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I’ve been eating my own home-grown asparagus for two years now, and I love having it in the garden. It’s been kind of painful in some respects, though, because to grow it successfully you need to have patience – something I don’t really have! With most of the growing I’m talking about in this book, you’ll get to plant and eat something within the first few months, but asparagus isn’t like that. It won’t produce properly for the first three years, as the plants have to build their network of roots and store huge quantities of nutrients and energy in order to produce their lovely spears. It’s this initial investment in time, as well as its low weight yield per square metre and the fact that it can’t be churned out, that makes asparagus a more expensive vegetable to buy in the shops. Understanding all this has just made me love and respect this delicate and luxurious vegetable even more. Just remember to pick and cook it as quickly as possible to get the most flavour out of it.

It goes without saying that you don’t have to grow your own, as it’s possible to buy good asparagus from your local supermarket or market, but please only buy it when it’s in season and has travelled from field to store as soon as possible after picking. If you’re buying out of season from the other side of the world it can be okay, but it definitely won’t be a memorable experience. There are loads of different varieties that you can get hold of in good supermarkets – long thin ones, wild straggly ones and beautiful chunky ones.

Asparagus is one of the most nutritious vegetables you can eat. It contains a whole cocktail of nutrients and vitamins, including a large amount of folic acid (this can’t be stored in your body so has to be taken daily – it looks after your blood and is especially good for pregnant women as it protects against spina bifida in developing babies). Asparagus is also a wonderful diuretic, which means it cleanses your liver. And if your liver’s happy, everything else tends to be happy as well!

So even though growing these little babies can be a labour of love, it all becomes worth it when the spears pop their heads up through the soil. When they’re ready, simply click them off at the base (that way you won’t get any woody, stringy stalk), give them a quick wash, and the world of asparagus cooking will be at your fingertips. You can steam the spears, boil them or quickly stew them in pasta sauces to exaggerate all their juiciness and sweetness, or you can dry-grill or roast them to bring out their unusual nutty flavour, which you might not have tasted before.

Whichever way you choose to cook asparagus, a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil or a dot of butter will really make the most of it. Other friends of asparagus are eggs, smoky crispy bacon, lovely mozzarella, Parmesan, any crumbly cheese like Lancashire or Cheshire, chilli, cream, seafood, herbs like mint, parsley, basil, rosemary... the list goes on.


How I grow asparagus

Soil
Asparagus can be a fussy plant, but it can also be one of the easiest vegetables to grow if you’re patient and give it the right conditions from the very start. It needs a rich, free-draining, slightly sandy soil in a warm, sheltered, sunny part of the garden. However, the soil I have in the garden at home is a thick Essex clay that’s cold and soggy in winter and hard and dry in summer – just the conditions asparagus hates! I didn’t want to give up at the first hurdle though, so to give mine the best chance I made raised beds for it, filling them with the right soil – a mixture of coarse, sandy grit, rubble, good soil, well-rotted compost, manure and leaf mould. It’s definitely worth the effort, because now the beds are established the plants will crop for at least ten years (and possibly even longer). As asparagus is a perennial plant it will come back every year, and it doesn’t like to be moved very much. When you’ve found the right place in the garden for it the asparagus will need to stay there, so pick a spot you’re happy with.

Planting
Asparagus is cheap to raise from seed, but as I’ve found out, it can take three years to grow big and strong enough to crop. A good shortcut is to buy one- or two-year-old ‘crowns’, which are ready-grown plants, from a garden centre or nursery. Ten should be enough to feed an average-sized family. Seeds should be sown individually in 5cm pots or module trays in spring. When the seedlings are a few months old and 10 to 15cm high you can transfer them into larger 10 to 15cm pots, making sure you use good potting compost. Keep them growing until the following spring, when they’ll be large enough to plant outside in the ground.

Crowns can be planted outside straight away, bud-side up. All you need to do is bury them about 10 to 15cm deep, spaced 30 to 45cm apart, down the middle of your raised beds. Bare-root crowns may need to have their roots spread out – it’s a bit like planting an octopus! Water them well at first, but when established they rarely need extra water. Keep the growing area well weeded and spread a 10cm layer of rotted manure, compost or leaf-mould over it each winter. This will help to protect the crowns from cold weather and enriches the soil – they’ll love you for it.

Asparagus grows quite well in big pots (30 to 45cm wide) filled with rich, free-draining potting compost, so if you don’t have a garden you can still grow a few spears. They are very pretty plants as well, with fern-like foliage.

Harvesting
You can start to pick your asparagus in the third year after planting crowns. But only for one month during this first season, as the plant will still be expanding its root system and if too many spears are removed it will weaken the plant. During the fourth year and thereafter, feel free to pick spears from their first appearance in the spring until the middle of June.

Only pick spears that are 12 to 20cm in length and do it by cutting them at the base, or snapping them. Cutting may damage some spear tips that are still below the soil, so, although it’s the method preferred by commercial growers, I think it’s best to snap them. To do this, grasp your spear near the base and bend it towards the ground. The spear will break off at the lowest point where there’s no fibre. As asparagus can deteriorate so quickly after picking, either eat it immediately or blanch it in boiling water before freezing it.

My growing tips
• Asparagus will develop root rot if allowed to stand in water. This can destroy a complete bed really quickly, so make sure that all water can drain away easily.

• Asparagus roots have a tendency to rise up out of the soil as the bed matures, so it’s a good idea to add a covering of soil to keep the crowns under cover if you see this happening.

• Late spring frosts can kill emerging spears, so cover your bed with garden fleece if there’s a cold snap.