Ep. 82 – This Year it’s Perennials Over Annuals

Planting a dense perennial bed with annuals in the middle

It’s mid-May. I’ve already planted 90 plus plants. I’ve had some transplanted grafted trees fail – cedar, apple, rust gets them, even if the book says that this variety should be resistant, (I guess the tree didn’t read the book).

perennial-bed1 — Perennial bed with hazel, walking onion, plantain, dock, lemon balm, horseradish.

So this year I started to convert some of my garden, the peripheral parts, into perennials, with annuals in the middle.

Regular greens in my garden bolt quickly when it gets hot in early summer.

Options to augment those with perennial greens – dock, sorrel, lambs quarters, both narrow leaf plantain and a wider leaf plantain. Perennial are more bitter than annual greens. Dock and sorrel have a slight lemony after taste.
Hazelnut, goji berry around the outside, walking onion, Solomon seal, plantain, dock, with annual lettuce in the middle. A mix of perennials and annuals.
Milpa garden or regular annuals in the middle.

bloody-dock — Bloody dock – can be used as greens

front-perennial-bed-1 — Hazelnut, goji berry around the outside, walking onion, Solomon seal, plantain, dock, with annual lettuce

milpa2 — Milpa garden – squash, beans, corn, flowers, buckwheat, all mixed together. Squash has become dominant in this bed.

More info on how I am using Milpa gardening to start new beds, cover crop with produce in the first year. I used a broadfork to turn over grass, spread Milpa seed, covered with a layer of wood chips. It leaves a natural mulch and builds soil.

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