Argenteuil will provide you with tasty, tender tips early in the season. It will start to form crowns in the first year, you will be able to cut half in the 2nd year and all from the 3rd. Aromatic with a delicate flavour this heirloom variety produces white asparagus with tips coloured from pink to purple. Price for 20 seeds
Did you know
Asparagus is a plant that grows in the night and must be harvested very early in the morning to keep its freshness
A little bit of history
Asparagus actually originates in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Siberia. A detailed guide on how to raise asparagus can be traced back to around 65 A.D. by the Roman Columella: Romans spread the culture of growing asparagus along with their empire. After the Romans asparagus cultivation declined until it was ‘rediscovered’ during the renaissance. In France Asparagus was a dish highly appreciated by Louis XIV, the Sun King, who ate them in strips with a soft-boiled egg: they were frequently recorded as on the table at Versailles. For centuries Argenteuil, a short distance north-west of Paris, was an important asparagus-growing district: at one time several thousand persons were employed in cultivating the crop. It even went through its own ‘craze’ period: 400,000 tons were harvested in 1867, by 1900 it had reached more than a million tons. After 1900, the spread of diseases, industrial activity and WW1, the Argenteuil asparagus production diminished. Since then, selections of advanced cultivars were derived from Argenteuil and cross breeding efforts were carried out, particularly in the US, with Mary Washington being the most successful descendant.
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