A plate of freshly harvested asparagus, dripping in butter and sprinkled with Halen Môn is a much anticipated early celebration that heralds the bounty that is to come. The season starts around St George’s day, better known to us as Anti Gwyn’s birthday, and ends on the summer solstice. This seasonal treat can be quite addictive and an expensive habit. This is incentive enough to grow it and well worth the effort if, like us, you enjoy a plateful of fresh asparagus.
I have a 5 year old asparagus bed. However, its harvests have been disappointingly meagre. I’d like to say that its performance, or lack of it, has nothing to do with me and that it’s just one of those things, but I was taught never to lie. Despite spending a lot of time rigorously researching and seeking reliable advice on how to grow asparagus, I chose to ignore all that I’d learned. Not because of a lack of conviction, but because I was overwhelmed by greed and this, compounded by an impatient gene, made me harvest the spears in the first year. Anyone who knows anything about growing asparagus will tell you not to even consider harvesting until the third year.
Last year I took the bull by the horns and decided to plant up a new bed and this time I fully intended to follow the guidelines. Asparagus requires well drained soil, not easy when you garden on the best Anglesey clay.
Inevitably, the first step was to sort out the drainage, we divided the bed into quarters. We dug the first quarter to a depth of 2 feet.
We then lined the bed with a layer of between 5 and 6 inches of horticultural grit, mixed more grit and well rotted manure into the excavated soil and piled it back on top of the grit. We repeated this step for each of the 3 remaining quarters.
We used string to mark out the trenches and this helped to ensure that they were as straight as possible. We then dug foot wide trenches to a depth of 6 inches. In the centre of each trench we made a ridge. To plant the asparagus we put the centre of each crown on the ridge with the roots lying to each side of the ridge and then covered them with about 3 inches of soil.
We planted the asparagus about 2 feet apart.
A year later and here they are. Protected and not to be touched for at least another year.
Bara, pridd a Prosecco 