INCREDIBLE EDIBLE PERENNIALS

Stephanie Hafferty shows how you can save money by growing crops that just keep on coming year on year

- Stephanie Hafferty

Perennial edibles are a low-maintenance way of producing delicious, abundant crops with less work. Ideal for a budget-savvy garden, they save time too: plant once for years of food. Often cropping in the spring, many perennials can provide delicious meals during the hungry gap periods, helping to increase your home-grown abundance.

Edible perennials, which include herbs, vegetables, fruit and flowers, are plants which are expected to live for at least two years, and usually crop for much longer. Requiring less attention than annuals, they are ideal for people with busy lives. Many, such as globe artichokes, alliums and sea kale, are structurally beautiful and perfect for cottage garden-style ornamental borders.

These established plants are more resilient, with greater resistance to pests, drought and other problems. Many help to extend the growing season and can bridge the hungry gap, for example perennial kale ‘Taunton Deane’ which crops year round.

FOOD FOREST 

I grow edible perennials in the flower borders, on the edges of the annual veg beds, in pots and in designated perennial beds. Some are even fine grown indoors on windowsills, such as the perennial alliums and herbs. In my previous garden I had a whole perennial forest garden in pots, grown on an area of concrete, including fruit trees, bushes, herbs and brassicas.

A favourite way of growing perennials is as a food forest polyculture. This technique often associated with permaculture involves growing a range of plants of different heights together, creating an edible paradise which increases biodiversity and creates an easily maintained food plot.