Blog to know: Tropical Self Sufficiency

A Puna, Hawai'i resident named Spencer has been experimenting for a couple of years with perennials in the tropics, and he's written up some excellent experience based species profiles. You'll find many of the species explored by Toensmeier's Perennial Vegetables, one of Spencer's inspirations. Some species are purely tropical, but many are familiar friends (or could become such!) of temperate permaculturists as well.

The site is loaded with information on propagation, growth, harvest, and use of perennials, in a combination of collated research and original discoveries. Multiple photos accompany each entry, usually including shots of the plants living in polycultures, with the surrounding species conveniently named as well. As the site title indicates, there's an emphasis on staple crops.

All in all, my kind of info-dense resource! Check out Spencer's site at Tropical Self Sufficiency.

(Relatively) quick-yielding perennials

As the new growing season approaches, you may want to plan for some low-maintenance, habitat-building perennial plants to supplement or replace some of your annuals. A friend just asked me, "Do you have any garden plant recommendations for us here in Eugene? We're interested in perennials that establish relatively quickly and provide a good crop in the first year or two." I replied with the following:

Very few perennials will yield much, if at all, in the first year, especially if you're trying to let them establish for a strong future. Some will yield decently in the 2nd year, but for most you'll have to wait til the 3rd year or later. (Assuming from seed - starting with transplants or tubers will speed it up.) That said, I'll include everything below which gives some harvest in the specified time frames, but don't expect huge returns.

First year

• French sorrel
• Mallows (Malva sp.)
• Anise hyssop, lemon balm, peppermint, other mints
• Fennel
• Andean tubers (mashua, oca, yacon)
• Jerusalem artichoke
• Wapato
• Salad burnet
• Alliums
• Columbine
• Malabar spinach
• Comfrey
• Perennial kale
• Chicory
• Perennial arugula (Diplotaxis sp)
• Sweet potato for greens?
• Scarlet runner beans
• Lactuca perennis

Second year

• Scorzonera leaves & flowers, and maybe roots
• Fuki
• Bellflowers (Campanula sp)
• Strawberries
• Lovage
• Dandelion
• Miner's lettuce
• Daylily from divisions
• Sedums
• Good King Henry
• Cow parsley
• Tree collard
• Turkish rocket
• Sea kale & giant sea kale
• Mitsuba
• Hot tuna
• Sweet cicely
• Sorrels (Oxalis sp)
• Pokeweed
• Rhubarb & Asparagus (a little bit)
• New Zealand spinach? (not successful for us)
• Violets

Self-seeding annuals (such as Amaranthus sp, Chenopodium sp, Calendula, Land cress, and Borage) and biennials (such as Angelica, Burdock, Evening primrose, and Alexanders) are intermediate in investment and return, yielding in the first year yet often persisting in the garden. It's also well worth identifying and researching all your "weeds", since many of them are probably edible and provide an immediate easy yield.

Self Sufficiency, Five Years In - audio slideshow

In spring 2011, I gave a presentation three times on the progress, successes, failures, and lessons from five years of working towards self sufficiency with my ex-partner at our house in Portland. I advertised the event with this blurb:

In March of 2006, Tulsi and Norris purchased a small house on a .2 acre lot, and used permaculture principles to design their food forest, sun garden, and house renovation. They aimed to create a low-maintenance, truly sustainable habitat for 2-4 people plus wildlife, providing from the property all necessary food, heating & cooking fuel, water, and waste treatment. Join us for a reality check on what's worked and what hasn't, what seems theoretically possible for the future, and what all this means to the oxymoronic goal of a sustainable city.

I've finally synced up an audio recording I made of my presentation with the slide images, to make a sort-of movie. You can view the Self Sufficiency, Five Years In slideshow online (may require reasonably fast internet connection) or download a 36MB zip file for offline viewing. (Extract to anywhere on your hard drive, then open the included index.html file in your web browser.)

I've also created a video, which requires more bandwidth: Self Sufficiency, Five Years In on YouTube. (You can download the 166MB WMV movie file or watch it below)

Or you can download a 6 MB PDF of the slideshow without audio.

