What is it? Well, it does what its name implies - it's a knife to harvest asparagus! Yes, it's a bit specialist. But if you've gone to the effort to grow asparagus, you want to harvest it the most effective way possible - to maximise your crop. This Sneeboer knife is the perfect garden tool to allow you to do just that. 

How do you use it? When the tip of the asparagus breaks through the top of the soil you can use this Sneeboer asparagus knife to remove the entire asparagus spear without damaging it.  You can push the knife into the soil, so you can then, with one swift motion, quickly slice through the stem. As with everything from Sneeboer - it's great quality  - with a comfortable wooden handle and a sharp blade to cut cleanly.

Product details: The hand forged stainless steel asparagus knife has a comfortable wooden handle (Ash - 14cm long), measures 49cm overall and can easily be pushed into the soil to cut the spears below ground.  The blade itself is 4cm long and 3cm wide. 

And why do we stock it? Many moons ago, I shared an allotment with my best friend. We both had young children and not enough space to grow our own at home. So we lucked out and secured an allotment for us to share. 

One of the first things we planted was Asparagus. We knew we wanted to grow it, and for the first time we had the luxury of space to set aside for it.  We waited. The other crops flourished and failed in equal measure depending on how good we were at watering (we had to take our own... small problem when we had small children to manoeuvre at the same time). We waited some more and were rewarded by a faint wisp. We weren't greedy. We didn't harvest too soon. But to little avail. For whatever reason (soil, conditions, or more likely my incompetence) we didn't add asparagus to our annual harvest. 

We both moved house and found ourselves lucky enough to have space for our own veg patches. But neither of us have set aside the space for asparagus. Once bitten, twice shy? But the idea lives on. Perhaps I will bite the bullet and replant. Until then, and perhaps to motivate me, we've stocked the Sneeboer Asparagus knife. For those gardeners who are lucky enough to have the space, the conditions, the temperament and talent to grow it for themselves, this is the ultimate tool for cutting it. Becuase after ALL that effort, you don't want your tool to let you down at the end... and with Sneeboer in hand, that's never going to happen.