Jerusalem Artichokes
Edible Landscaping
By Robin Wheeler
Image courtesy floridata
What is an edible landscape? Well, a landscape is that area outside your window, and an edible landscape is one you (or a beneficial animal friend) can eat. “Like my vegetable garden?” you ask. Like a great big vegetable garden, that reaches from yard edge to yard edge, in which as many plants as possible are not only good for food, but might have other uses as well.
Let‘s pretend there has been a major earthquake, or maybe you just didn‘t make it to the grocery store after work. Let‘s also pretend that last year (smart thing!) you planted some edible landscape plants, and now you can benefit from your wisdom. You can just march out and pick some salad greens from around the back door, perhaps some chard, green onions, lettuce, corn salad and chickweed. Perhaps you‘ll be digging up some potatoes or Jerusalem artichokes from their permanent patch, plucking scarlet runner beans from against the carport, and bringing in some apples for cobbler on the way back into the house. A snippet of lemon balm and peppermint will be nice to throw into the teapot after dinner. All of the above samples are tough, easy to grow, and much more useful than a hydrangea.
The theory is that instead of planting merely pretty plants in your yard, you replace your planting areas (and most of your lawn!) with something that will not only grace your dinner table, but will also live on to produce again next year. The theory and practice of permaculture (permanent agriculture) and edible landscaping introduces lots of complex issues and arguments, but the supporting concept is simple (just like most of the complex issues of the world!).
Next time you have an opportunity to acquire a plant for the yard, think twice about your choice. Should you get a nice hydrangea, or a fall-bearing raspberry? Should a large fern fill out that corner, or a rhubarb plant? When Aunt Matty offers you a clump of daisies, point a trembling finger at the fine patch of sorrel she has too much of. Expand your horizons.
And when you start dragging your plants home, remember that they don‘t need to go into your sunny veggie garden (which can now be saved for annuals like tomatoes and peas) but can be tucked in less obvious spots. Many of the perennial plants like berry bushes and edible greens are coincidentally much more tolerant of shade than annual vegetables, so they can be thrown into your gloomier corners. Start them off with some good compost and a soaking. Don‘t forget that if they don‘t do well after a year, it is a simple matter to try them in another spot.
While you‘re reconsidering your concept of where certain plants belong, start thinking multi-use in terms of each plant‘s novel characteristics. A prickly gooseberry can be planted where the dog tries to push through the fence to chase the next door cat. Jerusalem artichokes can be planted along an exposed length of fence to give you a fast-growing hedge for privacy in the summer, since they can grow 8 feet tall. Your pea trellis can offer shade to your sitting area, and will keep the ground behind them cool for a patch of lettuce or mint.
A sour cherry tree may be so distracting to the local birds they‘ll be too busy for your sweeter fare. Start thinking of rampant strawberries as ground cover and let them creep out of their given spot. They‘ll keep weeds down in otherwise unused spaces. If you‘re choosing a site for your potato patch, just pick where you want to put in another garden area next year, and let them do the work of breaking the soil.
Even if you‘re renting, you can start collecting plants and either keeping them in containers under trees, or planting out the smaller plants like herbs and edible greens.
These are a few of my favourite things:
My friend Diane, who eats her own salads pretty well year round on the Pacific Coast introduced me to Welsh or Japanese bunching onion. These grow most of the year, dying down during heavy frost but coming up quickly in the spring.
Just cut off green onion shoots as you need them and leave the plant to grow. You‘ll need quite a few plants in a patch if you use lots of green onion, but one seed packet will give you more than you will ever need, and you can take them with you when you move. An easy alternative to growing from seed is to cut 1 to 2 inches off the root end off the green onions you normally buy at the grocery store, and just sticking them, root down, in any soil. A Chinese friend told me this trick, and as a proud propagator, I wonder why it had never occurred to me before. But the little blighters sprouted new greens and I paid them back by keeping them watered. You can plant them at any time of year when the ground is workable, and get about another year out of them before they poop out, which they do seem to do.
I also love my chives, planted just down the steps. I can duck out and snip a handful for salads or scrambled eggs.
Another favourite is perennial or sprouting broccoli. My friend Jess showed me her plant, a full 5-foot tall purple sprouting broccoli, and told me she and her husband had been picking off that one plant all winter. It was still very sweet and covered with little broccoli shoots in April. She finally cut it down because it was causing too much shade for her other veggies! Nine Star broccoli is good too, and don‘t forget to eat the leaves and flowers! A couple of these plants near the backdoor will keep you in soup greens, stir fry bits and salad bits for months.
And for just being able to walk out and pick a green for salad or stirfry, kale is a good bet. Many of us have had bad experiences with kale, especially if we have folks from the Old Country that liked to cook everything to mush. But Red Russian Kale is very sweet, especially after the first frost, as well as being darned good for you. A couple of decent plants will keep you in red “greens” for many months of the year, ready to eat at any time. Kale is another tough, easy-care plant. Just pick leaves off as you need them, and leave some for the mother plant to carry on.
I appreciate my lovage plant, because when I run out of celery, I can peel a few leaves off and chop them very fine into salad or soup to give me that celery flavour. Plant these in semi-shade, and they will come up relentlessly year after year. The taste is so strong of celery, you need very little, or might just rub the bowl to get enough taste and smell to convince the crowd. See the herb chapter for more ideas on incorporating herbs into your life.
Corn salad is becoming a favourite - it‘s a tiny, lush little plant, all edible, that you can nip leaves off of all spring. Then it goes to seed, and the next flush of plants arrive in early fall, all without a single gesture on my part. And then, in spring, there they all are again, dozens of the little blighters, for moving around or giving away. And corn salad doesn‘t get bitter like lettuce does.
Another treat for the new gardener is to have some tea plants around. Monarda is a good plant for tea, as is peppermint and lemon balm - all are so easy to grow, they‘ll take over the yard if you let them. You might want to contain them in pots for this reason.
Wild berries - salal, Oregon grape, huckleberry, thimble and salmonberry, wild strawberry - all these native plants are good for tucking into wild, shaded portions of your garden, and all the berries are edible.