My asparagus plants are about 4 years old. I’ve been keeping the ferns on all winter, then removing them in the spring as the new spears come up. Would it make any difference if I remove them in the fall? Do they serve any purpose during winter? And if I can remove them in the fall, does it matter whether I remove them when they’re still green or should I wait until they turn brown?
if you leave them up a winter then you don’t step on your plants.
doesn’t seem to make a major difference when taking down otherwise as i’ve seen or heard.
I have one that’s probably … lessee … * looks up and mumbles * … at least five or six years old now (tough little bastards!) and I just snap off the fronds once they’re brown and dried, but that’s primarily to clean it up visually. Concur with johnpost that they primarily serve to mark where the hell the plants are so you don’t dig them up or leave a bag of sand on them all winter.
For the record, mine’s in-ground now but lived in a pot for at least four or five years - never a soil change - and got almost no protection from winter freezes, so I wasn’t kidding when I called them tough bastards. (Yeah, yeah, I live in Texas, but we DO get winter nights down into the 20s and teens. They’re sporadic and not numerous enough to call a proper “winter” but just enough to kill off plants that otherwise would have been fine. :()