Growing Edible Perennials in the Yard and Garden

Yvonne Smith

Yvonne Smith

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As i have gotten older, and my balance has gotten worse, I have not been able to do as much gardening as i used to do. First, I switched over to mostly container gardening, but after tripping over tree roots in the yard and falling a few times, I have been thinking that even yard work is not such a safe thing for me anymore.
However, I have decided that growing plants that do not need to be planted each year, like berries and other fruit, might be a better way for me to go nowadays.

We have enjoyed the blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries for several years now, but this fall we planted 2 small bush cherries, and two more blueberries that Starks had on closeout sale. It might be a while before we actually get fruit, but then we should have berries every year after that.

I am also starting some tree collards, which are a perennial form of kale or collards, and they are supposed to overwinter and live for years. I like rhubarb, but have not had any luck getting it to grow this far south, but I have some seeds and any going to see if they will sprout and maybe grow.
 
I actually planted broadleaf plantain in my backyard, along the bank leading up to the defunct railroad bed. Plantain is a weed that grows in backyards throughout the country but it has far more nutrition than lettuce, and can be used to replace lettuce. It can also be used in place of spinach, and I think it's at least as nutritious as spinach, and it tastes better than both of these.

Given the fact that the land my house was built on, in 1910, was apparently a pond or a swamp before the paper mill filled it with slag from the mill operations, a lot of stuff won't grow, except in rock gardens or other above-ground enclosures that I can fill with soil, peat moss, and compost. I've been experimenting with various things to see what will grow and what won't. Since blackberries and raspberries grow wild throughout Maine, I thought they'd do okay but they don't survive the winters in my yard. Strawberries should do okay because if I don't mow my yard, I'll have wild strawberries there. I've tried blueberries, also common in Maine, and even in other parts of town, but they wouldn't grow. Cherry trees do well until they get to be above 5-6-feet tall, and then they fall over; I think they can't root past the slag.

Lingonberries do great, although much of my backyard is too heavily shaded for them to flower and grow fruit. They do good along my driveway, though. I have some growing along the south side of my yard but, while the plants are healthy enough, I think it's too heavily shaded for fruit.

I've given up on edibles, and am trying various flowering plants to line gardens that I have built up above ground along the sides and back of my yard. Lupines, which grow wild throughout the state, don't do well, except that the largest variety of them. Roses do well, as do peonies, daffodils, and lilies. I bought seeds for some nice-looking flowering perennials that are classified as weeds, figuring weeds would have a good chance. I forget what it is, but one of my favorite perennials in my front yard garden is a weed that I dug up at the town's compost pile.
 
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We have lots of plantain, too; both the broadleaf and the narrow leaf, and I do harvest that and cook it sometimes. I also grow comfrey, which comes back each year, and use that like spinach.
Comfrey is one of those foods that people have eaten and fed their animals with for hundreds of years, but then someone did one of those research where they fed some rat more than 10 people might eat in a day, and it gave the rat liver problems; so now we are told not to consume comfrey. It is actually the roots, and not the leaf, that have the part they say can be toxic, and people just eat the leaves and use the roots as a poultice.

For a long time, I thought the wild strawberries we have here had no flavor, and then i discovered that they are not really a strawberry at all, they are wild CinqueFoil, which has little light colored berries that look like a wild strawberry. The leaves resemble strawberry leaves, but the flowers are yellow and not white. They seem to be edible, but tasteless .
 
I'd love to plant some gooseberries on my land up north but they are illegal to buy in Maine. I think they can't be bought in New Hampshire either, so I'd have to drive to Massachusetts to find them. We're not supposed to grow them in Maine, the result of what seems to be a since disproved idea that they carry something that causes blight in white pines. Most states that once banned them have lifted their bans, but perhaps because the white pine is our state tree, Maine has not. Norway maples are considered invasive in Maine too, yet they are the most prominent tree in Millinocket.
 
I just looked on eBay, and there is nothing that says they do not ship to Maine; so I think you could order some if you wanted, but some of them are a crazy price, like $60 for one bush. The red one was cheaper at about $20. The only place they didn’t ship was California, and some said they ship to all 48 states.

