How to Grow Good King Henry

Plant it once and pick it for a decade, as long as you leave it alone the first year.

Good King Henry is an old perennial vegetable, grown in European kitchen gardens for centuries and almost forgotten now. Plant it once and it produces spring shoots, summer leaves and flowering spikes for a decade or more from the same crown.

What you get from it

Spring shoots, cut young and cooked like thin asparagus. This is the best of it.
Leaves through summer, used like spinach. Deeper flavoured and more mineral than true spinach.
Flowering spikes, which can be cooked like broccoli raab when young.

Planting

Sow in March, April, or start from a crown division, which is faster. Seed is slow and benefits from a period of cold before it germinates, so an early sowing or a stint in the fridge helps.

Space plants 45 cm apart in deep, rich soil with plenty of compost. It tolerates part shade, which makes it useful in a spot where little else crops.

The first year is an investment

Do not harvest at all in the first year. Let the plant build a crown, and it will repay you for years. Cutting early gives a weak plant that never establishes properly, which is the usual reason people conclude it is not worth growing.

From the second year on

Cut spring shoots when they are pencil thick, taking no more than a third of them and leaving the rest to grow on and feed the crown.
Pick leaves through summer, always leaving the growing centre.
Stop cutting by midsummer so the plant can rebuild before winter.
Mulch each autumn with compost and it needs nothing else.

Cooking it

Always cook it. Like spinach and chard it carries oxalates, and cooking deals with them and improves the flavour. Blanch the shoots briefly and dress them with butter, or wilt the leaves as you would spinach.

Older leaves get coarse and bitter, so take the young ones and let the rest feed the plant.

See also: How to Grow Good King Henry in the Plant Library for sowing months tuned to your region.