Page 12 - Simply Veg Issue 3 2019

Maintaining a perennial vegetable garden is really much easier than dealing with annual vegetables. For
myself, now living on my own, I don’t need lots of vegetables and don’t have endless space anyway and it’s more convenient for me to buy root veg etc. But, the time saved by growing perennials gives me more available time to spend on my experiments and on the few annual staples that I particularly enjoy growing, such as beans, peas, tomatoes and squashes. I now try to garden as lightly as possible, using no dig and mulching principles as much as I can, so tidying up and preparing is fairly easy. This year I chose to sow more potato onion and my own shallot seed with heat in February and these are now planted out with a selection of last year’s “sets” of both in mid April.
But other than keeping the plot tidy, there are a few jobs that I still need to do.
Most of my perennial brassica varieties (purple tree collards, Taunton Dean and Daubenton variegated and plain varieties,) don’t normally set seeds, but both Spis Bladene (Danish kale) and Asturian tree cabbage do. So I have eaten what I could of these as sprouting broccoli and then “pruned” them back to stop them dying, which they could otherwise do as a natural process if left to flower. The Asturian tree cabbage tends to lean over, root and then split and produce several separate stems. Just one of these stems hasn’t run to seed, so I have lopped all of the seeding stems off totally and will root this one into a pot
by pinning it down and layering. When
it is well rooted I will separate it from the parent plant and move it elsewhere to a
new position. I also pruned a couple of other shoots back, so hopefully I will now get some new growth anyway. My nine star perennial broccoli is also pruned back to remove all the seeding parts as I write this at the end of April and I have an extremely nice
Beds of seeded potato onions and shallots and selected sets of potato onions, shallots and garlic after one months growth
commercial variety that I will also try with
the same treatment. I will take cuttings later of all of the brassicas that I want to keep
to overwinter in the greenhouse in case of losing the originals in extreme weather. As I said in my first article in this series, you don’t need to grow every variety, but I have been particularly impressed with the Asturian tree cabbage, purple tree collards, variegated Daubenton cabbage and nine star perennial broccoli. And all of these are all additionally very architectural plants, so are also quite ornamental and will look good in any garden.
My perennial leeks have had mixed results over the winter. The Kahikatae leeks from New Zealand remained evergreen and
bulked up, producing very nice clumps of new leeks, but have remained very thin, so I am both re-selecting the bigger specimens’ and separating clumps to re-plant singly. I thought that I had totally lost another variety sent from Penny Woodward, a very helpful friend in Australia. These were very young and tender when I got them late in the season
last year. Those planted outside in the garden didn’t survive, but luckily, I also kept two small clumps in pots in the greenhouse and these did survive, providing some dozen new young leeks to grow on. I am particularly looking for varieties that remain evergreen in winter and this variety – like many perpetual leeks appears to die back to a corm, or bulb in the winter, but I will see how they get on this year. I also imported some Poireau perpetual leeks from France late in the season last year. Only two
of these have survived outside, but I have more replacements on the way. And this year
I tried multiple sowings of perennial Russian leeks from seed, but not one of the sowings has produced anything at all. So overall, my first impressions are that I think that the art in growing perennial leeks is likely to be in finding the right variety and then singling them and planting out separately in the spring and I have been surprised in the amount of feeding required. My experiments in perennialising other annual varieties of leeks are ongoing and will need at least a full season to be able to assess how they perform.
I haven’t really covered perennial shoots yet, but the following all produce edible shoots in the spring: Asparagus, Bamboo, Hops, Hostas, Sea Kale, etc. These can
all be cultivated, but also I especially recommend the Marsh Thistle, (Cirsium palustre) known as Poor Man’s Asparagus, which doesn’t really do its delicious stalks justice. All of our thistles are edible, so you won’t need to worry about mis- identifying them, but this one is exceptional. When you go out for a country walk, marsh thistle can
Daubenton perennial cabbages
Purple Tree Collards against fence
be found wild and can be gathered - with permission - from grassy fields, woodland clearings, roadsides and obviously marshes. It is a pernicious weed, found between April and August, growing 2 to 6 foot in height, topped off with a pale pink thistle tuft. The best time to eat this is in June or July, and ideally before the flower stalk appears. The only other thing that I have been told likes them is a donkey, but trust me, they are worth foraging for and are very easily found. They can’t be bought, except occasionally in parts of Portugal, rural France and Italy, but you can very quickly gather a basketful! Cut off the top six inches of the plant, remove the spiky leaves and peel the tough spiny stem with a vegetable peeler. The raw stems are pale green, nutty and taste fresh. They are good in salads, or as a crudite
like carrot, celery and cauliflower etc, but otherwise boil and treat as asparagus. There are also many other perennial vegetables that produce useful edible shoots not mentioned here, but many are covered in Steven Barstow’s book “Around the World in 80 Plants” for those wishing to learn more. Highly recommended reading is also Martin Crawford’s excellent book “How to Grow Perennial Vegetables.” My thanks again to Alison Tindale of backyardlarder.co.uk for her help in producing this article and others in this series on growing perennial vegetables. And again, please contact me if you wish to join, or help to develop a permaculture group to share information, techniques, plants and recipes etc, particularly an NVS group. David Wall FNVS: dorsetnvs@hotmail.com
Perennial Vegetables:
A New Beginning: Part 5
David Wall FNVS
12 simplyvegetables