Here’s PennLive garden writer George Weigel’s Plant Pick of the Week:
Common name: Asparagus ‘Millennium’Botanical name: Asparagus officinalis ‘Millennium’What it is: Asparagus is one of those rare vegetable-garden edibles that comes back year after year with a single planting, often for 15 years or more.
Largely because of its superior yield of spears, the Ontario-bred “Millennium” hybrid is becoming the go-to variety in many plant catalogs and garden centers.
In Minnesota trials, Millennium produced about 80% more in spear weight than the previously favored Jersey varieties.
A main reason for that is that most of this variety’s plants are males, which are higher-yielders than females (detectable by how females stalks produce red berries in fall).
Millennium was also good enough to earn a 2024 Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society as a plant variety deserving greater use in mid-Atlantic gardens.
North Dakota University Extension adds that the variety is long-lived, very cold-hardy and adaptable to less-than-ideal soils.
Size: The good-looking, ferny plants grow three to four feet tall. Space crowns about one foot apart at planting and cover with two to three inches of soil.Where to use: Because plants colonize, give asparagus its own bed. A section of a large vegetable garden is ideal, but asparagus’ ferny foliage is attractive enough that it makes a nice hedge or backdrop planting in any sunny part of the yard. A site with good drainage is also a must to prevent root-rotting.Care: Asparagus is usually planted from one- or two-year-old crowns in early spring. Do not harvest the first year. Allow plants to maximize energy, then harvest lightly the second spring.
From the third year on, cut finger-sized spears from late April through May (no more than six weeks of harvest total), then let the spears mature into ferny shoots the rest of the season.
Millennium is a little slower to get started than some asparagus varieties, so it may be year four until you see its peak yield.
Scatter a balanced fertilizer over the beds early each spring and again in early June after harvest ends. (Asparagus is a heavy nitrogen user.)
Work lime into the bed before planting if the soil is too acidy. Asparagus grows best at a neutral to slightly alkaline pH. Granular lime might need to be applied in fall to maintain a neutral pH.
Let plants stand until the stems collapse after a hard frost in fall. That allows the roots to recharge. Then cut them and compost them or shred the spent foliage and use it as mulch over the bed in winter.
A fall covering of compost or aged manure is another good way to supply nutrition.
Keep the beds weed-free, especially in the early going. Since asparagus is a perennial, it’ll be harder to control weed infestations than in garden beds that are cleared at the end of each season.
Good partner: Asparagus is best grown by itself since roots will fill in and colonize to make a dense planting.
However, the tall, ferny foliage makes a good backdrop, so you could plant a bed of peppers or hot peppers or even annual flowers to a bed in front.
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