Temperate staple crops: plants (and critters) for a future

In my review of Carol Deppe's annual-based The Resilient Gardener, I expressed disappointment that no one has created a comparable blueprint with perennials. Now that I've moved to Hawaii with its abundance of well-documented perennial crops, I've dramatically eased my own task of synthesizing perennials, animals, and wildlife into production of a low labor, landbase supportive paleodiet. But I still want to see similar systems develop in temperate areas. I can offer some hints and glimmers of hope based on my experiments in Portland, for others to develop further. My previous post, Low-Maintenance Temperate Staple Crops, established a broad framework. This post gives more specific suggestions, heavily biased towards a Pacific Northwest climate with its winter rains and summer drought.

Livestock

Small parcels

• Most importantly, experiment with ways to integrate small animals such as ducks, chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs into perennial gardens in such a way that the animals benefit the system, require minimal care, and produce high quality eggs & meat.
• Keep bees for honey for moderate consumption. They'll gather incredible numbers of calories for the space required.
• If you have a pond, try growing fish, even if just goldfish for slow-growing, very occasional eating by yourself or poultry.

Larger parcels

• Keep grazers such as geese, sheep, buffalo, and cattle where the land wants to grow grass.
• Keep browsers such as goats where the land wants to grow trees. Manage them carefully to ensure they don't make the land grow dead trees and sad scrub.

Tree crops

• Plant nuts. Chestnuts, acorns, english walnuts, black walnuts, filberts, and ginkgos have all proven themselves as reliable abundant croppers in the PNW.
• Plant fruits & berries. Figure out how much you can realistically eat, and how much is healthy for you.
• Grow olives if you can, for low-PUFA, oil rich food. Our olives failed to grow, but others in the Portland area have had success. We may not have given our plants good enough drainage.
• Use the seed kernels from Prunus and other fruit species as bonus seeds for your own or livestock consumption.

Herbaceous seed crops

• Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus): needs breeding work for increased seed production (larger and/or more seed.) We found it a very low maintenance and tough crop, though we didn't perfect a ground cover situation to eliminate the need for spring weeding. Seed yields never got very high for the land involved - perhaps partly from competition following our neglect in weeding, and partly from inadequate irrigation in the summer.
• Scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus): try growing them as perennials. We never succeeded in growing them well even for the first year (slug pressure?), and the few healthy plants didn't overwinter. Someone in my neighborhood grew them as perennials on the west side of his house for summer shade, so maybe giving them a similar warm microclimate and/or heavily mulching would help. Breeding for hardiness may help. Supposedly you can dig up the roots and store them in a root cellar, then replant in spring.
• Experiment with recently developed perennial grains for humans (assuming you can digest them OK) and/or animals.
• Integrate minimal maintenance legumes like overwintered favas and early spring peas (we had minimal success with these - ducks to keep down our slugs may have helped). As with the grains, humans can eat these in moderation if they don't have bad reactions, and/or they can feed livestock.
• Perennial flax (Linum perenne). We grew this on our ecoroof and got a few seeds the first year. We didn't stay long enough to know whether it produces well once fully established. If not, maybe it could benefit from breeding work. Like its annual relative, perennial flax oil is rich in omega-3, highly beneficial for us and for livestock.
• Find other perennial seed crops for minor or major production. For example, we found fennel extremely easy to grow and harvest for ourselves and for the chickens, but we could only eat a small amount of seed each day because of its strong flavor. Perhaps a variety of minor seed crops could add up to useful caloric inputs.
• Breed other perennial legumes for larger or more useful seeds for humans, or just plant them as livestock fodder - Lupinus perennis, Vicia cracca, Vicia americana, black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), pea shrubs (Caragana sp.), and ...?

Root crops

See my notes on perennial and self-seeding roots for more information on specific species: part 1 and part 2.

