(upbeat music)
- Asparagus is a lovely plant to grow, not difficult.
And it gives you harvest at a time of year
when not many other vegetables are producing.
That's the early spring, from late April hereabouts,
so a climate temperate, oceanic until the longest day,
roughly, say June 21st.
Today's June 24th, so actually we did stop picking
on June 21st, that was three days ago.
So it gives you an idea of how already the asparagus spears
that we've been picking are rapidly now growing
and developing into ferns.
Starting out asparagus, there's two ways I'd recommend.
One is sowing seed, under cover.
If you have propagation space, it's really not difficult.
Or you can buy crowns and that will give you
a one-year advantage over sowing seeds
in terms of waiting for harvest.
From sowing seeds, it's about four years
until first harvest.
From planting crowns, it's about three years.
It might sound a long time, but time flies, as we all know,
so you'll be pleasantly surprised, I think,
how quickly you can be picking asparagus.
Here, when I started out in December 2012,
that's five and a half years ago, it was very weedy
and the weeds were a lot of perennial weeds,
like buttercups and dandelions in this case.
And ideally, they need mulching and eliminating
before planting crowns of asparagus.
So if you have a very weedy patch and want to get going
that's where sowing seeds can be worthwhile,
'cause you can be raising your plants
while you're mulching the weeds and killing them.
And sowing seeds, buying seeds,
is cheaper than buying crowns.
However, all of it's a good investment.
Crowns are a good investment,
because don't skimp on the cost of buying crowns.
They're going to be with you for a very long time.
A patch of asparagus like this
can go on producing for another 20 years yet
from where we are now.
So that initial amount spent on crowns is worth it
in the long term to get good ones.
And good ones includes all-male hybrids,
which put more energy in their growth into spear and leaf
rather than seed and fruit.
So when you plant them,
give them also a decent amount of space.
Like here, I've got a good two foot, even a bit more.
So that's around 70 centimeters between each planting.
And between each row, well, it's a bit more than that,
about a meter, three and a half feet.
So that's the extent of my patches.
Nine meters long, just under 30 feet.
And to give you an idea of yield,
in the fourth year, fourth spring,
we had five and a half kilos,
then last spring eight and a half,
and this spring just finished, we had 15 and a half,
that's around 33 pounds of asparagus spears.
Lovely harvest over a period of eight weeks or so.
Little and often.
It's sometimes made to sound quite difficult,
but it's not really.
And mainly I think for weeding with this approach,
with thorough mulching initially.
So this is no dig,
I just mulch the weeds with cardboard compost.
You could do it with pulsing, even initially,
just to get rid of those perennial weeds.
And then it's just a question of coping
with any annual weeds that germinate
and you don't disturb the soil at all, there's no need.
So you're just mulching on top.
I put four to five centimeters,
just under two inches of can be quite rough compost
on every autumn, after clearing the crowns.
And that's the total extent of any feeding fertilizer I do.
And that really slows down the weed growth.
We do almost no weeding here.
It really is an easy area to maintain.
And one other thing I've done is put this on top,
which was all the regrowth that you get,
the spears becoming ferns.
If I was standing here in four weeks time,
you would hardly see me
because the ferns are kind of up here.
It's like a jungle.
This path becomes unwalkable
for most of the summer and autumn, but I do nonetheless.
I crawl through it, actually, looking for the odd weed
'cause I just want to make sure no weeds go to seed.
That's the key thing.
So the ground is clean.
And then by autumn, we got these tall two meter,
six foot plus high ferns held in by wire,
that's to stop them blowing over,
'cause they are a bit fragile
in terms of falling over or not.
But by autumn, you don't want them here anymore
'cause you want the ground clear for next springs.
So I actually scythe them, I take a scythe and I chunk
just above ground level,
and then I pile them up in this pathway here
and walk on them a few times
and that breaks them up and they become a surface mulch
for years to come, feeding back into the soil.
So little things like that all contribute
to making it a better job.
And just looking around,
I think I pretty much covered all angles here,
but one thing I will just mention is
how you can see the progression of growth from spear
to very tall spear
to a few ferns
that are already behind me.
And there's one other thing I'll mention, which is picking.
Now, this is green asparagus, not white.
And in some countries it's very much the fashion
to grow white asparagus, where all the growth
is happening below soil level,
and you actually need to go hunting with a special knife
for the white blanch spears.
And that's fine, if that's what you like.
On the other hand, it's actually really easy
to grow the green ones, which is what we do.
And to give you an example, I mean, this is what I do.
I pick it, like that.
This would be picking asparagus.
And so that's why you can see a lot of stalks here
from where I've harvested through the spring.
I just find this a very easy and quick way.
It's partly about time-saving.
So I'm not even getting out a knife.
And when you pick a spear, you can feel,
just by bending it a bit first,
where it might become woody and stemmy underneath,
with the bit you won't want to eat.
So that way all of that is nice and tender and good to eat.
So, go for it.
(peaceful guitar music)