Perennial Vegetables For Your Garden

 

Perennials are a plant that regrow each spring after going dormant in the winter. While most vegetable crops are grown as annuals and require replanting each year, perennials are planted once and provide years of delicious harvests.   

While many are familiar with perennial flowers, there are perennial vegetables and herbs you can add to your garden.  Once established you have years of harvests and minimal care to maintain the perennial. 

The perennials you can plant, depends on your planting zone. Those I am sharing can be grown in zones 4-7. 

Asparagus

Asparagus is grown from crowns which are the one year old root system of asparagus grown from seed.  The tender spears of an established asparagus patch are cut and enjoyed for 3-8 weeks depending on the age of your patch. The spears are then allowed to mature creating fern like foliage that can reach 5 feet.  This feeds the roots ensuring you will have a harvest the following year. It takes 2 years to establish before harvesting any spears.

Smoked asparagus with BBQ sauce, yum!

Growing Conditions:

- Cold winters where the ground freezes

-Dry summers

-Prefers a sandy loam soil and full sun

Choosing Asparagus Varieties

Asparagus plants are monoecious plants meaning they are either male or female plants.  Male plants produce more shoots while female plants must invest energy in producing seed and produce fewer shoots.  Jersey Knight or  Jersey Giant produce all male shoots. 

Planting Guide

Planting in a raised beds makes weeding and maintenance easier.  A raised bed also warms up earlier in the spring and allows you to properly amend your soil with plenty of organic matter. Be sure to start with a sandy loam soil and add 2" of compost. Raised beds will drain better preventing the crowns from rotting.

Dig a trench down two sides of your raised bed.  The trench should be about 1 foot deep.  You can add a dry organic fertilizer to the trench.  Place the crowns in the trench about a foot to a 1 1/2 ft apart.  Cover with 3 inches of soil.  Continue adding soil as the plants emerge until it is level with the soil line.

Maintenance

Each spring add a complete dry organic fertilizer and mulch with compost around the plants.  Keep the bed free of weeds.  The first two years water regularly.  As asparagus matures it sends down deep roots and can go longer without water.  

After the fronds die back leave them there through the winter to act as a protective mulch.  In the spring before the spears emerge cut the foliage to the ground and remove it.

For more detailed information on harvesting refer to this post:

Growing & Harvesting Asparagus

Rhubarb

Rhubarb is a lush large leafed perennial.  It adds a tropical touch to our high desert gardens and one of the earliest garden treats. With stalks ranging from deep crimson to green with a touch of red, it is truly a beautiful plant.  While leaves are toxic, the stalks are the prize used in pies, jams, lemonade, sauces, and breads. Rhubarb will produce for 10 or more years.

Rhubarb crowns are cylindrical in shape.  Both the roots and the buds which will become the stalks grow from the crown.

Planting Rhubarb

• Purchase 1 year old rhubarb crowns which can be ordered online or found at garden centers.  
• Dig a large basket size hole.  Amend with compost and a handful of a complete dry organic fertilizer
• Rhubarb should be spaced 2-3 feet apart
• Plant the crown with the roots down and buds up about 2" deep
• Water well
• Rhubarb tolerates in afternoon shade in hot summers

Care of Rhubarb

In early spring, give a feeding of fish emulsion.  Clean up the area of debris, weed, add a dry organic fertilizer, and mulch with 2" of mulch.  Even moisture is important.  Cut out all bud stalks to encourage more leaf growth. You can side dress with a complete organic fertilizer throughout the season.

Harvesting Rhubarb

• Do not harvest stalks the first growing season and harvest very sparingly the second to allow for the plant to become well established
• Harvest the 3rd year for 8-10 weeks which is until around mid summer.
• Harvest 12- 18 inch thick stalks.  When the stalks become thin stop harvesting.  Always leave 2-4 leaves when harvesting
• To harvest grab the stalk at the base turn and twist.

Refer to this post for more rhubarb tips and delicious recipes:

Rhubarb Growing Tips & Recipes

Rhubarb: The Pie Plant

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

Rhubarb Breakfast Cake

Rhubarb Strawberry Cobbler

Rhubarb Lemonade

Rhubarb Crisp

Sorrel

Sorrel is a perennial green that sprouts in early spring. It is a traditional European cool season crop.  Although less common in American gardens, it deserves a permanent spot in your garden.  It looks like spinach or arugula but this leafy green has a lemony zesty tang.  Oxelic acid gives it the sour taste.  (Same substance found in rhubarb which is in the same family) It's nickname is sour grass. 

Sorrel is the common name for three different species common garden sorrel or sour dock, French sorrel, or mountain sorrel.  All three have a history of being collected in the wild and grown in the garden.

Sorrel has arrow shaped leaves and grows to about 12".  It prefers the cool spring and fall.  In summer it will quickly bolt sending up a tall flower stock. Sorrel will self seed if flower stocks are left.

Growing Sorrel

Sorrel can be grown from seed. Prepare the bed remember it will be a permanent planting.  Amend your soil with lots of organic matter.  

 It can be seeded directly in the garden when soil warms to 50 degrees F. Press  the seeds into the soil and cover very lightly. Thin the plants to 12" apart.

Sorrel will overwinter in the garden and be a welcomed early green.  Plants can then be propagated easily by divisions in early spring.  You will want to thin them out.

Harvesting

Harvest the outer leaves when they about 4 inches.  Keep the flower stocks trimmed to the ground and cut off older declining leaves to help keep younger new leaves sprouting.

Because of the Oxelic acid deer do tend to leave sorrel alone

For recipes and ways to use sorrel refer to this post:

Sorrel: Perennial Green

Sage

Perennial Herbs

There are also many perennial herbs you can grow in your garden.  Your planting zone will determine if the herb will grow as a perennial or needs to be grown as an annual.

In my zone thyme, oregano, lemon balm, mints, sage, chives, lavender, and parsley can all be grown as perennials.  Many of these will reseed and spread rapidly throughout the garden.  It avoid this don't allow the plant to go to seed. Frequent harvesting will prevent this.

 Mints, thyme and oregano can also spread through roots.  A lot of these herbs are best contained in pots or a box dedicated to perennial herbs. 

In warmer zones rosemary, marjoram and other herbs are perennials.  In my zone I plant them in pots and move them into the greenhouse to overwinter.