Freshly harvested asparagus from my garden, I can't wait to eat them!

It's finally time to start talking about asparagus! I meet a lot of gardeners who actually don't have asparagus in their gardens. We have to change that! This is after all such a great vegetable. It's one of the earliest ones to pop up in the garden and it keeps coming back year after year, even though I don't put in much work. I just sow and plant my asparagus after all. Asparagus is as you might have guessed a perennial plant.

My new guide All about asparagus is going to be loooooong. It will span over several years, since it takes about 4 years from sowing to harvest. But the investment is well worth it. You can after all keep harvesting the same plant for several decades. There is even supposed to be an asparagus plantation in Norway that is several hundred years old!

I will show you how to sow in the first part of my guide All about asparagus.

Since it takes such a long time for asparagus to grow, I think the best plan might just be to buy some nice large plants to kickstart the project. This will help me get an earlier harvest than if I sow asparagus seeds.

Read more: Guide: Planting and growing beans

All about asparagus

I have around 60 plants in my garden. I decided to go for several different varieties and I put them in different spots in my garden to spread out the harvests over the year. My asparagus grows both in my polytunnels and outside.

My asparagus varieties:

• Gijnlim (an early variety – in the polytunnel and outside)
• Rambo (a sturdy variety – outside)
• Sweet Purple (purple asparagus – outside)
• Burgundine (purple asparagus – outside)
• Fortems (male hybrid with thick stems – outside)
• Pacific purple (purple asparagus – outside)
• Mary Washington (the most common seed variety in Sweden – outside)
• Primaverde (early variety – outside and in the polytunnel)

You can grow asparagus from seed too. Asparagus seeds have excellent seed viability and they are very easy to sow in spring.

I put the plant in a pot when it's around this size. Make sure it's not too large.

Asparagus is like I said one of the first things I can start harvesting in the garden. It's such a luxurious vegetable with a lovely tender taste. I can just slice it and put it right into my salad bowl without even cooking it. The harvests are quite small before the plants grow larger.

Asparagus is not only one of my favorite vegetables in the kitchen garden, the one I long for the most in the cold dark winter months. But on top of that, it's beautiful too! From the first little bud that pops out of the soil, to the bright red berries and the yellow leaves in winter. I just love them! You can do a variety of companion planting projects with them too. Asparagus works really well with summer flowers and other perennials for example. It's just magnificent! I decided to do companion planting with giant verbena, sweet peas, parsley, snap beans, chives, sage, snapdragon, godetia and many more.

One of the best companion projects I have made, parsley under the asparagus together with seven summer flowers that gave the area some color from summer until late fall.

Watch the video below to see some of my companion planting projects:

All I can do now is wait until the asparagus grows large enough so I can replant it. I will show you how in the next part of All about asparagus. I just noticed that a few of the asparagus seeds have germinated already. It makes me so happy! Growing asparagus is so much fun. Not only because it's so tasty, but also because I really enjoy the way they look in my garden. I will show you shortly!

I hope you will join me for the next part of my series All about asparagus. Good luck growing asparagus at home!
/Sara Bäckmo