In Australia, commercial asparagus farms cut back vegetative growth and mulch it into the soil at the end of the growing season in order to return the nutrients in these plant parts to the soil. My question is whether this is better or more metabolically efficient for the crop than allowing natural translocation of nutrients to occur. Essentially the question might be: is uptake of nutrients from the roots more metabolically cost-effective than translocation from vegetative parts?
My current thoughts on this: