Why is asparagus so expensive?!
Why is asparagus so expensive?
compared to other veggies?
Answers:
Asparagus is hard to grow and it does not produce any stalks the first couple of years, so the farmer must cultivate and feed and water a plant that will not produce until a couple years later. These stalks then must be cut by hand to preserve the plant. Once cut, they must be sold quickly to preserve the freshness or they will dry out and be no good. All this costs money.
Source(s):
experience
because the demand is so low that they need to set the price higher in order to make money
There is such a limited time that it can be harvested between being too small and shooting up.
supply and demand. Low supply and high demand = high price. Its also a premium vegetable and the better something tastes the more it costs. They charge more because they know people will pay it.
it only grows for a very short period of time, and it's high in demand, therefore expensive
It only comes out in the early spring. So it is cheap for a couple of months. The rest of the year it has to be raised in greenhouses.
expensive crop, corn and potatoes is so cheap and they just grow and grow either way, asperagus is more suseptable to poor wheather and other things and hence more dies or doesnt grow
Because it's not in season now, when vegetables are easy to grow because that's when they would grow naturally in the wild, and therefore less expensive.
Asparagus is naturally a spring vegetable, therefore would need to be grown in a greenhouse at this time of the year.
Because it takes a *long* time to get a crop from it! Plant your Asparagus seed this year. It will have to grow all year, go dormant through the winter, grow one more entire year, go dormant one more winter and then the third spring you can *finally* get to harvest the fresh shoots! You might be able to get a second crop but normally you wait another year.
Get the idea?
Labor and time.
Asparagus requires a light sandy soil, the roots are set deep, and take several years to come into full production.
Soil is heaped in windrows atop the emerging shoots to keep the sun off of them as much as possible as they gain size, then they are cut by hand using a cutter that is poked down into the soil to cut the stalks off below where they are blanched from the soil covering.
It takes two years to grow.