There are absolutely loads of reasons to grow more perennial food, from making our lives easier to helping wildlife while also helping slow global warming. The more I’ve explored perennial edibles the more exciting and important I’ve found them for the future of our planet.
The first reason though has to simply be that perennial edibles are fun to grow and help feed us all, and they are tasty! There are so many perennial crops that they alone can meet most of our nutritional needs, or at least a large chunk through the year. And we can all find a bunch of perennial edibles that we love the flavours of.
I also find perennial edible planting, especially edible plant communities, to be much easier to care for than traditional annual crops in lines. In some areas of mixed edible food crops I have actually done almost zero weeding because the tough perennials outcompete other plants.
They also tend to be much more resilient to lack of water and drought, in fact, the above plant community I have never watered at all. This is due partly to our position in West Yorkshire – though we do dry out completely most summers – and because the dense mixed planting has lots of biomass from the roots and leaves, that improves the soil and shades it from the sun. This all helps it lock in moisture and prevents the soil drying out from wind and direct sun.
Over the years I’ve observed edible perennials can be used in a way that makes them as valuable for wildlife as other ornamental planting, if not even better! Some of our edible perennial plant communities hum loudly with insects on sunny days. You can enhance this by allowing some of the plants to flower.
But the real benefit of edible perennials to wildlife is their permanence. Perennial plants return every year, allowing populations of wildlife to rely on that stable contribution to their habitat, building up numbers year on year.
Perennial crops also do their bit for storing carbon both in their stems, roots and leaves, and by contributing to the living ecosystem. The more life there is in a spot, the more carbon it stores in the living and dead organic matter – especially in the undisturbed soil. Plus of course, almost all edible perennials are beautiful plants that happily slot into any size of garden! What’s not to love?
I’ve explored all of these topics and more in my book Grower Gatherer if you’d like to delve into much more detail.
