How to Grow Perennial Vegetables
Low-maintenance, low-impact vegetable gardening
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How to Grow Perennial Vegetables gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetables, from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants.
Perennial vegetables are a joy to grow. Whereas traditional vegetable plots are largely made up of short-lived, annual vegetable plants, perennials are edible plants that live longer than three years. Grown as permaculture plants, they take up less of your time and effort than annual vegetables, and extend the harvesting season - avoiding the hungry gap between the end of the winter harvest and the start of the summer harvest of annual vegetables.
Unlike annual vegetables, perennials cover and protect the soil all year round, which maintains the structure of the soil and helps everything growing in it. Humous levels build up, nutrients don't wash out of the soil, and mycorrhizal fungi, critical for storing carbon within the soil, are preserved. Perennial plants also contain higher levels of mineral nutrients than annuals because they have larger, permanent root systems, capable of using space more efficiently
Written by gardening expert Martin Crawford, this book gives comprehensive advice on how to grow and care for both common perennial vegetables like rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish and asparagus and unusual edible plants such as skirret, red chicory, nodding onions, Babington's leek, scorzonera, sea kale, wild rocket, coppiced trees and aquatic plants.
With plenty of cooking tips, colour photographs and illustrations throughout and an A-Z of over 100 perennial edibles, it is an inspiration for all gardeners.
About this Author
Martin Crawford has had broad and varied horticultural/agricultural experience over the years - experience that led him to the concept of forest gardening as a sustainable system that can flourish in our changing climate conditions. This led to the founding of the Agroforestry Research Trust, a non-profit-making charity that researches temperate agroforestry and all aspects of plant cropping and uses, with a focus on tree, shrub and perennial crops. At his forest garden in Dartington, Devon, Martin systematically researches plant interactions and unusual crops. He also runs a commercial tree nursery specialising in unusual trees and shrubs, and has a large trial site, researching fruit and nut trees.
Reviews
"This lovely book makes it clear that we are not just missing a trick, we are missing a feast." --Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
"At last an in-depth book on perennial vegetables combined with Martin Crawford's usual diligence of research - essential reading." --Ben Law
"A lot of information is packed into a relatively short space... Lots of the plants listed were new to me entirely, or as an edible possibility. Now I'm not only thinking where edible perennials may fit on my allotment, but also in my garden too! This is an informative and detailed book, which I shall be returning to again and again." --vegplotting.blogspot
"I admire tremendously the first-hand experience which informs Martin Crawford's writing. This book leads us down the path to a wealth of perennial vegetables and tells us how to combine them successfully." --Anne Swithinbank
"A really useful book... Let us start freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the annual sowing, thinning and planting regime." --Bob Flowerdew
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