The time has soon arrived to plant asparagus over here (Dec-Jan) and I wonder if there is anyone here who has been growing asparagus successfully for a few years in 9b (Sacramento valley).
Please share what variety you had/have success with.
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I am in zone 10a and planting asparagus for the first time this year as well. The local nursery had 3 varieties–Mary Washington, Jersey Knight, and a purple one I don’t remember the name of. I chose the Jersey Knight because it is an all-male variety and is supposed to have 2-3 times higher yields than the heirloom varieties like Mary Washington.
I planted mine yesterday. Not sure how it will perform in this climate zone, but we shall see. I’m assuming that if growing it in this area were totally out of the question, the nursery wouldn’t carry it.
Not specific to your zone, but I just wanted to chime in on the “all male” hybrid thing. I planted some Jersey Night crowns and 3 of 10 turned out to be females. I think this is fairly common to get some female plants in the mix, so it might be better to thing of them as mostly male instead of all male. It certainly isn’t as many as growing the heirloom varieties, but I probably would have gone with the heirloom plants from seed instead of spending more for the hybrids if I had known. The female plants still produce pretty well, so not a huge deal, except I do get seedlings popping up around my beds.