IT'S got stiff competition, but I reckon asparagus must be the tastiest plant you can grow.
Few vegetables are so popular that completely unrelated plants hijack their name to assume a more alluring lustre - asparagus pea, for one, which is faintly reminiscent of asparagus when smothered in butter.
Only a brave man should write about asparagus. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the indomitable Scots gardener James Justice wrote that growing asparagus could be "practised with very bad success ... owing to the ignorance of people who [only do] what they have heard of, or possibly read in some book"; he also claimed to have grown asparagus the equal of anything you could find at market. Having produced fairly good results over more than 30 years, I'll dare to tackle the subject.
When planted properly in a good position, asparagus crowns should keep cropping for at least 20 years, so choose plants carefully. When you're buying new crowns, always select "male only" varieties to be sure of a better crop. Male plants emerge earlier in the spring and remain productive for longer.
A female plant produces attractive flowers and seed heads but uses valuable nutrients to produce seed rather than prepare for next year's harvest. If self-sown seed does germinate, it'll be too close to the parent plant and will compete for nutrients. And if you're growing an F1 cultivar, for example Backlim F1, the next generation won't breed true to the parent.
Like its wild ancestor, cultivated asparagus has a complex root system. The wild asparagus you find along coastal Mediterranean hillsides grows in thin, rocky soil, so its roots need to dive deep into the rock for moisture and nutrients. The plant also has roots close to the surface to capture any available rain or dew. Fleshy asparagus roots, growing close to the surface, store moisture more efficiently than thin ones. This explains why an asparagus bed should be deep and fertile.
Only consider growing asparagus if you've plenty space. I recommend planting crowns 45cm apart in a row, with 90cm between rows.
Ideally, the bed should be double-dug the previous autumn. Dig out a row of soil in the bed and put it in a barrow. Fork over the soil underneath and mix in well-rotted manure or good compost. Cover this with soil from the second row and fork over the lower layer as before. Continue along the bed and add the soil from your barrow at the end of the bed. This should provide free-draining soil, essential for asparagus.
If you can obtain some rams' horns, you could follow the technique described by 17th-century agriculturalist John Worlidge: "Some curious persons put rams-horns at the bottom of the trench. They hold for certain that rams-horns have a certain sympathy with asparagus which makes them prosper the better." Alternatively, mix in hoof and horn fertiliser.
In March or early April, prepare the bed for asparagus crowns. Dig out a trench, 30cm deep, piling the soil to one side. Use good compost to make a shallow mound, 7cm high, along the middle of the trench. Lay the crowns along the mound, spreading the roots to each side of the mound. Gradually fill the trench with soil until full.
If planting one-year-old crowns, resist harvesting the following year; instead, reward yourself with a light picking in the third year. You can take a few spears the next year from two-year-old crowns. Keep the asparagus bed well fed every year by adding a thin layer of good compost in early spring. Add a generous sprinkling of seaweed meal to the bed when you stop cutting spears.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article