Jackie French: Saffron, home-grown gold

What is surprising is that this was in 1580. I know Australia Post can be slow, but four hundred years to deliver a letter is a bit extreme. Also the writer of the letter seems to be a reader of The Canberra Times.

His letter ran thusly:

Dear Jackie,

'An acre of ground

Yields Saffron a pound.'

Approximately more or less, you try the maths, your saffron corms should be 10 centimetres apart to flower. Space them and feed them.

Your Ladyship's respectful servant,

Thomas Tusser

He is perfectly right, of course. Saffron needs to be well spaced, 10-15cm apart, not shaded by taller plants and, sadly, probably not grown at all in a shaded valley that gets limited sun for a good crop, or even any crop at all. I am guilty of every possible crime against saffron: mine is too close together, shadowed by other plants (some of which is not my fault, like the self-sown tomato still blooming in the middle of our paving despite the frosts that have withered every other tomato bush). Nor have I fed my saffron. Well, not often, nor regularly. Or enough. We do get the blooms but they are conspicuously lacking in stigma – a sure sign of not enough sun. Or food. Or care.

And yet …

Saffron is glorious stuff. Plant the corms, or even the potted plants, in autumn, wait till they bloom in autumn. If you have grown them well they will have a three part orange stigma inside the purple flower. Those stigma are the saffron that is so expensive to buy and so stunningly fragrant and colourful when cooked in fluid to add both flavor and a rich golden hue. Let the leaves keep growing in full sunlight through winter, well watered and well fed to feed next season's flowers.

If you have ever dreamt of earning an income from your garden, saffron is possibly your best bet in dollars per square metre. Dig up your lawn and plant saffron – though it will look bare over summer, when both the strap-like leaves and flowers vanish. Maybe you could grow something shallow rooted and drought resistant but fast growing, like white alyssum, to take its place, but don't water it. The saffron below ground will not like it.

If saffron are grown in the right place – weed free, well drained, sunny, fertile and with dryish summers – they will naturalise easily and go forth and multiply.

After harvesting, dry the stigmas in a dry, sheltered spot for three to five days, like on the top of the bench, then store in an airtight container. The few times we have had a decent crop (the crocus must have been feeling generous, or maybe it was a sunny drought year when not much else grew) I've kept ours in an old envelope.

Do not try hacking up your lawn to plant saffron, however, unless you live in Tasmania, Victoria and the cooler, dryer parts of SA, WA and NSW: saffron corms not like too much heat, especially humid heat. The corms rot in wet soil. A few very careful gardeners have managed to harvest saffron in subtropical areas in terracotta pots on dry terraces.

And I envy them ... and every gardener who manages to get a lavish harvest of garden gold.

PS I am also grateful to the esteemed Thomas Tusser, Esquire, for not putting his address on the back of the envelope, nor on his most delightful card, so that I cannot politely respond to him. With two boxes of mail and enough emails to stun an elephant, ensuring that the recipient cannot reply is the mark of a true gentleman.