Social media went crazy for the idea of planting strawberries and asparagus together: "twice the harvest from one space!"Here's what I learned from my dedicated, multi-year experiment with this popular gardening hack.
A few years ago, I came across an idea on Pinterest that jumped out at me. It was a gardening tip from a fellow homestead blogger, who suggested growing strawberries and asparagus together in the same garden bed.
It was supposed to be an incredible space-saving strategy, so I gave it a try. For 3 years, I tweaked my shared asparagus-and-strawberry garden bed experiment, to see if I could find a perfect equilibrium that resulted in asparagus and strawberry harvests that could rival my mono-culture garden beds.
Being of an experimenting nature, I wanted to rule out as many variables as possible before deciding whether the project was a success.
For asparagus, I tried growing Mary Washington and Viking varieties - both plants I'd started from seed and ones I'd grown from store-bought crowns. For strawberries, I grew Sparkle, Chieftain, and Old North Sea varieties.
Regardless of the combination of varieties, and even with working hard to maintain the shared bed and keep it appropriately fertilized, I found that growing asparagus and strawberries together just was not as successful or productive as growing them separately.
Both varieties of asparagus did OK, but not as well as those in beds without strawberries.
The strawberries of all varieties showed significantly less vigor, and were significantly less fruitful than the strawberries grown without asparagus in other locations in my gardens.
Both raised-bed and field-grown strawberry plants far outperformed those that were grown with asparagus.
It's been a fascinating experiment, but at the end of this growing season, it's time to bring it to a close. I'll be digging up my experimental asparagus & strawberry beds, and replanting them with asparagus. The strawberry plants will get re-located to other garden beds.
I always feel like if I've learned something new with gardening, than any experiment can be called a success.
I'm glad I gave this "Pinteresting" idea a try, and now I'll be glad to move on to a setup I now know works better for me here in my Zone 5a Maine gardens.
Have you tried growing asparagus and strawberries together? I'd love to hear how it went for you!
Happy gardening!
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Anna Chesley is a freelance writer living a homestead lifestyle, with a special love for family travel, old books, vintage skills, and seaside living. In addition to founding Salt In My Coffee, she runs the website, New England Family Life, as well as The 1800's Housewife, a website devoted to re-creating authentic 1800's recipes.
Erin says
I have tried growing asparagus and strawberries in the same bed. Although the harvests were a huge success and the plant did amazingly well and grew healthy, I had such a hard time getting to them. When I planted my asparagus, I planted in rows and had some rough pathways to walk through. Obviously you can’t really control strawberries and their runners and by the second year there was no space to walk. I got tired of doing acrobatics to get to my harvest so I ended up digging all the strawberries out and moving them.
Edda says
Would love to learn from your experience. Curious to know what spacing you used. If you used the same asparagus spacing as in the monocrop, and the asparagus did just as well, then I would think that anything the strawberries produced is essentially a free bonus i.e. produce from ground that otherwise producing nothing. It's not really a question of how the strawberries did compared with monocrop strawberries, but how much overall produce (x amount asparagus + y amount strawberries) you got from the intercropped plot vs the mono crop (for instance same amount asparagus but 0 bonus strawberries).
Megan says
Thanks for the info! I was considering adding asparagus to my strawberry patch, but I'm thinking I'll find a different place for them after all.
Anna Chesley says
I would definitely recommend that! After allowing one area of this experiment to continue for yet another year, I am even more convinced that intermingling strawberries and asparagus is just is not an idea growing situation. Best of luck to you!
Paula says
Giving you a thumbs up!!👍👍. Trying to figure what type of Raspberries I have and how to prune them. Went to a few sites and my brain still wasn’t clear. Came to yours and FINALLY I GOT IT!!! You did a great job in your two articles THANK YOU!!! Most mine are ever-bearing and 2 are summer bearing. Now I can prune soon. Thanks again.