11 Easy Edible Perennials - Plant Once and Harvest Every Year

Welcome to our cottage garden and right now we're in our vegetable garden and this part of the garden is entirely built on perennial vegetables and today I wanted to show you some of my favourites. There's so many good reasons to grow perennial vegetables but the number one for me is that they're easy and pretty much maintenance free. Pop them in the ground and they'll get bigger and bigger and every year you can harvest something from them and if that's not a reason to grow them then I don't know what is. They're also really good for soil health because they'll have a long-term root structure in the soil. They can be good for pollinators where they've got flowers and they can be super cost effective as well because they'll feed you year on year. So here are some of my favourite perennial vegetables and fruits to grow. First up we have walking onions and these are a really generous perennial vegetable to grow. So you'll see there's this long stem and you can eat this like a spring onion. There's also these bulbules on the top which you can plant or eat and then if you dig up the plant from underneath there's an even bigger onion that you can use in place of a regular onion. But the cool thing about these is that as the stems die back these bulbules on the top will fall over they'll scatter themselves in the ground and then new plants will appear. So they will quite literally walk around your garden hence the name but they're a really easy and a really generous plant to grow and these bulbules even have their own bulbules they just keep going so they're super easy to propagate and share with your friends as well and I'd highly recommend them. Next to the walking onions I have another sort of perennial onion and these onions propagate by division so if you put one bulb in the ground that will multiply into two that will multiply into four that will multiply into eight and before you know it you'll have massive bunches of onions and again you can use the stem like a spring onion or you can dig them up and eat the bulb you can also replant the bulbs to reposition them but these are another really good one. These ones don't flower as well they just propagate by division and you'll end up with masses of onions that you can just help yourself to. I also have some perennial leeks in this bed but it's quite normal for them to die back in the hotter months so at the moment I haven't got anything to show you but if you like perennial vegetables give us a subscribe and hopefully next time I show you around the garden I can show you the perennial leeks as well. Next to me here is a perennial kale this one is called Dorbenton's kale and it has this kind of mound compact shape so it doesn't get too tall and this one will spread by these stems getting heavier and they will droop and come close to the ground and then those will root as well or you can take cuttings from this really really easily but this is a super tasty plant you can use this in place of how you would use kale or spinach normally I like to use it in a pesto as well it's super tasty the good thing about this is it's really easy to take cuttings from so you just help yourself to any of these little side shoots stick them in a pot of soil and they will root so I'm propagating loads of these going to give them out to my friends I think it's a really good plant to have and also because it will always be covered in foliage it's quite a nice thing to have in your garden in winter as well when things are looking a bit bare nice to have something on display I also grow a perennial kale called Taunton Dean and this is sort of a tree kale so it can get really really tall it can be about the height of a person and it's a purple color so it's quite pretty you will notice that I haven't covered these they're covered in caterpillars and that's okay the plants are really sturdy because they've been in the ground for such a long time they've got a really developed root system so you can eat from them the caterpillars can eat from them and the caterpillars are an important part of the food chain in the garden so I don't cover mine you can cover them if you want to but they will be absolutely fine if you don't and I think this is another really good plant to grow in your vegetable garden these plants are new to me and these are called Chenopodium strawberry spinach or strawberry sticks and the way that you would eat these you'll eat the leaves in place of a spinach they're a nice soft green and you can eat the berries in late summer autumn and they're similar to a strawberry so what an amazing plant to give you a hybrid of kind of something you'd use as a vegetable and a fruit I got these from my local garden center they were only two pounds so that's really great value that's the same as maybe buying a nice bag of spinach in the green grocers this ferny looking plant is actually asparagus and I grow two types of one just so that I have a continuous stock of asparagus through the spring months and you will eat these as they appear as new shoots in the ground in spring and then after the longest day you'll let them grow into these ferny kind of structures and again they're a really pretty thing to have in the veg garden kind of ornamental as well when you let them go into this fern shape asparagus is one that's a little bit of an investment to get going so you're supposed to plant the roots and those are called crowns and you leave them for about two to three years to get established so that they can build up really strong plants and then after that you can harvest from them so this was actually our first year harvesting from these but it tastes so different growing your own food no different with asparagus it tastes amazing when you harvest it yourself from the garden and the amazing thing about these plants is that they will last in the garden for 25 to 30 years so we're going to be harvesting from these for years to come even though it was a bit of effort to get to get them going well worth it in my opinion and another great one to add to your vegetable garden in my two asparagus beds i actually under plant them with strawberries so this acts as a good ground cover in the summer helps keep the moisture in and it also provides us with fruit in the summer as well so another amazing thing about strawberries is they are so easy to propagate if you start with one plant it will send out loads of side shoots and you'll in no time have a whole bed filled with plants so i actually started with eight plants i'm three years in and this bed is absolutely swamped with strawberry plants the fruits are really really tasty again they just don't compare to the ones that you buy in the supermarket and it's a good way to grow them when you plant them next to asparagus a good way to maximize the space this is one of my rhubarb plants and a rhubarb is a classic vegetable garden plant super delicious to eat the shoots in the spring makes a really nice crumble and then following that you have these gorgeous big leaves fills up a lot of space and it's quite dramatic and beautiful and i love growing it so we've got three rhubarb plants here they're all quite young so we haven't harvested from them yet but next year we'll start to eat from these as they're looking like a really good size now but when we put these in a couple of years ago they were tiny so you can see they're absolutely thriving here again super easy the only thing i do to look after these is when they die back in the autumn i just take the dead leaves and put them over the plant to help keep them insulated in winter but i'm sure they'd be fine if you didn't do that they're a really easy plant and a very rewarding one if you like a rhubarb crumble as well next to me here we've got jerusalem artichokes and these are really cool because you can eat the tubers so you'll dig them out from underground and you can use them as a roasting vegetable or you can use them to make soups and purees but they also flower so they're great for pollinators so they have these sunflower type flowers which haven't appeared yet we're in middle of august here so they look like they will appear soon and these also spread really quickly so they're great value for money as well i've only recently added these two plants into the garden but i've put them in this raised bed just so they don't completely overtake the growing space a great one to grow and a good way of attracting pollinators into your garden as well this one's going to require a little bit of imagination because it's something that we've only recently added to the garden but this one is a globe artichoke and there are so many good reasons to grow globe artichokes so you can eat the young flower heads which are super tasty but they also if you let them mature and bloom they're really great for pollinators and you will see loads of bees enjoying those and they're a gorgeous plant in terms of structure so they're massive take up a lot of space very showy and bright blue purple flower heads are stunning as well so both practical and beautiful in my opinion and another great one to add to your vegetable garden i also have a kiwi vine in this bed and i thought i would give it a mention because it's a really cool thing to grow i actually didn't realize you could grow them in this country until last year so i've planted one it hasn't done especially well it had a lot of frosts into the spring that killed off the new growth but it's still surviving so i'm hoping that maybe next year it will thrive if not i may have to try again with another plant in a different bed but if you can get these established in your garden you will have thousands of kiwi fruits and if you you can buy varieties that are self-fertile so they don't need cross-pollinating and you'll have this really gorgeous massive vine as well so my aim is to climb it over this archway and then it will be beautiful when the leaves and flowers are in bloom but also should give us lots of tasty fruit as well that's all of the perennial veg plants that we've got growing in our veg garden at the moment but if you'd like to see more give us a subscribe i'm always on the lookout for perennial plants to add to this area and i'm going to be continuously working on it throughout the years so thanks for watching and see you next time