• Jerusalem artichokes AKA sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus): Fantastic drought tolerant, persistent, low-to-no-labor abundant yielder. Due to high inulin content, these only work well as a staple crop if you can either:
  • Digest them OK with minimal cooking (many people ferment them).
  • Cook them long enough on a wood stove running in the winter anyway.`
• Skirret (Sium sisarum): breed for increased root production. We found yields quite reasonable at 1/2 pound/year in good conditions, and 1/4 pound/year in shade or poor soil. We experienced enough variation in yields between different plants to warrant selecting for larger and more roots. Skirret also deserves experimentation with different lengths of multi-year growth before harvest to maximize its potential as a perennial; we generally found the roots larger and less woody if we let the plant grow for two or three years, but never quantified this precisely.
• Grow mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum), oca (Oxalis tuberosa), and yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) as perennials, deep mulching as needed to overwinter them.
• Where conditions allow, try aquatic crops like cattail, water chestnut, and wapato.
• Develop and refine perennial polycultures such as my experiments with skirret/oca/potato and yellow asphodel/oca/lily.
• Cinnamon vine (Dioscorea batatas): great potential as a no-dig staple carb from its aerial bulbils. Set up on a permanent trellis such that you can lay a tarp or sheet under the vines to easily collect lots of bulbils at once.
• Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides): summer available root with mild flavor from an aggressive ground cover. May work well under jerusalem artichoke.
• Yellow asphodel (Asphodeline lutea): summer-available root adapted to summer drought and intercropping well with many other plants. Try to breed it for larger roots (perhaps at the expense of its flowering, which though beautiful and providing tasty nibbles presumably diverts a lot of energy from the roots.)
• Scorzonera (Scorzonera hispanica): experiment with how long to leave in the ground without having to dig too deep for the taproot. I tended to dig the top foot or so of the root, but snapped it off and lost it below that point. Experiment with replanting a portion of the tops instead of needing to resow from seed. I have successfully transplanted individuals with 6-12" of root, but suspect you could plant even less, and therefore get to eat more.
• Asiatic lily (Lilium sp): I assume Asian growers bred these over thousands of years to select for larger bulbs from these gourmet crops. Seek out varieties with maximum food yield instead of showiest flower.
• Camas (Camassia sp.): Another inulin rich root, requiring experimentation in a solar cooker to evaluate as a summer staple root. Otherwise it may not be justifiable due to the large amount of fuel required to make it digestible.
• Garlic (Allium sativum): pseudo-staple (since you can only eat so much of it per day.) Super easy to grow and supposedly high in calories per pound, though I wonder whether the high inulin content means we don't actually digest all the calories.

Harvest log update, February 2012

I've updated the harvest log website. I haven't posted about the harvest log since last April. Some unorganized thoughts follow:

• Our average daily calorie harvest hasn't changed much, still right about 670 calories per day. We still have perhaps 10-20 pounds of honey and maybe 3 pounds of fennel seed which we harvested but haven't weighed and entered into the database yet, which will boost the calories.
  
• We've been harvesting fewer ounces of food per day than before, but with similar total calories, meaning we're harvesting more calorie crop - mostly a result of increased honey and egg harvest.
  
• None of the fruit trees we've planted yielded last year, except the medlar in heavy shade with a little over 2 pounds of fruit. We did get twice as many cherries from our front yard seedling cherry as we did the previous year. We were a bit surprised and disappointed that the persimmon tree which gave 8 1/2 pounds in 2010 didn't yield in 2011. Our region had poor fruit harvests in general due to weather causing poor pollination. Hopefully this year the fruit trees will really start to produce, after 5 years in the ground!
  
• Great yield from our goumi, which gave 12 1/2 pounds.
  
• Much better yield from the strawberry patch, which gave 17 pounds in 2011 compared to 6 in 2010. Probably because Tulsey thinned out the plants in winter of 2010/11. The patch is about 80 square feet.
  
• Bad raspberry year (11 pounds compared to 31 in 2010), as most of the plants in our original planting died (probably from root rot or some other disease), plus we didn't water the living patches enough to get a good fall harvest.
  
• Our english walnut and two or three of our four hazels set some nuts, but all were taken by squirrels and jays. Unfortunately, we didn't eat any squirrels from the yard this year to offset that loss. We did get one tiny chestnut!
  
