Perennial vegetables

Building on the previous post about creating a forest garden on a small patch of the allotment I share with friends. 

There are so many wonderful perennial vegetable plants to choose from. Here is what I have planted or plan to plant so far:

• Good King Henry - Herbaceous perennial with deep green spinach like leaves. Young leaves can be harvested from early spring to mid-summer. Young unopened flowering shoots can be picked and cooked like asparagus. I’ll try and grow it from seed but I also have a friend with lots he can spare. 

• Skirret - Hardy perennial root vegetable that produces a cluster of sweet tasting roots. I have planted an offset (small portion of roots) and sown some seeds. The offsets will produce a new plant quicker than the seeds and I am a bit impatient so will try both.

• Perennial Kale ‘Taunton Dene’ Supplies tasty greens all year round. It can grow to over 2m tall and if you cut off the lower branches and support with a stake can be grown to look like a small tree. The leaves look tough but when cooked are sweet, tender and nutritious. 

• Jerusalem artichoke ‘Dwarf Sunray’ high yielding perennial root vegetable with edible tubers also flowers profusely with pretty sunflower-like flowers attractive to pollinators. Not as tall as some varieties. 

• Siberian purslane - hardy perennial that self sows and creates good ground cover. Leaves are edible and lovely in a salad with a beet leaf flavour.

Siberian purslane and perennial kale.