I'm planting Asparagus this spring for the first time ever. Lots of googling and youtubing. Not a gardener. Was raised around gardens, so pulling weeds and harvesting green beans is in my blood, but not getting things to grow.

I prepared my asparagus bed, got it primed and ready to go. Received my Jersey Surpreme Asparagus crowns (2-year) this week from Gurney's in the mail. I opened them up today, inspected them, and noticed that half of them appear to have small traces of what appears to be a light-green fuzzy mold growing on the roots. Is this normal? If not, what should I do? Should I contact Gurney's for replacement?

I'm in Southeast Missouri, btw, where we like to run around in shorts one day and shovel snow the next. A couple more nights of freezing temperatures are expected here (20's-30's) but we shouldn't have any more freezing precipitation. Instructions have said to plant in early spring. Is this too early? It's mid-late March, I already put a few crowns in the ground today. Was that a bad idea? Because it's not too late for me to remove them from the ground and store them until it warms up.

Finding good information on how to plant asparagus has been exasperating. So many different websites say different things. So here's what I did...

I dug a huge trench 18 inches deep, tested the soil, pulled out rocks, filled the trench with about 6 inches of new potting mix and potting soil, as well as some of the original ground soil, mixed it together, made a "furrow" (had to look that one up), planted some crowns as directed, and covered them in 3-4 inches of soil. I'll go back with more soil after I start seeing the crowns surface and eventually mulch after I get it up to the level I am shooting for. When I am done, the roots will be about 12-14 inches underground.

Anything I should have done differently, or should change while everything is still fresh? Nobody said anything about using store-bought potting soil to fill the trench. I didn't think it would hurt. Is that okay?