“There is a fantastic array of vegetables you can grow in your garden, and not all of them are annuals. In Perennial Vegetables the adventurous gardener will find information, tips, and sound advice on less common edibles that will make any garden a perpetual, low-maintenance source of food. Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as the flowers in your perennial beds and borders-no annual tilling and potting and planting. They thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season. It sounds too good to be true, but in Perennial Vegetables author and plant specialist Eric Toensmeier (Edible Forest Gardens) introduces gardeners to a world of little-known and wholly underappreciated plants. Ranging beyond the usual suspects (asparagus, rhubarb, and artichoke) to include such “”minor”" crops as ground cherry and ramps (both of which have found their way onto exclusive restaurant menus) and the much sought after, anti-oxidant-rich wolfberry (also known as goji berries), Toensmeier explains how to raise, tend, harvest, and cook with plants that yield great crops and satisfaction. Perennial vegetables are perfect as part of an edible landscape plan or permaculture garden. Profiling more than 100 species, illustrated with dozens of color photographs and illustrations, and filled with valuable growing tips, recipes, and resources, Perennial Vegetables is a groundbreaking and ground-healing book that will open the eyes of gardeners everywhere to the exciting world of edible perennials.”
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles
I have to give it 5 stars for being the first real comprehensive review of perennial vegetables, and the organization of this book is fabulous. Some of the information I found at odds with my own experience, such as that I have found hardy varieties of clumping bamboo available. Also, I question the sustainability of some of the quarantine methods for more invasive varieties he suggests (what happens if someone stops mowing?). Overall a fantastic book for gardeners who love perennials!
3 Stars I like it, but it could be better.
This is a good book well worth owning. I personally think that the layout could have been done better. There is a section at the end with lists of plants by climate zone, that really needed to give page numbers for the plants. Also the grouping by family, well very scientific, can make it hard to find what you are looking for. If you don’t happen to know what family it is in you have to look in the index. Be prepared to become very friendly with the index if you are looking for a certain plant. Also don’t take the maps too much to heart, the delineation of zones on the maps are wrong (he puts Vancouver WA as a Cold Temperate Climate type… we are zone 8 and rarely get snow.) but that is probley more a printer error then anything else. Add in the fact that the author has a HEAVY bias toward the warmer climes (like my zone 8 garden). Although a good part of that slant could very well be that there is a lack of research on edible perennials for the colder areas.
All that said I don’t regret buying this book, it is a good book with lots of interesting information.
3 Stars more pretty than practical
This is an interesting book with nice photos, but of limited use to me here in USDA zone 5. Most of these plants require much warmer weather than I have, and from those I have grown, I’d say that while some may be easy enough to grow there are reasons they’re not in widescale commercial production.
Take the sunchoke, or Jerusalem artichoke, for instance. It’s currently growing like a weed in a corner of my garden from six tubers I planted last year. I thought I had dug up the majority of what had grown last year – apparently not from the volume of new growth that sprouted this year. A friend of mine told me he had had a patch that got completely out of control before he mowed it into submission and gave up on harvesting it. I found the tubers really didn’t have much taste until after frost, which meant there was only a narrow window available for harvest in the late fall/early winter before the ground froze but not completely. They are small and knobby and a pain to peel, and don’t store all that well once they’ve been dug up out of the ground. All in all, easy to grow but not easy to use and certainly as likely as not to become a pest in the garden. I’ve tried New Zealand Spinach, too, and I’d have to say it was not very tasty – very tough and bitter. I’m glad it didn’t survive the winter.
So, while it’s a lovely coffee-table book and an interesting conversation piece, I’d say it’s “buyer beware” on the actual “veggies” featured in the book itself.
5 Stars Darned useful book
This is a fantastic resource for any serious gardener. You won’t find any stale information in here- we thought we were pretty well-informed about garden plants that are suitable for our area, but this book introduced us to many, many more, and we have tried quite a few, some very successfully! I now recommend this book to pretty much every gardener or gardener wannabe I know.
5 Stars Amazingly Well Written
I have spent a lot of time with this book. It is very well done and the standard of excellence is very high. Like many, I think we face the real possibility of having to be largely self-reliant as many different global crises converge, water, oil, climate change, etc. The antidote to despair is getting busy and one of the very best core strategies is to plant perennial vegetables and do edible landscaping.
As noted above, not only is this book very thorough and very complete, it will point the reader to seed, plant, and other resources to implement their ideas. I consider it a master work and far more valuable than its very reasonable price. Get it, it will be one cornerstone of your self reliance toolkit.
Recent Comments