• Our harvest of greens dropped off a lot last year, partly because we were wrapped up in the house project, and partly because we didn't irrigate much in summer and the greens suffered a lot.
  
• Fairly large garlic harvest last year, of 18 pounds. (Shallots were a near total failure.) I'd like to see that tripled next year.
  
• Sunchoke harvest has dropped by 50% due to making fewer fires, greatly affecting the winter calorie harvest. I think I'm going to break down and just use our gas stove and a sleeping bag (to act as a "haybox") to start cooking the sunchokes.
  
• We approximately doubled our fennel seed harvest, to 5 pounds. Very successful calorie crop.
  
• More eggs this past year, as the hens we purchased in May 2010 laid heavily from December 2010 through November 2011 before slowing down. We've had a larger flock than would be at all sustainable for this yard, and have been gradually culling the flock for ongoing meat harvest.
  
• Harvesting a lot more nettles this winter season than last year. Delicious!
  
• Light skirret harvest this year. I think last year I harvested a bunch of plants that had been in the ground 2 or 3 years and got very big, then replanted those crowns. I didn't water the skirret much this past season, and many of them grew in part to full shade. I harvested almost all those plants this winter as 1 year old, relatively scrawny roots. Definitely better to get some sort of multi-year mixture going so you can always harvest older plants.
  
• Light mashua & yacon harvests this year, again because of lack of water. Almost all the mashua plants died down in the summer; I didn't expect any roots from them at all, and was pleasantly surprised at how many we did get considering how sad they were.
  
• Good oca harvest this year! Two patches did poorly (lack of water again); one patch to the north of one of our persimmon trees in polyculture with yellow asphodel & lily did very well.
  
• Nice teaser autumn olive and grape harvests! Neither huge, but larger than the few dozen berries or grapes from last year.
  
• Pretty good potato harvest, though still not as good as I'd have liked - lack of water stunted or killed many plants.
  
• We ate lots of fuki stalk, and sold or gave away several divisions, barely managing to keep the growth of the patch in check. Great vigorous perennial vegetable.
  
• So far our asparagus is a very poorly yielding crop in terms of calories per space it takes up--only 280 calories from maybe 10 plants using maybe 30 square feet? Our solomon's seal gave 2/3 the calories from a similar area but growing in heavy shade on the north wall of our house, under timber bamboo, with lungwort, lovage, and wood sorrel in there as well. And we didn't even harvest as much of the solomon's seal as we could have.
  

Perennial polyculture: New Designs

This is part three of a three part series on perennial polycultures:

1. Designs: a five year review
   
2. Species profiles
   
3. New designs
   

Introduction

Following the massive failure of our original polyculture designs (see part one), I spent some time this past winter utilizing my hard-won knowledge of our successful perennials to try again. I didn't design anything for greens, since we have more than enough already established and coexisting quite nicely. I focused instead on root crops, which have proved more difficult to just plant here and there for a few reasons (not all reasons apply to all root crops):

• Soil disturbance damages adjacent perennials or roots of woody plants
  
• I lose track of where I planted odd plants after they've gone dormant, so can't harvest the roots
  
• Roots (especially those starting from small tubers or seeds) get outcompeted by other perennials
  

In this post I'll present the polycultures we're trying this year. I'll also mention a few other ideas I've had but haven't tried to implement. Refer to part two of this series, species profiles, for individual plant characteristics, presented in roughly the same order in which they appear in polycultures in this post.

Polycultures

Implementing

Garlic & Skirret

Garlic & skirret in foreground volunteer burdock & more skirret in background

This bicrop makes use of different time niches with these two root crops. I planted garlic at about 9" between bulbs, with skirret between with 9" spacing to other skirrets and 4.5" to neighboring garlics. Garlic grows through the winter and has died down in early summer by the time skirret has gotten big enough to begin competing for light. Garlic bulbs should lift out easily without disturbing the skirret, and skirret's drought tolerance allows for non-irrigation of the garlic while the bulbs dry down.