I have some Jostaberry bushes, which are a cross between a gooseberry and a currant, and it says they do well in zones 3-7; so you could grow those.
I would be happy to send you some cuttings and you can root them overwinter and put them out next summer, if you wanted to try those.
Mine bloom, but the birds seem to get the fruit, so I have only eaten a couple of berries. I think I need to cover them like I do the blueberries.
 
Ken Anderson said:
I actually planted broadleaf plantain in my backyard, along the bank leading up to the defunct railroad bed. Plantain is a weed that grows in backyards throughout the country but it has far more nutrition than lettuce, and can be used to replace lettuce. It can also be used in place of spinach, and I think it's at least as nutritious as spinach, and it tastes better than both of these.

Given the fact that the land my house was built on, in 1910, was apparently a pond or a swamp before the paper mill filled it with slag from the mill operations, a lot of stuff won't grow, except in rock gardens or other above-ground enclosures that I can fill with soil, peat moss, and compost. I've been experimenting with various things to see what will grow and what won't. Since blackberries and raspberries grow wild throughout Maine, I thought they'd do okay but they don't survive the winters in my yard. Strawberries should do okay because if I don't mow my yard, I'll have wild strawberries there. I've tried blueberries, also common in Maine, and even in other parts of town, but they wouldn't grow. Cherry trees do well until they get to be above 5-6-feet tall, and then they fall over; I think they can't root past the slag.

Lingonberries do great, although much of my backyard is too heavily shaded for them to flower and grow fruit. They do good along my driveway, though. I have some growing along the south side of my yard but, while the plants are healthy enough, I think it's too heavily shaded for fruit.

I've given up on edibles, and am trying various flowering plants to line gardens that I have built up above ground along the sides and back of my yard. Lupines, which grow wild throughout the state, don't do well, except that the largest variety of them. Roses do well, as do peonies, daffodils, and lilies. I bought seeds for some nice-looking flowering perennials that are classified as weeds, figuring weeds would have a good chance. I forget what it is, but one of my favorite perennials in my front yard garden is a weed that I dug up at the town's compost pile.
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I have wondered during the "outage" how your lingonberries were doing. Glad they are at least doing well.
 
I remember my wife encountering cinquefoil on our honeymoon in Williamsburg, Virginia. I tried to tell her they were not strawberries, but she would not believe me...until she tasted them. We grow currants, gooseberries and raspberries very well here. I have jostaberry and seaberry plants growing but have not harvested anything from them to speak of. We have Arctic Beauty kiwis growing as well, but I don't have both sexes of kiwis or seaberries as one sex of each plant type has died and hasn't been replaced. Blueberries and lingonberries grow wild all over here, but are low bush in both cases, and I rely on my more flexible wife to pick them. For @Yvonne Smith I would suggest the Rabbiteye blueberries that I once grew in the South and witch @Marie Mallory grows in Florida. For @Ken Anderson I would recommend haskaps/honeyberries if he hasn't already tried them. There are many varieties and they grow well in northern climes. Moose won't touch them, so I assume deer won't either. BIRDS, however, DO love them and will clean them off the bushes if they can get to the berries. We also have an abundance of wild berries that survive her, including something called Watermelon berries, as they are though to taste like watermelon, and a small wild strawberry that is called beach strawberry here that is ripe at pink and insipid at red. Highbush cranberries, bearberries, cloudberries, and salmonberries are wild berries that are good survival foods and sometimes used to augment other berries.
 
Ken Anderson said:
I actually planted broadleaf plantain in my backyard, along the bank leading up to the defunct railroad bed. Plantain is a weed that grows in backyards throughout the country but it has far more nutrition than lettuce, and can be used to replace lettuce. It can also be used in place of spinach, and I think it's at least as nutritious as spinach, and it tastes better than both of these.

