WE’RE now in asparagus season! Despite being able to get it all year round in the supermarkets, it’s actually available to pick from each patch for just six weeks, although the harvest start date will of course depend on how far north you are in the UK.

It’s seen as a luxury, but as a perennial vegetable which is pretty simple and easy to grow at home, the reason why it’s pricy in the shops is partly because it’s very labour intensive to grow on a farm, needing people rather than machines to pick it, or it’s flown from places such as Peru.

To grow at home there is an initial outlay to buy the “crowns” or bare roots; I have found the best source is Kings, which are currently selling them at £18.60 for 12 crowns. The plants, once established and if cared for properly, will crop well for 25 years.

They require one square foot per crown. We are a family of two and love asparagus, so planted 24 crowns around 10 years ago, which gives us both a decent portion every day for six weeks, plenty for the average family! This works out as over 1,000 bunches in the crowns’ lifetime- so fantastic value for money - around 3.5p/bunch!

When you receive your crowns, dig a trench to plant them and mound up the soil in the centre of the trench, allowing the growing-point to be around ground level, and the roots to spread away down each side of the mound, before filling the soil back in.

You do need to be patient before you start harvesting: waiting three years for them to establish. This is because we eat the emerging shoots: if you constantly pick the new shoots of a new plant it will die. Waiting for the roots to establish means there’s enough growing power stored in the roots to withstand harvesting the new shoots for six weeks - then you must stop and let the plant grow all summer.

Your patch does need to be kept fully weed free to prevent competition, avoiding digging out weeds but rather removing them gently when they are small to prevent root disturbance of the asparagus, and the foliage cut back in winter with a good layer of manure or compost applied to the surface every year.

So they are not really too much maintenance when you compare to annual vegetables which need resowing every year: the same as many different perennial vegetables, so it’s worth looking at other perennial edibles for your garden.

Asparagus also fills what veg growers call the “hungry gap”; the time between when our stored winter veg has been eaten and the main annual vegetables which harvest begins.

It should be a good plant for a forest garden, but we’re unlikely to plant it at Fox’s Field. This is best cared for at home where the rest period will be respected and weeding can be monitored more often.

By Helen Gillingham for Transition Town Wellington