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Episode-1744- 10 Perennial Edibles You Should Consider Growing

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bushcherry

Sand Cherry, A Beautiful, Hardy, Long Lived, Productive Plant

It is March and that means planting or planning planting depending on where you live.  In any event if you plan on annual gardening by now you are, you have plants started or you will be likely buying starts.

Today though we focus on what I call the “long term investment strategy of growing food”, of course that means perennials.  I tried to pick a good mix of over looked and misunderstood plants today.  Different plants the fill different needs, if times get tough or even if they don’t.

When I wrote this title I originally called it 10 perennial edibles you should grow, then I realized that was sort of arrogant and not practical.  Not every plant grows well everywhere and not everyone likes the same thing.  So today we don’t just look at these 10 plants, but where they grow well, what they provide, what they require and how to acquire them.

Join Me Today to Discuss…

Resources for today’s show…

Sponsors of the day

jujubeBob Wells Plant of the Week – Li Jujube Tree
Adaptable from zone 5 to zone 9.

Also called the Chinese date. It is a round shaped fruit, reddish brown, dry and wrinkled, sweet and chewy (like dates) when fully ripe in early fall.

Attractive, easy to grow tree: hardy, drought resistant, virtually pest and disease free.

It is self-fruitful, but if you want to boost production, plant a Lang Jujube along with it.

Bob Wells specializes in edible landscape, including: Fruit Trees, Berry Plants, Nut Trees, as well as the hard to find Specialty Fruit Trees. Find this plant and more at BobWellsNursery.Com

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Comments

Episode-1744- 10 Perennial Edibles You Should Consider Growing — 27 Comments

  1. RE: History Segment

    Better question: without government sticking its nose into people’s business who would enforce patents?

  2. I was just at Raintree Nursery on Saturday picking out about 7 fruit trees some vines, ground cover and tea plants. I spent about $500 there that I would not have if I didn’t hear about them on the Survival Podcast. Anyway, if you live in Washington or Oregon it’s worth the afternoon drive out to visit the nursery. The scenery is just gorgeous and they are nestled in the mountains near the tiny town of Morton.

    I have a 1/10acre suburban lot and now have a collection of 13 trees, 10 of which are fruiting. It can be done.

    • I went with Burntridge instead because they’re a fair margin less expensive. Got 30ish trees and a bunch of shrubs in the ground now.

      Granted I’d have saved essentially 100$ by picking them up in person rather than having them shipped.

      • Thanks for the tip, I’m ordering a catalog from them. It looks like they are at the farmers market in Olympia starting in April, so I’ll have to check that out.

  3. Gophers love Sunchokes so I plant them in protected raised bed planters. For those that have Aquaponic grow beds, they grow well in those as well.

  4. Also, yes it would be amazing if Raintree ended up in the MSB. [Bobwells just seems so inappropriate for those of us in the PNW.]

  5. I’ve bought sunchokes at a number of different Asian groceries where they’re about 1/4 the price of Whole Foods.

  6. can I plant these things in groups in a 4ft by 4 ft area , like all ground nuts together, all jerusalem artichokes together?

  7. Mulberry leaves are very good human food too! The leaves are very high in protein.

  8. I love Stark Bros. – Planted 3 small home orchards over the course of 15 years. Wonderful trees. Started my current orchard with them almost exactly a year ago. That being said, I ordered my fall trees from Bob Wells – calipers of the trees were bigger, and the peach has two blooms on it after less than a year in the ground (80*F here today – our last frost is supposed to be in APRIL – ugh!). I’m not supposed to be adding to the orchard this year as I’m spending time and money on my chickens (and maybe my stock tank brooder is going to become a quail raising thing). But those sand cherries sound awfully good. Got a 100 ft fence line that I need to do something with… And dwarf mulberries – didn’t know there was such a thing. Thanks for another great show.

  9. Thanks for the show Jack! We try to add a new perennial food to our garden each year. A vegetarian friend gave me a tip on sunchokes in Zone 6. Wait until after the 1st or 2nd frost to harvest the root and the “fart effect” is greatly reduced. Seems to work for me! I let mine grow 2 years before harvesting and dividing. I now have lined the edge of the neighboring property as a tall buffer plant. They can get super tall.