Given the fact that the land my house was built on, in 1910, was apparently a pond or a swamp before the paper mill filled it with slag from the mill operations, a lot of stuff won't grow, except in rock gardens or other above-ground enclosures that I can fill with soil, peat moss, and compost. I've been experimenting with various things to see what will grow and what won't. Since blackberries and raspberries grow wild throughout Maine, I thought they'd do okay but they don't survive the winters in my yard. Strawberries should do okay because if I don't mow my yard, I'll have wild strawberries there. I've tried blueberries, also common in Maine, and even in other parts of town, but they wouldn't grow. Cherry trees do well until they get to be above 5-6-feet tall, and then they fall over; I think they can't root past the slag.

Lingonberries do great, although much of my backyard is too heavily shaded for them to flower and grow fruit. They do good along my driveway, though. I have some growing along the south side of my yard but, while the plants are healthy enough, I think it's too heavily shaded for fruit.

I've given up on edibles, and am trying various flowering plants to line gardens that I have built up above ground along the sides and back of my yard. Lupines, which grow wild throughout the state, don't do well, except that the largest variety of them. Roses do well, as do peonies, daffodils, and lilies. I bought seeds for some nice-looking flowering perennials that are classified as weeds, figuring weeds would have a good chance. I forget what it is, but one of my favorite perennials in my front yard garden is a weed that I dug up at the town's compost pile.
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Guess you don't want a greenhouse and since we haven't used ours in a couple years now, I understand why.
 
I still think you can get those from eBay now. If it has been 10 years since you tried, it might be worth looking. Looking is free.
And I can send you jostaberry cuttings if you want to try rooting them and they should grow for you up there.
 
Ken Anderson said:
I actually planted broadleaf plantain in my backyard, along the bank leading up to the defunct railroad bed. Plantain is a weed that grows in backyards throughout the country but it has far more nutrition than lettuce, and can be used to replace lettuce. It can also be used in place of spinach, and I think it's at least as nutritious as spinach, and it tastes better than both of these.

Given the fact that the land my house was built on, in 1910, was apparently a pond or a swamp before the paper mill filled it with slag from the mill operations, a lot of stuff won't grow, except in rock gardens or other above-ground enclosures that I can fill with soil, peat moss, and compost. I've been experimenting with various things to see what will grow and what won't. Since blackberries and raspberries grow wild throughout Maine, I thought they'd do okay but they don't survive the winters in my yard. Strawberries should do okay because if I don't mow my yard, I'll have wild strawberries there. I've tried blueberries, also common in Maine, and even in other parts of town, but they wouldn't grow. Cherry trees do well until they get to be above 5-6-feet tall, and then they fall over; I think they can't root past the slag.

Lingonberries do great, although much of my backyard is too heavily shaded for them to flower and grow fruit. They do good along my driveway, though. I have some growing along the south side of my yard but, while the plants are healthy enough, I think it's too heavily shaded for fruit.

I've given up on edibles, and am trying various flowering plants to line gardens that I have built up above ground along the sides and back of my yard. Lupines, which grow wild throughout the state, don't do well, except that the largest variety of them. Roses do well, as do peonies, daffodils, and lilies. I bought seeds for some nice-looking flowering perennials that are classified as weeds, figuring weeds would have a good chance. I forget what it is, but one of my favorite perennials in my front yard garden is a weed that I dug up at the town's compost pile.
Click to expand...
Not to worry. You can find broadleaf plantain just going for a walk, like dandelions. Both are nutritious but I don't care for the flavor most of the time as they are too bitter if not gotten at just that right time. Have you ever tried cattails? The green spikes in husks , the second week in June. You can thank me later. ;)
 
