Edible Perennial in the bed.

My perennial garden in the front is undergoing an overhaul. (Yes, I know I just put it in last year but I am a gardener right and gardeners are infamous for reorganizing, aren't they?).

One of my decisions is to keep the front more of a perennial, self seeding garden, as opposed to the potager it is now. In other words, to have fewer annual vegetables. That doesn't mean it won't have veggies. Oh no. It will just have more biennual or perennial vegetables. I have salsify growing, which will have a lovely purple flower in its second year, and will be replanting parnip roots for their dramatic flower. I will also be transferring my 'radicchio' chicory with its arresting blue flower to the front.

These will join all sorts of nibble plants such as:

Seen grown here with overwintered hot peppers, nasturtiums, sage and thyme.


Also showing moonbeam coreopsis, a cultivar of a NA wildflower, gypsophilia repens - great for dry areas, basil, and lobelia.

Jeruselum artichokes, horseradish, rhubarb, daylilies and egpytian onions in my 'wild side bed'


The giant plant is Jeruselum Artichoke.

I adore the dramatic leaves of horseradish. Here seen with tansy that somehow snuck in.


Aples, plums, red current, gooseberry and rugosa rose as part of the foundation planting:


Seen her with native ninebark, hosta, iris and peony. Oh and a kid, nicknamed worse than the birds. This is where she was headed in the above picture.

I will, however, miss the strange looks of people passing by the cabbage planted with the lavender.


Cabbage temporarily planted where there are some so far well behaved raspberry vines...

I should probably include an

Optimistic Gardener Warning

I am planting the salsify beside a false sunflower. And the parsnip as a background plant. The chicory will probably grow in front of the parsnip, with the cosmos. As chicory is my favourite flower, I was happy to discover that radicchio has a flower nearly identical to the wild type, except the buds have a pleasing jewel tone before opening.

Photo updates next year.

Links:

A wild food site. How to identify and prepare chicory

Salsify flower - aren't they pretty!

Overwintering Parsnips

You may notice that I have a thing for overwintering and perpetual beds of vegetables. I know that normally it is only the westcoast gardeners and others in warmer climes that are all dizzy about keeping a vegetable alive so that it starts fresh and early in the spring. Maybe I'm jealous. Maybe I wish that my skin didn't feel lethaly threatened when I walked into a -30C windchill this afternoon. Maybe, but that's neither here nor there. -30C windchills are challenges just like 4 feet of accumulated snow, and percipituous killing frosts late in spring.

Back on topic - Overwintering parsnips.

Hortiphilia Fact:

You can overwinter parsnips!

Cold turns starch to sugar so spring dug parsnips are sweeter.

At least, it seems that most people can overwinter them even in zone 2/3. I read in the gardenweb forum of some really far north gardners who have self seeding beds of this divine root crop and I thought, is this possible for me? When would they flower. Would the seed grow fast enough to produce decent sized parsnips for harvest in the fall, or only in the spring. Would I be selecting for smaller parsnips? How many parsnips would I need to keep up sufficient variability in the genetic line? Will the garden plot get riddled with disease because it wasn't rotated? Questions, questions.

I think I stumbled across the answer of 6 parsnips as adequate genetic stock. I believe the source was Breed Your Own Vegetable Varities by Carol Deppe. However, I have to verify that.

Could I keep 6 parnsips aside for seeding reasons. Of course! Perhaps, an experiment is warranted... I feel an optimistic gardener warning coming on...

Parsnips in the foreground, mid-summer


Extra, extra, read all about it (or general info):

1. Plant parsnips as soon as the ground can be worked
2. Soil must be loose and without stones. A cheat way to plant is to take a crowbar and make a conical hole, fill with a mixture of peat moss and sand, or some other sifted light material.
3. Parsnip seeds germinate poorly so always use fresh seed. It also germinates slowly so many people suggest marking the row or block with radish seeds.
4. They taste better after a couple of heavy frosts as the starches are converted to sugars.
5. You can store them in the ground over winter. I've never heard of someone mulching them first but I don't think it would hurt. Harvest as long as the ground is diggable and then first thing in the spring.
6. You can store them in a root cellar as well.
7. They are really tasty roasted, or in stews. We make root veggie pie out of them!