APRIL/MAY 2019It’s hardly surprising Dominikowski has an eye for
spotting white asparagus: The 33-year-old has traveled
to Hof Grothues-Potthoff, a farm estate with a bakery,
farm shop, and hotel, in Senden, Germany—about
10 miles southwest of Münster—for the past eight
years, to help harvest and sort up to a hundred tons
of Germany’s white gold. Every April, he leaves his
wife and job in Poznań, Poland, to work 10 hours a day,
six days a week, until the official end of the season on
June 24, the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist. It looks
like backbreaking work, but Dominikowski thoroughly
enjoys it. “It’s satisfying, and the money’s much better
than repairing computers back home,” he says.
White asparagus season is celebrated with a pas-
sion in Germany, and I’ve come to the flat, castle-filled
region of Münsterland, with its maritime climate and
sandy soil prime for the spring vegetable’s production,
to find out why. Elmar Grothues, who with his siblings
oversees a 14-generation-old family farm, takes me to
a newly planted field. Pulling a bundle of roots from
the soil—a cluster of earthy rats’ tails attached to a
feathery green shoot—he explains the labor-intensive
white-asparagus-growing process. It requires precision
planting and constant monitoring of the soil that’s
heaped over the spears to prevent them being exposed
to sunlight: If it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, dry or hard,
the growth of the spears is affected. It’s hard work made
easier through modern technology and the support of
a collaborative local network: Grothues uses manure
donated by a pig farm; their asparagus waste goes to
a dairy farm as cow fodder.
We arrive at the farmyard just as Dominikowski
and his co-workers are hoisting crates containing the
morning’s harvest off their truck and into a barn. The
crates are filled with cold water to keep the asparagus
at peak freshness. The shiny steel sorting machine is a
veritable homage to the German love of systems and
procedure; each spear is sliced to a uniform length
before being computer-analyzed, classed, and spat
out into one of 20 water troughs for manual collec-
tion and storage. The straightest, smoothest, whitest
spears with a tightly closed head command a far higher
price than the broken or discolored ones. I wonder
if their appearance is a reflection of quality. “Not at
all,” Grothues admits, rather sheepishly, “It all tastes
the same. We just like it looking nicer on the plate.”
The day before, in the lively student city of Münster,
I’d seen signs of the city’s culinary history everywhere,
from plaques among the cobblestones marking the old
salt trading route, to white asparagus carved into theMünsterland’s mania:
asparagus detailing on
Erbdrostenhof palace
(top left); harvesting (top
right) and processing
(bottom left) spears at
Hof Grothues-Potthoff;
Münster’s town center
(bottom right)stone facade of a private mansion. Münster’s old town,
almost completely destroyed in the Second World War,
was rebuilt in its prewar style, and the buildings along
the Prinzipalmarkt—tall, pale, and narrow with acutely
angled roofs—look not unlike a row of white asparagus
tips themselves.
The city’s weekly market, a maze of trucks and
stands shaded by colorful awnings, takes place in a
large, leafy square by the cathedral. The fresh produce
stands are currently dominated by baskets of jewel-
red strawberries and stacks of bright white asparagus.
The annual asparagus harvest is a source of great local
pride, and I find only one vendor indifferent to it: “I
grew up with two white asparagus addicts for parents,”
she says. “Back in the ’50s we grew it ourselves, like
most people, and we never went to market. I’ve eaten
my fill, and it doesn’t interest me anymore.”
Today, the market is still shunned by some locals—
those who prefer to buy their white asparagus from
the source. Heading out on the weekend into theAPRIL/MAY 2019It’s hardly surprising Dominikowski has an eye for
spotting white asparagus: The 33-year-old has traveled
to Hof Grothues-Potthoff, a farm estate with a bakery,
farm shop, and hotel, in Senden, Germany—about
10 miles southwest of Münster—for the past eight
years, to help harvest and sort up to a hundred tons
of Germany’s white gold. Every April, he leaves his
wife and job in Poznań, Poland, to work 10 hours a day,
six days a week, until the official end of the season on
June 24, the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist. It looks
like backbreaking work, but Dominikowski thoroughly
enjoys it. “It’s satisfying, and the money’s much better
than repairing computers back home,” he says.
White asparagus season is celebrated with a pas-
sion in Germany, and I’ve come to the flat, castle-filled
region of Münsterland, with its maritime climate and
sandy soil prime for the spring vegetable’s production,
to find out why. Elmar Grothues, who with his siblings
oversees a 14-generation-old family farm, takes me to
a newly planted field. Pulling a bundle of roots from
the soil—a cluster of earthy rats’ tails attached to a
feathery green shoot—he explains the labor-intensive
white-asparagus-growing process. It requires precision
planting and constant monitoring of the soil that’s
heaped over the spears to prevent them being exposed
to sunlight: If it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, dry or hard,
the growth of the spears is affected. It’s hard work made
easier through modern technology and the support of
a collaborative local network: Grothues uses manure
donated by a pig farm; their asparagus waste goes to
a dairy farm as cow fodder.
We arrive at the farmyard just as Dominikowski
and his co-workers are hoisting crates containing the
morning’s harvest off their truck and into a barn. The
crates are filled with cold water to keep the asparagus
at peak freshness. The shiny steel sorting machine is a
veritable homage to the German love of systems and
procedure; each spear is sliced to a uniform length
before being computer-analyzed, classed, and spat
out into one of 20 water troughs for manual collec-
tion and storage. The straightest, smoothest, whitest
spears with a tightly closed head command a far higher
price than the broken or discolored ones. I wonder
if their appearance is a reflection of quality. “Not at
all,” Grothues admits, rather sheepishly, “It all tastes
the same. We just like it looking nicer on the plate.”
The day before, in the lively student city of Münster,I’d seen signs of the city’s culinary history everywhere,
from plaques among the cobblestones marking the old
salt trading route, to white asparagus carved into the
Münsterland’s mania:
asparagus detailing on
Erbdrostenhof palace
(top left); harvesting (top
right) and processing
(bottom left) spears at
Hof Grothues-Potthoff;
Münster’s town center
(bottom right)stone facade of a private mansion. Münster’s old town,
almost completely destroyed in the Second World War,
was rebuilt in its prewar style, and the buildings along
the Prinzipalmarkt—tall, pale, and narrow with acutely
angled roofs—look not unlike a row of white asparagus
tips themselves.
The city’s weekly market, a maze of trucks and
stands shaded by colorful awnings, takes place in a
large, leafy square by the cathedral. The fresh produce
stands are currently dominated by baskets of jewel-
red strawberries and stacks of bright white asparagus.
The annual asparagus harvest is a source of great local
pride, and I find only one vendor indifferent to it: “I
grew up with two white asparagus addicts for parents,”
she says. “Back in the ’50s we grew it ourselves, like
most people, and we never went to market. I’ve eaten
my fill, and it doesn’t interest me anymore.”
Today, the market is still shunned by some locals—
those who prefer to buy their white asparagus from
the source. Heading out on the weekend into the