Perennial Vegetables

[jansman]

Or perhaps it should be titled ' Edible Garden' ,whatever...I am a keen kitchen gardener and have a large garden.In the past I have had allotments and at one point an acre of ground with polytunnels,goats and fowls.That fed us very well,but was a LOT of work on the whole.

Now at home there are basically just two of us.We don't have to shop and garden on an industrial scale! Currently we have a greenhouse and small polytunnels , 5x square foot beds 8'x 4' and the perennial section. That's the bit I want to expand.We eat what a colleague described "All sorts of weird s###!" some years ago.Perennial veg can fall into that category, as often its not what is for sale in the shops.Conventional veg is stupidly cheap,and if you grow it it can take a lot of molly- coddling at times.That's not to say I will stop growing annuals!

Right now my perennial area looks like a rainforest.To some it may look 'untidy' in the conventional sense.To me it is lush,pest free and very high yielding.In that area is our mini orchard of pears,apples and plums.There is soft fruit,rhubarb ( for chutney and Hooch!),Sorrel,Horseradish, Welsh Onion,Garlic Chives,Chives,Shallots and Garlic.The last two,if you leave them unharvested,spread like a perennial.Perpetual Spinach if allowed to seed grows EASY.Also I have a large bed of Jerusalem Artichokes. They are insanely productive and suffer no ills.

I am adding Egyptian Walking Onions,Salsify and Scorzonera,Bucks Horn Plantain,Lovage and Good King Henry.When I can lay my hands on Nine Star Perennial Broccoli and Daubentons Kale it will be good.Also Babbingtons Leek.The onions are needed as conventional ones are attacked by white rot in my own ground.

The reason for all this transition ( although I am halfway there to be honest)
Is that I am getting older,and I want less work.Also,if SHTF for real,this will be a real energy saver in a busy world.I adopt permaculture attitude to the property now,have done for 25 years.

Do any of you use Permaculture principles or make good use of perennial edibles?

[Brambles]

I'm a big fan of perennial veg too J. Sadly, I had to leave everything I had collected behind when I moved. I had Ramsons, Welsh Onion, Chinese Artichoke, Oca, American Groundnut, Daubentons Kale, Red veined Sorrel and Everlasting Onion. I lost the lot and all my fruit trees. Once I'm settled, I'll start again. I can give you a lead on Daubentons Kale. Will pm you as it's a private address. I really want an onion alternative as I have discovered the allotment field is infested with onion leaf miner and I lost my whole crop.

I've grown Nine Star Broccoli and frankly it's not worth the effort after the first year. I really want to grow some Seakale I failed with my last lot as the soil was too heavy even though I amended it with lots of sand and gravel. Another thing for me to try when I get my own garden.

[jansman]

Wow! That's an impressive list Brambles.Not just me that likes the idea then?.I'll bow to your experience on the nine star broccoli,as there is no point in wasting time.I failed with Seakale too.The lead for the Daubentons kale would be good,if you would be so kind. Let's hope you can start re -establishing your 'lost' garden soon.

[Brambles]

Will do, I'll hunt it out.

Once I'm settled, maybe we can start swapping.

[Arzosah]

Perennial fruit and veg are really important to me too, and for the same reasons, though as I've been trying to catch up with 5 years of garden maintenance, a lot of it has once again been overrun by weeds especially brambles from next door

However ... I do have quite a bit on the go. Garlic, wild garlic, Babington's Leek, chives (not enough), oregano, quince, raspberries, lady's mantle, lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, winter savory, sorrel, rhubarb, blackcurrants (overrun with ants milking aphids *again* this year ), cranberries, mahonia.

I haven't been able to do any planting this year, but I have a potted sage ready to go - if I can dig up a gooseberry plant today thats determined to only sucker and nothing but sucker, I could plant that.

I'd love to grow kale/perpetual spinach/chard - any greenery that can contribute to the diet, basically. But my whole calendar year so far has been dedicated in the garden to cutting back hedges on all three sides of the garden to get the light and the breeze back in. It's had a big effect - the cranberry bushes were bought several years ago, never cropped more than 4 berries each, and this year there's maybe a dozen bunches of berries on each plant. I thought I'd be at a stage where I could do planting this year, properly, but I haven't been. But, very slowly, things are getting there.

I was having a think about perennial veg the other day - they're perfect for a "grey" approach, which is really, really needed in suburban terms **rushes off for tinfoil hat**

[jansman]

Looks like we got us a club! Brambles,when I get upon and running we will sort some swaps for certain.Arzosah,your list is impressive too.

My Egyptian onions turned up today,brilliant!

[grenfell]

I've quite a bit too , soft fruits , rhubarb , garlic and Jerusalem artichokes for instance. On the front of the house I have a fair few herbs , sorrel , couple of types of chives , rosemary , strawberries , lemon balm , whitehorehound , and an almond tree and probably a couple of other things that slip my mind. A couple of years ago I put in an area of chard and that too has established itself and has been coming again and again. One seed even managed to find its way across the garden and grew into a monster reaching over seven feet high. I had dubbed it the triffid and my 12 year old daughter said it was becoming embarrassing when her friends came round though I'd be surprised if any knew what it is.

[Arzosah]

Brilliant stuff! One weed that I've let grow is a clump of ragwort - no horses will ever use my back garden, after all, and there's a moth or a butterfly round here that only eats ragwort - I figure I should do my bit for the local ecology. Comfrey, buddleia, and a scabious I'm nursing are also popular, and a yellow thing thats probably a sedum but I don't know which - the hover flies lurve it.

When I did my Real Seeds order at the start of the year, I also bought some bread poppy seeds - apparently the poppy heads don't have the usual holes, so they don't fall out - you can plant some, of course, but they're a lot easier to gather for use in cookery (all psychoactive substances removed ).

[Deeps]

I'll get Her Maj to read this, she's the gardener here, see if she's up for joining the Borg collective.

[grenfell]

Brilliant stuff! One weed that I've let grow is a clump of ragwort - no horses will ever use my back garden.

One of my customers keeps horses , well ponies to be pedantic, and she is always moaning about ragwort ( actually I could have put a full stop after moaning and the sentence would still be valid) so I did a little googling . Seems a lot of horses won't touch it unless they are desperately hungry and it won't poison them off instantly though it is or can be harmful . Others have been know to acquire a taste for it and according to one website there's at least one horse who alledgly ate it's body weight in ragwort with no ill effect. Evidently it has some medicinal use but is just as dangerous to us as horses ( toxic to our livers by all accounts) which considering it's profusion seems such a shame.
Some of the stuff I grow on the front garden probably come under most people's heading of weeds , the sorrel and comfrey for instance and one weed I have inadvertently grown is jack by the hedge or garlic mustard. I had filled a wheelbarrow with soil off one of my jobs to grow bulbs in as I do grow some flowers just to make it look a little like a slightly "less cared for" conventional garden. However , the soil must have contained seeds and they have grown . I've chomped some but have left some to go to seed ready for next year.