Growing notes for Perennial Vegetables - Plant Once Harvest Forever!
This is my growing notes page, for my "For Sale" page please click here.
I used to grow some amazing vegetables when I was a teenager, when I left home I lost most of them. Slowly I am tracking them down again and now have a rather eclectic range of vegetables which I sometimes sell for other people to grow and enjoy. Some of these vegetables are on the brink of extinction in Australia, others are far more common, regardless I have found them all to be valuable, productive and worth saving and distributing.
I offer to provide growing notes to people for the plants they buy from me, but after cut and pasting emails I think that making a list of growing notes here and linking to them is probably a better way of doing this. I plan to put in some more growing notes when I have time, if there is anything that I have sold you that is not covered please let me know and I will email growing notes through to you.
How to Grow Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis)
Water chestnuts need frost free warm weather to grow properly. While technically they are a tropical plant (just like the tomato) they can and do successfully grow in cool climates such as Canberra. If you buy corms in the cooler months store them in damp soil somewhere dark and safe until Spring. Please check on them from time to time to ensure they are not rotting, they should be firm to the touch.
When planting water chestnuts the biggest mistake people make is rotting them. If you put the corms under water and they do not have any leaves above water they will drown and rot. They need leaves to be out of the water as they use them like a snorkel. I start them in a punnet of moist but not wet soil, just like any seedling. I normally do this towards the end of the frosty months and keep it under cover somewhere as they do not like frost.
When they have sprouted I put the punnet so the bottom half is under water and the top half is in the air. This way they have a lot of water but the corm is still above the water level. When they are about 10cm tall I pull them out of the punnet, separate them and plant them in their proper home which can be anything from a 10L bucket to a swimming pool. I fill that with water so that only just the tips of the leaves are poking out of the water. From there the plants get a lot taller and I keep that water level as constant as I can until they die down in Autumn. After the water chestnuts have died down I let them dry off for a few weeks prior to harvest.
You will get a huge yield of corms from each one you plant, the further you space them apart the larger the corms they will produce. I am told 1 to 2 square meters per corm is adequate, but I dont have that kind of space. If you crowd them they will produce masses of tiny corms that are too fiddly to bother eating. These tiny corms can be planted the next year and will produce huge yields of large corms if given the room to grow. The better the soil the better they will grow. I have put more comprehensive notes on how I grow them in buckets on my water chestnut page here.
How To Grow Perennial Leeks (Allium ampeloprasum)
When posting these I trim the leaves, wrap in damp newspaper and put into a zip lock bag, I have found that by doing this the plants undergo less stress and grow faster. They do sulk a little after being replanted, but if you give them a lot of water they pick up pretty fast.
You will need to plant them deep to help them produce long white shanks and water them a lot to get them established. Once established they will survive with minimal watering but will produce best with regular watering. We normally plant about 10cm apart, if you plant them closer they will still grow but will not get as large, if you plant them further apart they will grow larger. Frost is not a problem for these and if it gets too hot and dry they may die down to odd little bulbs and reshoot when it is cooler.
Harvest them when they are the right size for you, some people eat them when they are tiny others when they are large. When you harvest they should have multiple babies growing that you can replace them with. In the early years to help build up numbers you can cut off the roots with a few mm of shank attached, if you put this in a jar with a little water it will reshoot and can be replanted. Sometimes they will send up a dozen shoots, other times only 3 or 4.
They do not often produce viable seed so I normally try to cut off the flower stalks so they can put energy into growing. If they flower the pollen may cross with other leeks so be careful if seed saving other varieties (apparently the offspring will not be as good as either parent). I have had viable seed produced once after floods and odd weather. Those flower heads also produced tiny leeks on the flower stalk as well as seed. I have planted both but have not had them long enough to see if anything useful results from them. If either are exceptional I will keep them separate from the regular perennial leeks and offer them.
How To Grow Babingtons Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var babingtonii)
I have gone into a bit of detail on how to grow Babingtons leek in a different post. They will grow much like any other leek. The closer together they are planted the more competition they have and the smaller and slower they will grow. As I have wanted them to grow as fast as possible I give them up to 20cm between each plant. Planting them as close as 5cm between each plant will still give you a crop, but they may take a few extra years to flower and they may never develop thick shanks.
How To Grow Giant Russian Garlic (Botanically this is a type of leek and not a true garlic Allium ampeloprasum)
This plant is botanically a leek, but used in the same way as garlic, it will grow and produce well in areas where garlic normally will not survive. Heavy frost is not a problem, nor is dry heat, or humid heat, this plant survives a lot of neglect but produces best when taken care of, weeded and well watered. Frost is not an issue for these and it makes the taste stronger, and they tend to die down around Christmas so are not too water hungry.
Generally planted around the shortest day (June 21) and harvested around the longest day (December 21) but does fine if planted a few months either side of these dates. I have planted cloves that are over 18 months old and they have performed just as well as the fresh cloves.
I normally plant them about 3cm deep with the pointy end up (if planted upside down they may die), and about 15cm apart. If you plant too shallow they will work it out, if they are too deep they may not have enough energy to grow to the light. In the future if you cannot remember which way up to plant, plant them on their side and they will sort themselves out.
Russian garlic has a slightly different life cycle than regular garlic. If you plant a single large clove, in a growing season it will generally grow into a large bulb made of 5 or 6 cloves with a heap of hard bulbils growing underneath the bulb as well as a large purple flower head made of hundreds of flowers. The bulbils may or may not grow if planted; if they do grow they mostly grow into a large single clove about the size of a ping pong ball called a "round". Small cloves also generally produce a single round instead of a large bulb. If you plant the round it will usually grow into a normal clove of 5 or 6 large cloves. I try to plant a mix of small cloves, large cloves and rounds each year. With that said: some years we get mostly rounds, some years we do not get any.