This patch could be replanted in the same place year after year by harvesting all the skirret in September and October, then replanting garlic cloves and skirret crowns. Or move the garlic to a new patch and harvest the skirret as needed through the winter, replanting the skirret crowns into that new patch as they become available.

Skirret, Day Neutral Strawberry, & Oniony Thing

This patch combines the need to thin strawberry plants with the need to thoroughly dig up skirret roots. It works because you can leave skirret in the ground for two years before harvesting, and because we have day neutral strawberries which should be thinned in late fall or over the winter. (June bearing strawberries should be thinned after they bear their crop in mid summer). I planted four rows 15" apart in a 5' bed, with skirret and strawberries alternating in their rows every 8". (16" between strawberries, 16" between skirrets, 8" from a skirret to the closest strawberry.)

I planted some sort of evergreen oniony thing between the rows to have some winter growth of its edible leaves. Originally I planned for the ongoing disturbance of the skirret & strawberries to prevent the oniony thing from getting swamped out. But as of mid June, the oniony thing is dominating the area and I'm aggressively harvesting their leaves to open up space for the strawberry and skirret!

This fall I would harvest skirret from two of the four rows (rows 1 and 3), replanting skirret crown divisions after harvest. This will wipe out most or all of the strawberries in those two rows. Next year the strawberries left in the undisturbed rows 2 and 4 will recolonize rows 1 and 3, while the skirrets in rows 2 and 4 grow for a second year.

Next fall I would harvest the skirret in rows 2 and 4, wiping out those strawberries and replanting the skirret crowns. Then follow the same pattern in the future, harvesting two rows each year, such that each row is harvested every other year. This should keep the strawberries from crowding themselves out, as a natural byproduct of thoroughly digging the soil to harvest the skirret. I would adjust the size of the skirret crown divisions in future years to integrate well with the strawberry growth rate--smaller if the skirret is outcompeting the strawberries, or larger if the skirret is getting swamped.

Skirret, Oca, & Potato

This patch uses time niches to some effect, though it doesn't have any winter evergreens.

Oca and potatoes alternate in rows with 16" from one oca to the next potato, (32" from oca to oca and 32" from potato to potato.) I spaced two rows 30" apart in a 5' bed. I then planted one row of skirret halfway between the oca/potato rows, with skirret on 12" spacing within its row.

Skirret and potatoes grow vigorously early in the season, with oca putting on growth more slowly. We'll harvest potatoes July through September, with skirret still providing shade for the oca in the heat of the summer. With the cooler cloudier weather in September, the oca vegetation should quickly fill out to use up the space left behind by the potatoes. We'll dig all the oca tubers out after the first frost, and harvest skirret as needed through the winter. We can either reimplement the same polyculture in the same bed, or rotate it to other beds to prevent disease problems with the potatoes.

Oca, Asiatic Lily, & Yellow Asphodel

Confusing mess w/unplanned strawberry etc

Utilizes different time and height niches. These are planted in an understory wedge to the north of a young persimmon. At 6' tall the persimmon casts minor shade. Oca is planted on 30" centers with asphodel surrounding it on 10" centers. One lily is planted in the center of each oca "triangle". I don't have enough asphodel propagated yet, but eventually their density could be increased to about 6" between plants.

Asphodel grows from fall through winter til early summer, making its roots available for harvest while the oca is still small. The oca and asphodel provide ground cover for the lily, which grows above them. Harvest all oca after first frost, and harvest lilies as needed through the winter.

Lilies and asphodels can be harvested with fairly minor soil disturbance, so the main conflict might be the effects of oca harvest on the asphodel roots with their new-ish growth going into winter.

We planted this polyculture into an area somewhat invaded by strawberries, and with remnant camassia and weeds including dandelion & popweed. We may have trouble with the strawberries especially, since we don't have a strong ground cover or weed excluding element.

Yellow Asphodel, Good King Henry, & Violet

Utilizes height & time niches. Violet should be an evergreen (we're using Viola odorata) for permanent low ground cover and winter greens, with the yellow asphodel and good king henry (GKH) growing up through it. The GKH begins growing late in the spring, but the other two plants should help suppress early weeds, and the asphodel will then die down in summer for the GKH to fill out further. We should be able to harvest the asphodel roots in the summer with minimal disturbance to the GKH.

