Grow, harvest & cook | asparagus

The sweetest, weirdest spring vegetable for coastal climes

Asparagus officinalis is quite possibly the best thing you’ll ever add to your edible garden. Now, admittedly I’ll also say that about artichokes, fennel, mulberry trees, mangoes and pretty much every other edible plant under the sun. But today we are talking asparagus and, in typical fashion, my efforts to get YOU excited about a plant have wound up getting ME way more excited than I expected and now all I want to do is fill our entire front garden with this fantastic perennial. I’m pretty sure I was even dreaming about it last night. 

Asparagus, sometimes colloquially known by it’s folk name, Sparrow Grass (so pretty and quaint!) is an edible perennial in the - aptly named - Asparagaceae family. Although named after Asparagus officinalis, this plant family includes a whole heap of other surprising plants, like hyacinths, bluebells, pineapple lilies, mondo grass, yuccas and agaves. Squint your eyes and look at them sideways and you can kinda see the resemblance between a hyacinth bud and an asparagus spear… but most of the Asparagus relatives are ones I would not have expected, and ones you definitely do not want to flash fry in butter and attempt to eat. 

Asparagus officinalis, though, is totally worth your time - and your butter - and if you haven’t considered adding it to your garden, you should. 

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ASPARAGUS

(Asparagus officinalis)

Cheat sheet

When to plant: winter

Position: full sun

Plant: direct

Depth: bury crowns 20cm deep

Time to harvest: 3 years (eep!)

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How to grow

Like artichokes, blueberries, fruit trees and capers, asparagus is a perennial, and will reward you with up to 20 years of productive harvests if you treat it right. The part we cook with, the spears, are actually the young shoots that burst upwards out of the ground in springtime. Left alone on the plant, these shoots will grow taller, thinner and fernier, bursting open into frothy, fluffy leaves atop a woody, stringy stem that is not nearly as tasty or as edible as the young shoots. That’s an understatement - it is woody, stringy, unchewable and entirely inedible. 

Asparagus plants are native to Europe and Western Asia, where they have been found growing along the coast. This is very convenient for those of us living in sandy, coastal regions, because (unlike many of the veggies we may try to grow) asparagus plants don’t mind a bit of salt in the soil, are moderately drought tolerant, and will tolerate alkaline soils. That said, they will grow better and more happily if you nurture them by enriching your soils with animal manure and giving them plenty of water in summer. They like full sun (at least 6-8 hours of it) and they won’t appreciate being planted shallowly, so bury yours nice and deep (more on that in a mo’).

Buying asparagus plants