Son's place came with previous tenant's attempt at vegetable gardening including a small asparagus patch - maybe started with a pack of 5-6 roots, there are that many big stalks, but loaded with a coarse, tall grass with really tough roots. Is there any wisdom you can share on dealing with that grass? Is it not worth the fight? The ground is rather stony, reddish, clay based. Could really use a load of old manure.. would that help smother/soften the grass?

At this stage of the game, You need to pull that grass. Hopefully after a good rain. Composted manure or regular compost in the late fall When you cut the ferns. Put on at least to inches, in the spring the asparagus will push up through it. but it will hold down annual weeds both grasses and broadleaf. Exceptions are Bermuda and purple nutsedge. Those two you need to dig up the crowns this fall and restart in a different spot.

Thanks Dillard.
This isn't bermuda or nutsedge, it is a tall hard and really strong rooted one I also see here now and then. We'll see what we can do. Yesterday WAS after two days rain, it isn't going to get much better

Can you post a pic of the grass? I deal with a number of grassy weeds, so if I can figure out which one it is, I might have some idea how to handle it. You're lucky it's not bermudagrass, that's my biggest nemesis (massive, major pain...almost impossible to eradicate without herbicide), but I also deal with Japanese stiltgrass, smartweed (I think?), quackgrass, and dalis grass.

I can try to show what I think is the same here...