The ones most important to me are kale, hosta, fiddle-head fern and good king henry. But could also be tempted to try Seombadi, Staphylea and Caucasian spinach. What makes Staphylea so great btw?
Fiddle-head fern I honestly don’t know how to sexually propagate. It makes spores instead of seed and I have only book knowledge about, have never tried. Hosta I’m only just starting to save seed from and getting more seed sources from (if you find any, I would love to exchange, I’ve not had great success locating hosta seed honestly).
Staphylea - I have a kink for woody plants with edible leaves. This one had edible flowers and unripe fruit too (the ripe fruit is too fiddly to work with imo). The flavor is vegetable stock like. The fermented flowers I love and they produce abundantly. The plant grows really well here. Long-lived woody plant crops are the gold standard for carbon farming, so I seek them.
Good to know. Yeah I have also no experience with spores.
Sounds very interesting, the flavour of Staphylea, would be very curious to taste it.
My neighbours have some hostas where I can see some of the plants have some green seed pods (the other plants may be sterile?). Was planning to take some seeds. But it looks some of the hostas are quite small. The others are bigger but grown in a big pot. So difficult to say if they could get bigger. Will take them with in October if I get any seeds.
I have a preference for large-leaved hosta because I prefer to cook large shoots. I know that my chef colleagues prefer to fat asparagus so I assume they will adopt hosta more easily if they are large. But honestly, I’m interested in any kind of seed
Aaahh you are not talking of the total size of the bush but just the size of the individual leaves? I find that does sound very interesting. The largest hosta overall I have seen is in a garden maybe 30km from where I live. I know the People there, but not sure I will get there anytime within the next few weeks.
I’m finding that one of the HUGE advantages of perennial vegetables is that they tend to be polycarpic, rather than monocarpic. (Two wonderful words I just learned!)
Annual or biennial vegetables tend to be monocarpic – they can only flower and produce seeds once, and then they die. Perennial vegetables tend to be polycarpic – they can flower and produce seeds many times in their lifetime.
This is particularly important with root crops (for obvious reasons), but I also really, really like polycarpic vegetables of other types, too. I want all my brassicas to be perennial, for instance. The older they are, the deeper their roots can grow, and thus the more drought tolerant they’re likely to be. They’re also likely to produce more fruits / flowers / seeds / leaves / whatever I want to eat every year.
So yeah, that’s the biggest advantage of perennial vegetables for me. I want to harvest the seeds to share (or plant myself!) every year, while also getting a nice harvest to eat. Bonus points if that harvest of food from the plant gets larger every year. 
Yeah the variations fascinate me too. Some perennials are monocarpic but survive for a long time, if the flowers don’t set seed. I know of examples of single plants that have survived for 30 years because the gardener always ate the flower buds and the species was supposed to be “polycarpic biennial”, ie. it flowers two times and then dies (Bunias orientalis).
Another way to understand how perennial a perennial can be is to look at CSR triangle theory: Where competitive (C) and stress-tolerant (S) plants are often long-lived through different strategies (competitive typically by cloning themselves and stress-tolerant by being slow to grow). The third category, pioneer and disturbance-adapted plants, often are short-lived, even if perennial. But those plants tend to produce a lot of seed - which is why disturbance (clearing the ground for that seed) fits them well.
The problem with CSR is that most plants don’t fit easily into just one category, but uses several of those strategies.
You can also analyze the longevity of a perennial through these four similar indicators:
- Inherent longevity. Genetically disposed and difficult to change.
- Vegetative propagation ability (self-cloning). If they have runners, root when a stem touches the ground, rhizomes, side shoots etc. they can rejuvenate part of the plant even if another part dies off.
- Persistence. A plant’s ability to stay in place against competition. Some plants are genetically disposed to a long life, but often don’t succeed because of competition. If a runner, rhizome or side shoot don’t find an available space to grow because the competition is too dense, the plant will quickly die out / low persistence. Some plants die of in their middle and spread outwards. Some grasses can stay where they are in the same clump for centuries.
- Self-seeding. How easily a plant sows itself under garden conditions. More dependent on context and has not really been systematized anywhere so all we know is via anecdotes.
3 Likes
Updated this overview with a new project thread on Toona sinensis.
How strong is Seombadi in taste?
(I’ve read it’s somewhere between lovage and celery.)
That’s a fairly good description. I would say there’s some parsley in there too. Most important for flavor is that the plant is best in winter and that’s when it should be used. Over summer the flavor gets harsher and too bitter for most people.
1 Like