asparagus beds

Asparagus.
I just recently bought a small farm and have been told there is a very large asparagus patch (or was) in one of the upper fields. My problem is I cant tell since the owners passed away years ago and someone has been mowing the field to keep down grass and weeds. Is there a way to tell if the plants are still viable or do I need to wait till spring?

As far as locating, late season asparagus turns into a whispy fern but the base will have the stems, old stalks still visible depending on how close the mowing was. It is a tough plant, viability will have to wait till spring hopefully you will have some female plants in the bed that have been reseeding.

How many years has the field been kept mowed? How short, and how often per year, was it mowed?

You are not likely to find stalks from more than a couple of years ago, and if the plants have been prevented from growing several feet tall, they are likely to be small and delicate if still alive.

True, they do have to fern out each season.

It’s been mowed for at least 5-6 years. And kept short from the looks of things.. we had a really dry summer this year so everything dried up hard. Should I mulch it now before the snow hits the ground or wait until the spring and cross my fingers. I am told the bed is approx 1/4 acre. So it would be sad to lose

My parents planted a 4' x 20' asparagus bed that kept us in all the asparagus we wanted to eat while I was growing up. When the family moved out, the tenants turned the whole garden (and the five acre field around it) into lawn that they mowed every weekend, and killed off the asparagus and the rhubarb plants. At least my father divided out the rhubarb to his new garden, and I was able to take some of that to establish a healthy rhubarb bed, and a new asparagus bed, in the house I built just up the hill.

Brenda Hovanec wrote:It’s been mowed for at least 5-6 years. And kept short from the looks of things.. we had a really dry summer this year so everything dried up hard. Should I mulch it now before the snow hits the ground or wait until the spring and cross my fingers. I am told the bed is approx 1/4 acre. So it would be sad to lose

That would be a lot of mulch. I wouldn't bother until I knew they were alive.
If they don't send up spears in the spring it's because they were mowed for 6 years and were never mulched, not because you didn't mulch this winter.