  10. I would put in my endorsement for Peaceful Valley for acquiring plant for this spring… I have purchased a bunch of stuff from them this year and they are
    all the highest quality, great packaging, healthy… everything you could want.
    Great company!

  12. I’m quite certain that I have Sand Cherry’s and dig up the shoots to restarted , but can they be cut at ground level and rooted??

  13. Sand Cherry and Black Currant together make an awesome mead. I’ve also taken them to a wine level, seriously like drinking a smoky red.

  14. Jack, thank you so much for this permaculture/plant-based episode! Episodes like this are why I subscribe to TSP.

    I have a question for you or the other subscribers – do some of the nurseries use a lot of chemicals or growth enhancers when propagating plants, which can affect the fruit, and do some nurseries grow plants more naturally? Last year I won a Dave Wilson Nursery “3 in 1” fruit tree and it looked absolutely bizarre due to the extraordinarily large number of buds on it….

    • Nothing any nursery does is really going to effect fruit, none of this stuff is that persistent.

      About the only thing people use if propagation is really rooting agents, which are nothing more than an acid in reality. They don’t persist much at all. There really isn’t such a thing as a “growth enhancer” only fertilizers and most use very little because trees don’t need much fertility.

      The biggest concern is insecticides, namely nicotinoids and while I wish they were not used in nurseries I don’t really worry much either. A tree you buy has a tiny amount of soil compared to where you plant it, it isn’t like spraying your land or anything. A bareroot will bring almost nothing with it. If you are using good natural practices, you should not have much of an issue with any tree you buy.

      Now the damage the nurseries do by spraying that shit in high amounts at their locations is real and it is a big concern. One reason we need more small nurserymen, producing locally, but above all do not even sweat rooting agents, ever, just don’t spill it on your hands, they are quite dangerous if not handled properly.

  15. Awesome episode. Learned about some new plants and encouraged me to get some others even more.

  16. On Blueberries… they are very adaptable, but keep in the back your head that they originally are a bog edge plant, hence it’s preference toward acidity. We have alkaline soils here too due to a preponderance of lime stone (nothing like sitting on coral down there though, sorry Jack) and I like the idea of isolating the soil around the plant. Elemental sulphur is commonly used to increase acidity in soil, so I plant (guild) mullein all around my blueberries as they mine sulphur with their deep tap roots. Would a raised mound tend to dry it out more though? If you can micro-climate design around those blueberries I’d consider mimicking bog-edge where possible.

  18. Question for Jack and everyone else out there. I would love to purchase a number of trees, vines and bushes now but my planting areas aren’t prepared and won’t be until some time this summer.

    Does it make more sense to wait until fall to order and plant everything when I have my orchard planned out and prepped or do I buy everything now and keep them in pots so that they are growing in an area that I can control and plant them slightly more mature in the fall?

    • Keeping them in pots during the growing season is not a good idea. They’re going to get more rootbound.

      Planting them out IN summer is viable if you have irrigation set up out there [or if you live in a damp-summer climate with reliable rain every week.

    • Indeed wait the biggest mistake I have made is buying plants before being ready for them.

  19. Anyone want some wild blackberry? Let me know. I’ve got it growing all over the place.

  20. As Jack noted I’m one of those folks that grow Jerusalem Artichoke in zone 9 (near Houston). He featured an email of mine on a recent show where I was the guy who grew so many that I had to take the extra to farmers market and sold it on consignment!

  21. Jack,

    I may be able to send you a big bunch of ground nut tubers from Maine if I get out to where they grow sometime. I know the stuff from Oikios or any place else is not cheap. The place I have in mind is along the sandy banks of a river where the tubers are easy to harvest. I know of some other patches on the side of the road that have quite a few tubers as well. Finding them in Mass is not so easy. I know you would appreciate these tubers .. I sent some to my sister and to a permaculture place in Idaho. My sister never had the time to plant them and the other place somehow failed to get them established ..

    I also have some groundnut seeds which are not easy to find as most colonies do not produce seeds. I have sprouted the seeds recently so I know they are viable. I sent some of the seeds to oikos

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