Tri-cornered Leek

The tri-cornered leek is back in flower and its my second plant profile. It blooms all winter and spring, before dying back completely for the summer months. Its got a pleasant oniony flavour, so the flowers and leaves are a great addition to salads. The leaves go into stirfries etc as well. I use the bulbs as well in stews and as a crunchy add in to my no knead onion bread.

Its a bit of a thug and needs regular pulling to keep in check but it keeps the soil covered in winter and pulls up quite easily once its died back. There ate always enough bulbs missed in the pulling up to recover the ground without replanting.

featured plants

I've decided to include a series of plant profiles. The criteria for what to include isn't decided yet, except that they'll all be in some way useful or significant to me.

I'm starting with Wall Pennywort. The succulent leaves of this little plant have a delicious almost cucumber flavour and I can rarely resist a munch as I pass them. Down here in South Devon it grows from about October to June when wild food sources are a bit less plentiful.

It grows in cool shady spaces, on walls, rocky outcrops and bark and appears not to need soil. There isn't any growing within easy salad gathering distance of home, so I've built a tiny dry stone and log wall in a shady part of my garden to make pennywort friendly micro-climate and carried home one plant that was growing on a loose piece of bark in a friends garden. That one piece is flowering now, so hopefully it will like its new situation enough to multiply.