Asparagus propagates through seeds that the asparagus flower of a female or hermaphrodite plant develops in autumn. However, in the large asparagus fields only male plants grow whose seeds do not germinate.
How to propagate asparagus?
Asparagus propagates by seeds, which are developed in autumn from female or hermaphrodite plant flowers. To obtain asparagus seeds, you can buy them from specialist retailers, harvest them from your own plants or exchange them with neighbors and hobby gardeners.
Where to get seeds?
There are several ways to get asparagus seeds:
- Buy seeds from a specialist retailer
- Harvest asparagus seeds from your own plants
- Exchange with neighbors or hobby gardeners
Seeds from large asparagus fields usually unusable
In order to plant a few spears of asparagus in your home garden, it is usually not worth buying large bags of seeds. That's why hobby gardeners like to collect a few grains from the large commercially grown asparagus fields. However, usually only male plants are kept there.
However, male plants do not produce germinable seeds. If you don't know whether the plants are male or female, ask or ask other hobby gardeners for a few seeds.
Buy seeds for the desired asparagus varieties yourself from a specialist retailer, make sure that you choose female or hermaphrodite plant seeds and not male plants (€6.00 on Amazon). Then you can get seeds for propagation yourself from the second year of growing asparagus.
Getting seeds from your own plants
After the asparagus season, the asparagus is no longer picked or cut.
The asparagus plants then form long green stems with feathery leaves. Asparagus begins to bloom in summer.
If the foliage of the asparagus plants is dark yellow, the seeds are ripe and can be collected. They are removed from the pulp and laid out to dry.
Why collecting the seed is necessary
Even if you don't need seeds to grow in the garden, you should collect the grains carefully. If you leave them on the leaves, they will fall ripe to the ground. Next year your garden will be littered with small asparagus plants.
Many hobby gardeners are happy when they receive asparagus seeds as a gift, especially if they are rare varieties. Simply exchange your seeds for other plants.
Tips & Tricks
Experienced hobby gardeners immediately plant the freshly harvested asparagus seeds in small pots and grow the asparagus plants indoors over the winter. You can then plant quite large plants outdoors in May.
