I SUPPOSE this could be the shortest column I’ve ever written. How to grow horseradish: stick it in the ground. Goodnight, see you next month.

But given horseradish’s status as one of Britain’s two great sauces (the other being mustard), I feel it deserves a bit more attention than that. March is a good time to plant the lengths of root known confusingly as “thongs” from which the plant is propagated.

If you need to start by buying roots, then do shop around. I’ve just had a quick look online and found prices ranging from £2 to £12. If you know someone who’s got a well-established horseradish patch ask them to dig you up a few bits of the root, and use those. Horseradish can, notoriously, grow from any lump of root left in the ground, so getting a new plant going is rarely difficult.

That’s the “shortest column ever” version of how to grow horseradish, and it works. But if you’ve got the time to do the job properly, you will likely get bigger yields of the edible roots, bigger individual roots, and more importantly ones which are tastier.

This herb tends to be relegated to difficult corners of a vegetable patch or allotment, because it can be relied on to grow there when other things can’t. It will do OK in partial shade. Give it a spot in full sun, though, and the difference is noticeable. Again, horseradish will grow in most soils, but if you can find it some rich ground you’ll be rewarded with better harvests.

Make a vertical hole in the ground and drop a thong into it, thicker end upwards, so that when the hole is filled in the top of the root is covered by roughly two inches (5cm) of soil. If you’re planting more than one piece of root, leave about two feet (60cm) between them.

Now I come to look at it, the longer version isn’t much longer than the shorter version. During the young plant’s first summer don’t let it dry out and keep it reasonably weed-free but that’s all, really. Horseradish is a hardy perennial, so you only need to plant it once.

The best time to harvest the roots for making sauce is after the first proper frost of autumn, when the leaves have been killed off, but before a full winter freeze makes digging the ground hard.

Dig deeply around the clump and snap off as many roots as you need, leaving some to grow for next year.

Because of its reputation for taking over — a bit like self-replicating AI, but slower and more pungent — some people prefer to grow horseradish in containers to avoid fragments of root escaping into the garden.

You’ll need a large tub, filled with good-quality potting compost or garden soil. A plastic dustbin works well, with drainage holes drilled in the bottom, so that you can tip the whole bin out at harvest time.