Asparagus has arrived

This morning I got up super early (well 7am but that is pretty early for a Saturday) and headed down to the allotment to tackle nettles before the rain arrived. It was actually very pleasant and in between the frequent coffee breaks I managed to make good progress with the clearing, it I can keep it up then I will actually have somewhere to plant my leeks.

I returned home completely spent at around 10:00, 1 hour later and the postman kindly delivered 10 asparagus crowns, after reading Ken Muir's instructions that they must be planted immediately on receipt and seeing that the weather forecast was predicting rain for the next 10 years I trotted back to the allotment to quickly chuck the crowns in my carefully prepared asparagus bed.

Unfortunately I had overlooked that although I had dug over the bed and covered it in manure several months ago, I would still need to actually dig the bed. 1 hour later and rather a lot more tired I had a rudimentary asparagus bed, as you can see from the photo the crowns sort of fit, although to be very fair it isn't all my fault because I have ended up with 11 crowns instead of 10 so my careful (ahem) measuring was never going to add up.

After the pain of digging the trench I actually had a pretty good time placing the crowns and spreading the roots around. Re-filling the trench wasn't so much fun but I am hopefully looking forward to many years of home grown asparagus, and at least I have learnt in advance that there is no way I am digging a trench for the potatoes.