Many have attractive leaves or flowers to enhance the landscape. The first ten were listed at the top of the article: raspberries, blueberries and other berry bushes, asparagus, rhubarb, kale, garlic, radicchio, horseradish, globe artichokes, lovage and watercress. Native Indians used to harvest Fiddleheads and they would take 3 in the group, leaving tobacco leaves as a blessing. Sorrel tastes best in early spring; it becomes bitter as the weather warms. This post may contain affiliate links. You can cut the plant back( YouTube it….super great videos with method, many opinions, use what you like) or let it go! Perennial plants are an excellent type of plant to include more of in your garden and on your property. After a 20-year career in green building and environmental sustainability, chronic illness forced her to shift her expertise and passion from the public sphere to home and hearth. I have grown the Egyptian Onions but they have not come back…I will have to look into them more. Others can function as hedges, groundcovers or erosion control for slopes. Does this apply to a specific variety of hosta, or are all varieties edible? How nice to see fiddleheads heading this post! Swiss Chard (started with Bright Lights but has become basic cream colored stem, tastes good. These amazing crops in addition to our aquaponics has made the homestead really productive. In fact, some perennials are so good at taking care of themselves that they require frequent harvesting to prevent them from becoming weeds themselves! All perennial food plants need full sun for best results. You’ll want to plant your edible perennials where the soil won’t get disturbed by your other plantings or get in the way of your other plantings. She was just asking a question. Perennial seeds and plants can be hard to find, depending on where you live. I did not know scarlet runner beans were perennials either! You can use these tiny onions as they are, or plant them in the fall to grow more Egyptian onions. Fantastic article! When planting these easy to care for perennials, you have to think about the bigger picture, but with so many perennial plants to choose from, picking the best ones can be hard. Yes, perennials are great. Your email address will not be published. I grow quite a few “perennial” vegetables. You didn’t mention hosta! My husband just went fiddlehead picking last night. Perennial vegetables should be much more widely available, especially because, compared to annual crops, they tend to be more nutritious, easier to grow, more ecologically beneficial, and less dependent on water and other inputs. Thank you for sharing your post with us and I hope to welcome you over at Seasonal Celebration again today! Thank you for linking up with Wildcrafting Wednesdays! We are gradually planting more and more perennial food plants, and perennial versions of annual vegetables. I’m putting in as many perennials as possible. Amelanchier spp., Zones 2 to 9. Hardy to Zone 4. Others can function as hedges, groundcovers or erosion control for slopes. Rebecca @Natural Mothers Network x. Easy to propagate and has a good taste. Rude, and wishing the “dear” best of luck does nothing to counteract such poor manners. Think about how many apples you can get from one apple tree! Here in Australia we take flowering as a sign that we will collect seed soon, not as a sign to disregard a plant. I didn’t know much about other perennial edibles, thanks so much for the info! What makes strawberries an excellent addition to a perennial garden is they can be grown whereever they can sprawl out. One big one is about regeneration: for the ostrich ferns, if you’re cutting off the fiddles, aren’t you just taking the plant before it grows into something that would look nice in your yard? Fiddleheads come from the Ostrich Fern, which is #16. So there you go, lots of edible perennial plants for you to choose from for your food garden. Share your recommendations in the comments. Just ordered the book for my Kindle and can’t wait to read it. 1 Every perennial plant has a different life span — strawberry plants, for example, will last about three years 2, while asparagus can grow for decades. It’s crazy how productive you can be with such little input! Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. Full disclosure, Click here to comment. Our rhubarb has not done well, so we are thinking of moving it. Our goals is that over time we’ll have more harvest with less work each season. I will scratch that one off my list for now. We grow runner beans, rosemary, thyme, mint, and oregano as perennials. Are Turk’s Cap flowers edible? Should I dig everything up and start again except for those that I know (strawberries, rhubarb and asparagus) or should I leave things to see if they do anything? You can find out here: http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/. Think I’ll plant some up against the trees between my yard & the neighbour’s & up against the fence on the other side. What an exciting post! I’m planting a new vegetable garden this year. Thanks! Thank you for this list! Although it isn’t very tasty and the texture isn’t that appealing much like Barbados cherry. That’s really exciting because I grew both of those in my garden for the first time last summer. Serviceberry. This really helps- Thanks! Thanks for loads of great information on perennial veggies! It has top green leaves and purple underneath. Obviously you do not eat ALL of the ostrich fern or ALL of the day lilly, that would be counter productive. short ecourse that will help you understand how these things affects your garden, growing it in zones 8 and 9 over winter as an annual, asparagus and strawberries in the same bed, USDA all parts of the daylily plant are edible, http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/438/438-110/438-110.html. Pinned this for future reference. These are great ones! The resources that I found all say that rhubarb needs between 400-500 chill hours (hours at or below 45 degrees F) in order to produce in the spring, (here’s one, http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/438/438-110/438-110.html). Please tell me more about this tomato plant. And the enemy of all perennials - all cultivated plants - are aggressive weeds like twitch grass and Canada thistle, to name just two. Thanks for the comment! older thread but I still wanted to mention that I have a tiny cherry tomato that grows like grapes in bunches and comes back every year from seed in zone 3. Zones 4-8. I grew up in, & still live in coastal Southern California, zone 9-11. I’m in zone 9 , coastal CA. The berries or fruit of the Turks cap is considered edible. It might die back and then come back when the conditions are right, like asparagus. Occasionally I receive products in exchange for a review or giveaway post. And it would be really great to be able to pick spinach during the summer. It was a wild tomato from salt spring seeds, and there are so many fruits that they cover the ground in the fall. Rosemary can only be grown as a perennial in zones 8 and warmer. I’ll have to look for both of those to plant. I live in zone 9B Pasco Co. FL. Thanks, Rebecca! Get some bars of “Irish Spring Bar Soap”; put them in old white crew socks; attach them to the branches of the trees (or to the trunks) so they hang down or to stake in the vegetable/flower garden. Cold and temperate Eurasian agriculture centered around livestock, annual grains and legumes, and early European settlers to North America simply brought their seeds and their cultivation methods with them, including draft animals for plowing up the soil every year. I have some sort of Allium in my garden. The deer might actually be helping you anyway. Perhaps there is a particular variety of rhubarb that you were referring to that requires chilling? We also have a lawn with real grass for the dogs. There are many perennials crops that are known and loved by gardeners everywhere, including these ten common ones: But there are actually hundreds of perennial fruits and vegetables that will grow in temperate and warm climates like are found in North America! 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