I planted GKH about 2' apart, and would eventually like to have asphodel at 6-8" spacing filling all the interior area. We don't have enough asphodel plants yet for full density, so they're more sporadic for now. The violets will fill in wherever they find gaps.

Jerusalem Artichoke, Mashua or Groundnut, & Chinese Artichoke or Creeping Bellflower

Jerusalem artichokes with small chinese artichoke underneath

This polyculture has a core structure but multiple possible plants to plug into the different niches. It mimics the well known three sisters guild of corn, beans and squash, which Eric Toensmeier has proposed morphing into the perennial guild of jerusalem artichoke, groundnut, and chinese artichoke. This polyculture makes use of above ground space niches, but not of time niches, since these root crops require heavy disturbance for harvest in fall through early spring. With the possible exception of the creeping bellflower, they should all benefit from the regular ground disturbance and loosening of the soil.

We're retaining jerusalem artichoke as the vertical element; we had an existing 100 square foot patch. However, we've never had much success growing ground nuts here, so we only planted 3 or 4 which survived from last year, instead mostly planting mashua on 3' centers as the vining element to climb the jerusalem artichokes. We can easily supply nitrogen via our urine so we don't require the leguminous groundnut for nitrogen fixation.

For the ground cover layer, we're trying about half a dozen fast-spreading chinese artichoke in half the patch, with creeping bellflower 1-2' apart as another vigorous, shade tolerant root crop in the rest of the area.

Our patch gave us about 100 pounds of jerusalem artichokes last year (1 pound per square foot). It makes sense to knock back the jerusalem artichoke production a bit in favor of more root diversity, and hopefully the total yield of roots will increase while we're at it.

Brief Mention

Oca & Tomatillo / Ground Cherry

Ocas & tomatillo at bottom tree collard and mashua at top not part of guild

Inspired by oca-testbed's oca & tomato bi-crops, I've planted 3 ocas, 2 annual ground cherries, and 2 tomatillos with 10" between each oca and its neighboring ground cherry or tomatillo (20" from one ground cherry or tomatillo to the next).

Squash & yacon

I planted some squash seeds at 6' centers and yacon halfway between at the 3' mark. The yacon should grow tall enough to hold its own by the time the squash reaches it, to share the space niche a bit. It may work somewhat as a time niche, too, as squash often dies back in early to mid fall with powdery mildew, while the yacon can keep growing until frosts kill it.

Not Implementing

Oca & squash

We created an accidental time niche bicrop a few years ago when a squash covered up some oca for most of the summer, but started dying back with powdery mildew in early fall, allowing the oca to explode in growth and fill out the space. We didn't get much of an oca yield--but I wasn't experienced enough at that time to pay close attention to frost and harvesting all the oca promptly. So maybe we got some roots but they rotted? Or maybe the squash didn't allow the oca to grow well enough to produce roots? I'd like to try this again with squash on 6' centers and two or three ocas at the 3' point in between. Or try combining it with the squash & yacon polyculture, with the squash and yacons spaced further apart to allow oca some breathing room between the larger plants. (See oca-testbed's polyculture mound of yacon, oca, and chinese artichoke.)

June bearing strawberry & summer root crop

I've tried to design a polyculture which combines digging some root crop with the need to thin June bearing strawberries in late summer, after they've finished cropping for the year. I've had a much harder time with this than with day neutral strawberries (see my polyculture with skirret above), since very few root crops can be harvested in the summertime after two years of growth to allow the alternating row harvest method. Strawberries fill out quite well by mid spring, creating a lot of competition for anything shorter than they are, limiting the ability to sow seeds or plant small divisions at the beginning of the growing season. Further, the root crop can't be allowed to outcompete the strawberries too badly -- we have some burdock in our patch, and we have to keep harvesting the huge leaves (we do eat the leaf stalks) or the strawberries get totally covered up!

