THE PROCESS

Asparagus begins its life cycle on our farm when we plant crowns into our light sandy soils in April. Spears are produced from the crowns in the same year as planting, however these are not harvested, we leave the spears to continue growing into fern during the summer. During the fern stage of growth, the plant is producing energy which transferred down to the crown so it has enough energy to produce spears again the following Spring. We allow the plant two years of building up energy before taking the first harvest of spears in the third year after planting. We hope each crown will continue to grow in the same cycle producing delicious asparagus for 10-12 years.

 

Typically the asparagus season runs from the 23rd April to mid June. During this time each individual spear is delicately harvested by hand, by our dedicated team who have been coming to harvest asparagus on our farm for over 13 years. Once harvested, the asparagus is taken immediately back to the farm and rapidly cooled to around 2 degrees Celsius, this keeps our asparagus as fresh as possible. Once cooled the asparagus is then optically graded into our four different diameter sizes, from thickest to thinnest; Extra Select, Large Select, Select and Choice. Then only the best quality spears are bunched, wrapped and boxed ready for sending to our customers. To reduce our carbon footprint, this year we have reduced our packaging usage by over 35%. Other than one rubber band all of our packaging is recyclable and we are currently trying to source suitable recyclable alternatives to rubber bands, something we hope to have for the 2021 season.

 

Our asparagus is used by some of the countries best and most famous restaurants in London and East Anglia. We pride ourselves in producing the finest taste and quality asparagus in the UK, if not the world!