Harvest plants after they die down around Christmas time. The flowers are said to be sterile, but they are not. I normally cut the flower head off after the plant dies down and leave it on the soil somewhere. Out of the thousands of seeds each flower head produces I normally have 2 or 3 plants sprout up. As far as seed saving goes they are not meant to cross with any other alliums so should not give you any problems.
How To Grow Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius formerly Polymnia sonchifolia)
Yacon is by far my favourite vegetable, I have never met anyone who dislikes the taste of yacon, all kids love yacon! It is easily grown in full sun or part shade, they grow from waist height to well over 2m tall depending on the year. The more fertile the soil the better harvest you will get. They can survive on low water but do best when given a lot of water.
We normally plant them 5cm deep and about 30cm apart, if you space them further you will get a larger crop. They tend to shade things out that are growing under them, but you can easily grow a fast crop of something like beetroot under them while they are little and something like a climbing bean growing up them when they are taller if you would like. They exude inulin and other sugars from their roots which feeds earthworms and helps nearby plants grow better. We had very few earthworms when we moved here, but I could always find them under the yacon.
Here growing is dictated by frost, frost kills down the tops of the plants and I harvest the tubers a week or two later. If you leave the tubers a week or so after digging they sweeten a lot, if you eat them too early they taste like a spicy carrot. To harvest I carefully dig them up, they will have small purple crowns and large brown tubers that look similar to sweet potatoes. The brown tubers are the part that is normally eaten, the purple crown is the part you replant to grow more yacon. Most years you can divide each plant pretty easily. I keep the purple crowns in a bucket of soil in the garage until spring, but they can survive in the ground if you mulch them and they are not frozen.
We normally peel the tubers and eat them raw, but they can be cooked in a variety of ways and go well in a fruit salad, a stir fry, or any dish that a water chestnut is used. The tubers store well for a few months but can be frozen and kept for ever. Frozen tubers are then peeled, chopped and eaten frozen to taste similar to a frozen banana custard! If you let them thaw they turn black, slimy and look bad so we eat them still frozen. All parts are edible, but we only eat the tubers, we skin the tubers as the skin has a resinous taste to it. I suggest trying a little of the skin to see if you like it. The leaves can be made into a tea that is meant to be good for diabetics and has a lot of other medicinal properties.
How To Grow Everlasting Onions (Allium cepa perutile)
These do not really grow a large bulb, they are more of a spring onion type of plant. That being said if they are divided each year they can form a small bulb that is very similar to the French Shallots that are found in supermarkets. Plant 10 to 15cm apart and plant reasonably deep, if they are not deep enough they will work it out for you. Water a lot to settle them in, then water as you would any spring onion. Over summer they may die down to a small bulb or they may keep growing, it depends on the climate. The more fertile the soil the faster they grow, but once established they will survive dry and poor soil. Frost is not an issue with these plants but it may slow their growth a little.
They do not often produce viable seed so I cut off the flower stalk when it appears so they can put more energy into growing and dividing. If you dig them up and separate them each time they divide it does not take long before you have a large patch of them. If you do decide to eat the small bulb you can replant the roots with a few mm of bulb attached and it should sprout and continue growing for you. As with any of the perennial vegetables I sell, unless you want to kill them you will always have them growing and producing food for you.
How To Grow Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus)
We plant the tubers about 20cm to 30cm apart and 5 to 10cm deep. Each tuber can produce well over 1kg of tubers in a regular season so they are very productive and valuable to have in the garden. They grow 2 or 3m tall in a season and grow small sunflower like flowers that do not seem to produce viable seed. A rich soil and plenty of moisture returns the greatest crop. If you do not dig them up and eat them or divide them they tend to produce a crop of smaller tubers which are difficult to clean.
It is said that they will stay where you planted them forever as you always miss some tiny tubers when you dig them. Even though we always miss some tubers I have found that I can easily get rid of them by pulling out any plants early in spring. Guinea pigs and sheep love the stems and leaves and the high inulin content is meant to be good for ruminants.
I plant in winter or spring (or transplant in early summer) and let them grow until the tops are killed by frost. Sometimes it takes a few frosts to knock them down fully. They are sweeter after being hit by frost, but you can dig them up earlier if you want (or if you live in a frost free area). You do not have to peel these to eat them, just scrub the soil off and either cook any way that you would cook a potato or eat the raw.
They do not store very well out of soil, they store in the crisper of the fridge OK but we find that digging them as needed is easiest and saves space in the fridge.
How To Grow QLD Arrowroot (Canna edulis)
Plant 30cm apart with the tip of the growing point at soil level, easy to divide to obtain more plants. These things love water but do OK out here where it is very dry as long as I mulch or water them. They grow 2 to 3m tall with large lush tropical looking leaves. For such a tropical looking plant they survive on very little water.
Very easy to grow, extremely productive, mine do not flower here but I am told that they flower and produce viable seed in other places. I grow them on the Western side of the vegetable garden to screen the hot summer afternoon sun, I have heard of people growing them in a semi circle under fruit trees to cut as mulch.
Frost kills the tops and leaves but the tubers survive and grow again in spring. This will form a clump, to create new plants divide it with a spade as long as each part has a growing tip it should do fine. I tend to separate them in winter and spring before they start to grow but they can be divided at any time of the year if you give them enough water.
Best to eat small tubers as the larger ones get a bit fibrous, leaves can be used in place of banana leaves in cooking or fed to animals. Tubers can be made into arrowroot flour and is said to have the largest starch particles of any plant, you can even see the starch particles with the naked eye. Very few people have eaten these in Australia or even recognise them as a valuable food plant, but they are cooked regularly in South America.
How To Grow Comfrey
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