There is a steep slope at the front of our garden and, to be honest, it isn’t very pretty. You need to be a mountain goat to mow it and it always looks unkempt. I’ve tried planting ground cover, but nothing seems to do very well there. This has everything to do with the fact that the soil is very poor, too well drained and nearly always in the shade of some ancient cypress trees under which nearly everything struggles.
I had the tiniest bit of luck with periwinkle. I saw that some was already growing among the weeds, so added a few more plants. That was over three years ago. I was expecting a carpet of blue by now!
What does do well under the olive and cypress trees is the wild asparagus. These were already well established when we moved here.
They are rather ugly plants that don’t do anything to enhance this part of the garden. If they weren’t so special, I’d have pulled them up ages ago.
Here, they come into season towards the end of March/beginning of April. So now is the time to start enjoying them.
If you are looking for a recipe: I just put them in boiling water for hardly a minute and serve drizzled with olive oil and a tiny squeeze of fresh lemon juice, but more often than not, I’ll just snap them from the plant and eat them raw. They are that sweet.
Two of my favourite blogs have posted about wild asparagus recently:
Ingrid from Vita Lenta nel bel Paese
and
If you click on the links, you’ll find more information, a couple of recipes and a neat video from Joe too!
Casalba News 