9 harvested spears that it produced last year.

I have tried the Dowding approach with success, although some plants did not survive the first attempt at planting. The nutrients must be topped up to keep these plants growing.

My 30 all male asparagus ended up with 4 females also, after the third year saved seeds frim them and started 30 new plants that ended up being 2/3 male....

I have an asparagus/strawberry bed in its 4th year. I bought male/male hybrid crowns and I get some red berries on my plants. But out of the 32 crowns I planted and all of the shoots in the bed only maybe 4 or 5 shoots got berries. So a very low percentage get berries.

You are doing a lot of research and I guess you work a lot in the garden. I couldn't even grow salad in a relevant amount - probably watered not enough and had bad seeds. First year gardening though, plan to keep doing it but other stuff eats time as wll...

I don't know how others made out this year, but I have been finding a lot of dead dry root stock. The plant you showed in your video I'm pretty sure was dead already. I have been able to get about 50-70 strawberries to live I've seen almost as many dead and I've managed to kill another 5-10 in the blistering Florida sun. Oops. Here's hoping the final 50 for this year at least arrive alive. Good luck & keep healthy.

seven minutes and twenty seconds I can almost hear Jeff Goldblum say "life finds a way"

Yes, you have females. I started my asparagus from seeds, they were supposed to be all male too - but i got a couple females out of 12 plants.

Thanks so much for putting this all together. I am in southern Ontario and was disappointed when the asparagus crowns I ordered did not arrive last spring. I used the extra time to cover the intended bed with a thick layer of hay and will try again next year. Where did you get your crowns from?

Asparagus is easy to grow, people just don't like to wait until the second year. I grow them from seed, much less expensive and not so much at the mercy of a store. The one thing I could say about Asparagus, if you can hold off another year and let all the sprouts form leaves, it will greatly compound what you get the third year. to me it is a bit like honey from bees... yes you can technically take some honey after the first winter, but you are much better just letting the bees prosper and then cashing in on year 3.

I have one female in my bed. It produces enough berries to add plants to the bed and give me seed to grow for others.

OLD LEATHER SMITH here, I plant Hot peppers 4 my dry pepper, I dry naturally, and grind into pepper which was intended 2 B 4 me but some friends found out so I now supply them and 1 chief, it takes me about a year 2 produce, this year t am cross pollinating GHOST & HABANERO, I have had 4 harvests so far, the Ghost & Habanero went in late but first harvest will start Tommorow 11/01/20, I really appreciate your videos thank you, GOD'S BLESSINGS ✝️⚾🙃

your posture and tone remind me of Bruce Darren from RED Gardens, especially in the intro

I like your sessions .. practical and enjoyable. I have a question ... maybe you cannot answer ... I have a raised garden bed and 1 out of 4 heads have taken off. Problem is that the bed has sunken ... I want to top up 6 to 10 inches ... should I 'transplant' the one or just back fill on top? Thoughts?

Need an update for the asparagus/strawberry companion planting, when new information is available. Thanks!

i waitted for this video jeeeej

Hi ! Thank you so much for your videos, very instructive. The animations are really helpful and I love them. How much time do you spend (on avergage) in your garden ? And would you think feasable to be entirely self sufficient (in food) this way and still have time for a job the rest of the time ? Thank you in advance for your answer and I wish you a pleasant day 🙂 Jeremy

Didn't think covering strawberry crowns w mulch was a good idea but the problem could of also been more dried than average plants. I bought some bare root strawberries that looked pretty dry. Only a few green leaves out of 20. I planted them and none of the more dried out ones have show any life. I tried again with a closeout sale batch that was much worse looking. Out of about 30, 5 had some decent green tip. 10 or so were just a bit less dry than the last part that were very dry and dead looking. I planted the not quite dead and as a test I bundled the totally dried ones and put them in a pitcher of water with the level just below the crown. It turns out the migrade ones had only 1 start to grow but the very dead looking ones are popping up with green all over. They say to soak the plants for an hour or so but I'm telling you if they aren't fairly green at the top soak the roots for days and get some green showing. I may also add some liquid fert . I already gave them a bit of B vitamin.

Those strawberry crowns were definitely dead before they even went in, and drowning them in so much mulch would have sealed the doom of any that might have had even a sliver of strength left in them. Male asparagus ferns do bear berries, but they never redden up, as the female ones do. Preparing my own asparagus/strawberry beds this year, it's very informative to see how others go about it and, my, there are so many out there telling us exactly how to go about it! I like your humbler, honest approach about what you did and why you did it. I'm also late starting in that I didn't leave my bed a whole year with black mulch on it, like the no-diggers would have it. No - I was growing food in that bed all of last year! Have you noticed how some famous no-diggers have enormous amounts of land and seemingly endless supplies of perfect compost (= either a lot of work, or a lot of money), not to mention plenty of time! It's not the case for most of us. I won't go as far as flipping the sods, but I've used a grelinette fork to loosen everything up and allow me to pull out the big perennial weeds, leaving the annuals to be root-frozen by this week's frosts. You're absolutely right, I feel, to model your ideas on the local wild-growing asparagus, and I wish you many great harvests to come.

Now that I've finally got a space to do some gardening for the foreseeable future I am thinking about giving asparagus a go but wondered what would be a suitable companion plant. This sounds like a good plan. Just to point out though that asparagus berries are poisonous. Eating young stalks raw in quantity is also not a good idea.

This is info I needed when I needed it (tho' 2 years after you posted). I've been looking into dioecious plants for a particular answer. I found that Asparagus can produce hemaphrodidic males which can bear (usually sparse and unviable) berries. My burning question is: Will all the seeds from a single berry produce plants of same sex?

Yayyyyyyyyyy!

#1 problem is probably poor drainage. IMO if you had a raised bed that provided the full 18-24 inches of well-drained garden-soil then you'd see double the growth you're experiencing here. Drain-tile helps but IMO the tall-filled-raised-garden-bed provides more growth.

I've never had any luck with growing strawberry crowns. Out of dozens I've planted, I've never gotten one to grow.

This method is also called double digging...just a friendly FYI

😊👍

Derek, I should think a good compost tea would soak to the asparagus roots, and they should be fine. Yes?