Don Alaska said:
I remember my wife encountering cinquefoil on our honeymoon in Williamsburg, Virginia. I tried to tell her they were not strawberries, but she would not believe me...until she tasted them. We grow currants, gooseberries and raspberries very well here. I have jostaberry and seaberry plants growing but have not harvested anything from them to speak of. We have Arctic Beauty kiwis growing as well, but I don't have both sexes of kiwis or seaberries as one sex of each plant type has died and hasn't been replaced. Blueberries and lingonberries grow wild all over here, but are low bush in both cases, and I rely on my more flexible wife to pick them. For @Yvonne Smith I would suggest the Rabbiteye blueberries that I once grew in the South and witch @Marie Mallory grows in Florida. For @Ken Anderson I would recommend haskaps/honeyberries if he hasn't already tried them. There are many varieties and they grow well in northern climes. Moose won't touch them, so I assume deer won't either. BIRDS, however, DO love them and will clean them off the bushes if they can get to the berries. We also have an abundance of wild berries that survive her, including something called Watermelon berries, as they are though to taste like watermelon, and a small wild strawberry that is called beach strawberry here that is ripe at pink and insipid at red. Highbush cranberries, bearberries, cloudberries, and salmonberries are wild berries that are good survival foods and sometimes used to augment other berries.
Click to expand...
I just got several varieties of honey berries a couple of years ago--they need more than one to bear fruit. I was please that one got berries last year so that they should grow in Maine. I have had currents here but my kiwis never bore. I got seaberry seeds on amazon but fear planting them for the thorns. Do people eat highbush cranberries? They grow like weeds here. I like the flowers. Raspberries grow wild here too but they get too brambley. I have some cultivated varieties and wild black raspberries. I used to pick those in Mass. Thimble berries grow by my daughter's in VT.
 
I know that parts of cattails are edible but I don't know much about that, as I hadn't looked into it. Broadleaf plantain tastes good when the leaves are young but they get more bitter and the texture gets tougher as they grow.
 
Mary Stetler said:
I just got several varieties of honey berries a couple of years ago--they need more than one to bear fruit. I was please that one got berries last year so that they should grow in Maine. I have had currents here but my kiwis never bore. I got seaberry seeds on amazon but fear planting them for the thorns. Do people eat highbush cranberries? They grow like weeds here. I like the flowers. Raspberries grow wild here too but they get too brambley. I have some cultivated varieties and wild black raspberries. I used to pick those in Mass. Thimble berries grow by my daughter's in VT.
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I tried for years to find a use for highbush cranberries and never was successful. You can make a ketchup with them, but nobody in our family would use it, especially if an alternative was available. We tried for years also to get kiwis to grow, and we managed 1 vine after many attempts. You need both sexes to get fruit and so far only one vine has survived. Many people in just slightly warmer areas here get them to grow fine, especially near buildings, but they will creep into the buildings if you are not careful. Our son raises and sell seaberries, but we only have one of those surviving as well and both sexes are necessary for those too. Our son's family makes a lot of jams and jellies with the seaberries and you just need the thorn-proof gloves to deal with them. I think my wife would make wine with the seaberries if we could get them to flourish. We have thornless raspberries and they thrive here...kinda. The people who owned our house before us said they planted a dozen canes one spring, and only two survived several winters as they are not supposed to grow here. I think that over the years, we have supplied thornless raspberries to half of this part of Alaska from those two surviving plants, as they have reproduced like crazy and we have given and sold many, many canes, and the people who got them also passed them on to others. Our raspberries also seem to be getting shorter season as well as time goes by. They used to become ripe in late August or early September and were almost too late for us to harvest, but as the years go by they seem to be getting earlier and we often get them in late July now.
 
I decided to plant broadleaf plantain, in part because I wanted to see what domesticated broadleaf plantain would look like, but also because convention, and town ordinances, require me to mow my lawn so I don't get a lot of usable plantain there.
 
Ken Anderson said:
I decided to plant broadleaf plantain, in part because I wanted to see what domesticated broadleaf plantain would look like, but also because convention, and town ordinances, require me to mow my lawn so I don't get a lot of usable plantain there.
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I laugh sometimes when making recommendations on wild foods. I had a guy say he wanted to try milkweed pods. So when they came available, I put them up and invited him over to try them. He took one bite and said he did not like them, as if it were my fault. :unsure: We really like them. (and there are always more for the Monarchs) So many weeds to try. Some I like and some I don't but It is good to try them all at the right time. The vitamins and minerals will surpass all cultivated veggies eventually. Speaking of cultivated, I really don't like okra.
 
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