Home & Garden Columns

Just on impulse and because I spotted a parking space, I dropped into Green Jeans Garden Supply in Mill Valley the other day. I was looking for something else entirely, but there was a four-inch seedling in the Edibles rack that I didn’t recognize. The label called it “agretti” and I didn’t recognize that either. “Italian specialty green—eat raw or sautéed with garlic and olive oil.” 

So of course I had to buy it, never mind that the label also says “full sun” and I have approximately none of that in our shade-beset and crowded yard.  

The guy behind the counter asked if I liked agretti, and I admitted I’d never heard of it, let alone grown it. “Neither have I,” he said, ”So I took some home to see what happens. I mean, it’s Italian. It ought to be good.” 

Clearly a kindred spirit, and one of these days I’ll have to go there when business is slow, and swap tales with him. I am applying a sort of rhetorical discount to the label’s suggestion, though: there’s very little that doesn’t taste good sauteed with garlic and olive oil.  

The little plant itself looks a bit like the “moss rose” portulaca’s foliage, but longer: succulent green shoelace bits in a disorderly tangle, originating from a half-dozen reddish stem bases. Not your basic leafy green vegetable. 

We have a few books about odd garden plants, foodstuffs, and dietary habits. Agretti didn’t turn up in any of them. Intriguing!  

Joe went on-line and found the stuff. A Santa Barbara site says it’s available at the local farmers’ market, and is also called “roscano” and “barba di frate” and, better yet, had the Linnean binomial: Salsola maritimum. 

It’s a halophyte—tolerant of salty soils—and grows at the edges of marshes. It tastes a bit salty. In other words, it’s a lot like pickleweed. 

You can buy pickleweed at the Berkeley Bowl sometimes. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of paying over five bucks a pound for it when it’s so plentiful where I spend a lot of time chasing birds—until I start thinking about what’s likely to be seeping into the saltmarshes around Emeryville and Albany. Then I hope that the Bowl knows its pickleweed suppliers at least as well as it knows its wild-mushroom suppliers.  

Agretti supposedly tastes saline even when grown in normal garden soil; I snapped off a bit of leaf and it did taste just a tad salty as well as slightly tart.  

Looking at my single seedling next to the farmers’ market bunches pictured on the site, I began to wish I’d bought more. Maybe it should be grown from seed, to get more than a dainty sample. 

More googling around yielded a source for seed, hard to get because it doesn’t keep well. I know I’ve seen Bavicchi brand seeds in local shops like the big Long’s Drugs store at 52nd and Broadway. Maybe they could be encouraged to add agretti to their list. 

Meanwhile, shop online and try the stuff. If you manage to grow it in shade, let me know.  

www.italianseedandtool.com/index.html 

www.edhat.com/index.cfm