Asparagus, weeds, Beetles, Salt, etc..? Please Help!

[farm48]

Folks, I have enjoyed asparagus for years, but the last couple have started to wear me slick! As I get older, the weeds are getting smarter and bigger. And for the last three years, I have been fighting asparagus beetles. I wish to stay organic, and have tried the Rotenone Pyrethrenes to no avail. I think the beetles just look at this as a new flavor of Koolade. I remember as a child, (somewhere right after the civil war) my parents used livestock salt to keep the weeds and grass down. In recent years, I have heard that this is no longer a practiced method. Why? And what can I do about those damned beetles that would still be organic? I already searched the archives and could find no suitable answers. I read in the archives that Cliff uses salt, and I am also a Missourian, so maybe he can tell me how to kill these damned, dastardly beetles. Bob.... Speed, Missouri...

[nedwina]

I'm no asparagus expert, but do you burn your "ferns" in the winter? Do you mulch? With what? Is it old?

I checked the life cycle of the asparagus beetle Crioceris asparagi . The adults overwinter in the dead stalks and in the litter/mulch around the plants. (Or in the ground too.) They wake up in the spring, mate and lay eggs. Eventually you have both the adults and their larvae munching away at the same time. When the larvae reach a certain stage of maturity, they drop into the litter below the asparagus and pupate into adults.

There can be up to 3 generations per season! That's alotta beetles, alright.

So aside from the munching on the ferns, there's alot of action going on in the ground (and/or mulch or leaf litter on the ground) around the plants. You may want to rake off all old mulch and replace with new. Maybe even do it a few times over the course of a season, to disrupt the life cycle. And certainly burn or dispose of far away all debris at the end of the season too.

This was a good link: http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/vegpest/aspbeet.htm

This too: http://www.meisterpro.com/vim/chap14.pdf

I don't know how big your patch is, but it might be worth it to do a total renovation. Rake away all mulch & dead stuff, pull weeds, lay down newspaper and remulch. Easy for me to say, eh?!

And I tried to find out information on attracting Tetrastichus asparagi, which is a small wasp that preys on the beetle, but I couldn't find out any useable information- like what plants they like, etc.

[mjc]

I have, in the past, burned the whole bed...

In the middle of winter, I've gone out and burned off all the dead weeds and stalks. This reduced the litter immensely. Then the following spring, I mulched the entire bed, heavily with composted manure. That combination seems to have broken the beetle cycle for a few years at a time.

[mjc]

After a quick search, myself...I've come to the conclusion that salt on asparagus must be of some benefit, otherwise all the 'masters' wouldn't be screaming NO! use (substitute chemical cocktail dujour) to control weeds/grass. (Salt is cheap, plentiful and can be bought anywhere...no special gear is needed to apply it...)

Almost all the Extension service links recommend chemical treatment, especially with things like Princep, Poast, Prism and even glyphosphate...yum.

[Dramaqueen]

have you ever considered companion planting? petunas are a BOSS for asparagus beetles

[jadek]

How exactly does one use salt in the garden? Wouldn't that ruin the soil?

[mjc]

Asparagus is probably native to the Mediterranean and was quite probably a coastal plant. It is a bit more than salt tolerant so it can handle that amount of salt, most everything else (unless you've got 'shore grasses') can't.

The old Rodale stuff I've looked through, on asparagus said something like 1 lb of rock salt per 100' row. And that was a one shot in either early spring, before the asparagus comes up or in July after it was done. It will take a little while (couple off months) for rock salt to dissipate, but by the next year, it should mostly be gone (leached well down into the soil or run off to elsewhere...). Also, while I did find that it can be done every year, it wasn't recommended...some of the things I found said every three years.

You aren't spreading it over the entire garden. You're putting in the asparagus bed...which will probably be in the same spot for 25+ years...

[farm48]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I will defiinitly try the salt, but sounds like I should wait awhile since its harvest time for the asparagus. I wonder if the salt will have any effect on the asparagus beetles? Thanks again, Bob...

[Cliff Timmons]

It won’t have an effect that I know of on either the beetle or the harvest.
I burn mine each winter and salt two or three times a summer to keep it cleaned up.

Oh, and I get a 40 lb bag of Livestock Salt and cover it evenly but thick enough that you can still see ground underneath but heavy enough it looks like a dusting of snow or something.

About like you would apply Seven Dust. "Can I say that here?" <Grin>

[farm48]

Thanks for the info Cliff, I do burn the asparagus bed each year in late winter, usually makes a pretty hot fire, but still I get those damned beetles. It is not a heavy infestation, but it is enough to tick me off! Thanks, Bob..

[Cliff Timmons]

Oh it does make me mad!
It's like, "I did everything right and these little varmits still come around!"
It almost becomes personal. <Grin>

[woody]

I spread straw and some leaves on the bed very early this spring so that I could burn off the fern and kill off the beetles. It worked fairly well so far this season but the beetles have now caught back up. I've always heard about salting but was slightly intimidated at the notion.http://woodysrockyridge.blogspot.com