Edible Perennial Gardening - Plant Once, Harvest for Years

About half of my allotment garden is dedicated to temperate climate perennial edibles -- vegetables, fruit, berries, and herbs that I've planted once, and can rely on for harvests every year. In this video, I show you some of the ones I grow, and a few others at the allotment. I also share some of their benefits and how I grow them in the garden and containers. There's even a perennial that many people know as a common annual crop!

If you're new to edible perennial gardening, think of it this way. Instead of sowing seeds every spring, perennials regrow each year, providing an easy, and often very early crop. Perennial edibles are also low-maintenance, long-lived, and save both time and money in the productive vegetable garden.

🌿 Question for you: Do you have any perennial edibles in your garden? Any ones that are very unique? We'd love to hear about them!

🌿 Further information
• Nine Star Broccoli images are from this piece by the Backyard Larder

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[ShookHomemade]

I love the idea of a predominately perennial garden!

[brucewayne-cnvd]

Another good perennial are hostas. I cook the leaves like spinach with butter and it tastes like asparagus.

[breaker-one-nine]

Mashua, babington leeks, walkies leeks, multiplier onions, everlasting onions, elephant garlic, hablitzia, skirret & perennial kales are good ones too. 👍

[lesliekendall]

I was made for a food forest. I have such a brown thumb that this year I was scouring the net for as many plants that had perennial species as I could find when eventually Geoff Lawton's videos began coming up on my Recommendeds. 😄. I was starting one and didn't even know it had a name. 👍

[CuriousinNY]

I have the herb comphrey that can be made into a tea for drinking, poultice, liquid fertilizer or green fertilizer by chopping and dropping. The bees love their flowers.

[Darkice]

Sunchokes are something that most people can't eat, because they never eat them. You don't have the gut flora to digest them properly. Once you start eating them, you will actually adjust over time and be able to eat them regularly with no problems. But it can take a couple months.

[jasons-jungle]

Nice video - thanks for sharing.

Did you mention Rhubarb?

Lavendar granita is so easy to make but tastes sooo good.

I've got 4 specied of perenial leeks in the garden - including the annual leeks I perenialised. There's also 4 types of chives, 3 types of onion, perennial loose leaf cabbage, 2 types perennial kale, 2 types rhubarb, hostas (never got round to eating them though), sorrel, cardoon, Jerusalem artichokes (start off the season with only a little gradually building it up helps the gut acclimatize - also try using with savory), good king henry, rocket, skirret, scorzonera, sweet cicely, fennel, scots lovage, wild garlic, elephant garlic, oerprei, Globe Artichoke, Cardoons, caucasian spinach.

Plus mashua, earth chest nut, oca, american groundnut.

Then theres the fruit - red currants, black currants, goose berries, raspberries, straw berries, honey berries, blue berries, 3 x grapes, choke berries, himalayan honeysuckle, dwarf mulberry, medlar, quincem goji berry, June berry.

Wow, listing it looks alot.

Then there's the kiwi fruit, rosemary, marjoram, sage, bergamont, japanese spinach, fig trees, logan berry, cranberry, comfrey.

[stacyk.]

Half of our garden is perennial herbs, vegetables, and fruit. Some are rugosa for rose hips, about 14 kinds of berries/nuts, asparagus, greens, American groundnut, artichokes, grapes, walking onions, horseradish, and Rhubarb. Just ordered seeds for Nine Star broccoli, welsh onions, perennial sunflowers, and more strawberries plants.

[peterellis]

Re: jerusalem artichokes - preparation is key to managing the gas issue. Slow cooking and pickling both work. As to it taking over, as with pretty much all plants, it depends. I've tried them in two different locations, hundreds of miles apart, and had them disappear entirely in no more than three years.

[dn]

have a great result with super size plants and huge potatoes. I use a 4ft by 8 ft mesh sided compost area. Each year I move to a new spot. I did build an 8ft trellis for beans, but as I had lots i just put the potatoes in. The plants got strung to it as reached 7ft tall. Once dug up I had 1 potatoe at 1.2kg and many at 0.5kg. This proved effective now for the 3rd year. I thing the ground gets so full of of energy the plants go nuts.

[sinkintostillness]

I love these videos and the comments section for lots of ideas for my garden. I'm envisioning a predominantly edible garden which looks pretty too like an English cottage garden. I add a few more perennials each year, so it's slow going, but exciting seeing how each new addition has progressed each year!

[lotusholistichealing]

Thank you for sharing!
Perennials and permaculture gardening is so helpful and important! Right now I'm in an apartment, so my perennials have been Herbs like yarrow, then I have lots of annuals. With my land I plan to have mostly permaculture, and an orchard, with perennials, then my annual garden closer to the house.

I have videos of my crazy covered apartment patio. It's been fun to get creative, but I'm ready for property! 💚💚💚

Perennials are also so much better for the environment, especially large scale, because they sequester more carbon in the soil, and don't require tilling. When soil is rolled, like large scale annual agriculture, extremely large amounts of carbon are released. You can even see images showing all the carbon being released in fields of the Midwest US during early spring tilling season, and then again when all the animals die off before winter.

[Londonfogey]

Some other good ones which are easy to grow are elderberries, lemonbalm, wild leeks, mint, strawberries (not exactly perennials but they will self-replant fairly easily), rhubarb, fennel, wild garlic. Also if you have a patch of nettles don't get rid of them, they are a very nutritious perennial food source, as good as spinach.

[michaelsallee]

For years I had a capture sunchoke bed concrete stair, walks, and structures on all sides. The reason for growing...they would bloom 3 days before the first major frost.

[charlescarabott]

Yes zone handiness and climate is the most important thing in gardening. I find one of my best perinials is the prickly pear cactus in my 11a zone. I have months of free fruit without any work except collecting them. Another low maintaince periniel I have success in is moringa.

[Muffy.from-Oz]

Mushroom plant, Okinawan Spinach, Vietnamese Mint, Lemon Grass and Society garlic Cheers, Muffy from Oz (Australia)

[MarlaGulley]

Some very interesting plants I’ve never hears of, so I really enjoyed learning about them. You might consider lacto fermenting the Jerusalem artichokes, as it makes them more digestible and eases their gas causing quality. I make a curried type pickle with them and they are really tasty.

[Atimatimukti]

I live in Portugal and one thing that comes back every year is Allium triquitun. You can eat everything, the litle bulb, the leaves and the flowers. They are out in march when all other members of the onion family are not good to eat. I think they survive in any climate but they do become an invasive plant so take most of the bulbs out in April

[reggieandherman]

I have many perennial herbs. Sage, oregano, different kinds of mint and thyme. And lemon balm.
The Birds and animals eat the peaches off our tree, so far none for us sadly
Love perennials.

[marinar]

I loved the editing on this video. 👍🏻 This was so informative and really opened my eyes to all the different types of perennial edibles! In my garden we have rhubarb, blueberries, blackberries, and new this year, raspberries. Thank you for the video!