Even the most experienced gardeners are delighted to have a perennial plant in their yard, that will provide a lifetime of food as soon as it is established.
Being planted in the proper site and climate, perennial vegetables can be virtually indestructible despite neglect and are often more resistant to pests, diseases, drought, and weeds, too.
Unfortunately, many gardeners are unaware of the delicious and low-maintenance bounty that can be harvested when numerous annual crops aren’t available.
Plants that come back every year are called perennial plants, and they live for at least two seasons, and often much longer. They tend to be soft-wooded, different from a shrub or tree.
You can plant them in a garden bed, or you can use perennial vegetables or fruits to edge your garden beds and even keep the weeds down. When they are established you should remember to mulch them to retain moisture, prevent weeds, and add nutrients to the soil.
Such plants were always valued, so if you add them to your garden, you will reap their benefits for years:
Jerusalem artichokes
They are worse then perennial—the plants are invasive as all get-out! The knobby tubers—also called ‘sun chokes’—are generally cooked like potatoes, taste best after winter frost sweetens them up, and don’t get very tasty in warm climes. But many gardeners don’t care; they plant the tubers—in a well-contained area—just for the riot of chocolate-scented daisy/sunflower-like blooms that appear prolifically above ground. You plant the tubers in the Spring, the above-ground growth dies back every winter, and the plants re-grow from the buried tubers year after year, often becoming pestiferous. Oh, and they’re native to North America, not the Middle East. “Jerusalem” is likely a corruption of the Italian word for sunflower, and somebody apparently thought the tubers looked like artichokes.
Rhubarb
The only vegetable we eat as a fruit, it also goes into the ground in Spring and should only be harvested lightly—if at all—the first couple of seasons. Then you’ll harvest lots of ripe stalks every Spring. Remove every bit of the (poisonous) leaf and use the tasty—and safely edible—stalks to make rhubarb pie. This plant requires good drainage, likes a heavy feeding with compost or well-composted manure every Spring and Summer, and, like asparagus, only grows well in areas with winter freezes. Cut off any flowers that form after harvest, and divide the clumps every couple of years to keep production high.
Asparagus
Plant the crowns in Spring, be patient the first few years, and you’ll harvest 6 to 8 weeks of good eatin’ every Spring thereafter. And gardeners who can perennialize their peppers outdoors can’t grow asparagus; it only thrives in areas with winter freezes.
Mushrooms
Your yard is an excellent place for mushrooms, such as Shaggy Manes, Morels, Chicken of the Woods, Oyster, Lion’s Mane, and Button. They only require mixing with compost or wood chips, sprinkling over a raked area, and watering in, while varieties like Shiitake and Portabella need drilling holes in stumps or logs and placing plugs with mushroom spawn in them. A mushroom bed takes a while to get started, but afterward, it will produce for many years.
Chives
It is very easy to plant chives, and it can be grown in pots, outside or inside the house, in a sunny window. You can start it from seeds in small pots in spring, and it will soon spread out and produce numerous tasty greens, with a little weeding and watering.
When they reach at least 4 inches, you can harvest them by clipping the whole plant off with kitchen scissors.
source: healthyfoodhouse