How-To: Planting asparagus crowns

Arwen @ CRAFT writes:

A friend just gave me an asparagus crown (the network of roots that supports an asparagus plant), so I figured I’d better figure out how to plant it! Unlike many garden vegetables, asparagus are a long-term investment; you aren’t supposed to harvest the asparagus for the first few years, to give the plant time to store as much energy as possible, and plants can survive for well over fifteen years! Most of the instructions I found online involve digging a trench for multiple plants in a proper vegetable garden. I’m a city girl with a container garden on my deck, but I’m hoping that a single plant will survive for a year or two in a big pot until I can transfer it to a bed in a backyard or community garden. By then it may even be time to harvest! Here are the step-by-step instructions I found from various tutorials online, adapted somewhat for a 15″ pot.