Spring ephemeral bulbs such as Camassia, Triteleia, Brodiaea, or Erythronium might work for the row harvest method, especially if you establish a solid patch first, then add strawberries later. Or instead of harvesting a full row at at time, you could do a distributed harvest of the thickest clumps of bulbs, disturbing patches of strawberries here and there while eating the largest ephemeral bulbs and leaving the small ones behind to regrow quickly the following spring. Or try root crops whose seeds can germinate in the autumn, overwinter as a small plant, and grow quickly in spring: black salsify (Scorzonera hispanica) or dandelions for full row harvest after 1.5 years, or black salsify, dandelions, or parsnips for distributed patch harvest the summer after they've been sown.

Perennial polyculture species profiles

This is part two of a three part series on perennial polycultures:

1. Designs: a five year review
   
2. Species profiles
   
3. New designs
   

Introduction

In Perennial polyculture designs, I mentioned inadequate knowledge of plants as one barrier to successful implementation of my designs. We've now gained enough knowledge of a few perennial plants to try again. With this mouthful of a title, I give the relevant design characteristics of perennial vegetables we're trying in polycultures this year. Unless otherwise noted, I consider these plants primarily root crops, though some have secondary uses like edible flowers or leaves. By the way, for more information on many of these unusual root crops, including some polyculture experiments, see:

• Oca testbed - nice details on tomato & oca bicrops, plus lots more on oca and some on other roots
  
• Radix Root Crop Research and Ruminations - pioneering work with many roots I haven't tracked down or in some cases even heard of before
  
• Obligatory link to Plants for a Future database.
  

Species characteristics

Garlic (Allium sativum)

• Harvest time: July or August
  
• Harvest process: Lift all bulbs, which doesn't require much soil disturbance. Store in cool dark place.
  
• Planting process: Plant cloves in October or November, which doesn't disturb soil, but cloves shouldn't be disturbed by other digging after being planted.
  
• Generally doesn't require any watering, and in fact shouldn't receive water in July so the bulbs can dry out for long term storage.
  
• Vegetative growth: small amount of leaves over the winter, growing more actively in spring. Die back in July with the summer drought.
  

Skirret (Sium sisarum)

• Harvest time: October through April. Stores in the ground all winter.
  
• Harvest year: can harvest after one year of growth, or leave in the ground for multiple years for more and larger roots, which seem less prone to having a woody core.
  
• Harvest process: Dig large chunk of soil from around plant (up to 2.5' diameter with older plants), pull out crown. Cut off roots, optionally divide and replant crown. Can be difficult to find in late winter after stalks have rotted away.
  
• Drought & shade tolerant
  
• Vegetative growth: Appears mid-season (April), grows fairly quickly to 3-5' tall (depending on age of plant), and dies down in early fall (October). Dense, casting heavy shade.
  

Garden strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa)

• Use: berries
  
• Harvest time: summer through fall
  
• Best with full sun and adequate water through growing season.
  
• Benefits from thinning (following the annual harvest for June bearing varieties, and in the winter for day neutral varieties)
  
• Vegetative growth: semi evergreen to 1' high, spreading quickly from runners
  

Potato (Solanum tuberosum)

We haven't actually grown potatoes very much, but my understanding so far:

• Harvest time: June onwards. Can probably store in the ground through the winter?
  
• Harvest process: Seems to need a fairly thorough excavation of the soil, especially to find all the roots. We had many potatoes return this year from last year's plantings, so this seems to have potential as an overwintering perennial. Disease buildup normally demands crop rotation.
  
• Supposedly fairly drought and shade tolerant.
  
• Vegetative growth: Starts growing in late March or April. Reaches 3' wide? Yields supposed to improve with hilling up soil onto the lower stem.
  

Oca (Oxalis tuberosa)

• Harvest time: after the first light frost(s) kill the foliage, but before hard freezes damage the tubers, which often dwell close to the soil surface.
  
• Harvest process: Dig out all the roots, generally concentrated at the center, though some may form where foliage touches the soil. Store in cool dark place for the winter, replanting some tubers in spring. In mild climates, tubers missed at harvest time may resprout on their own in spring.
  
• Appreciates some shade during heat of the summer, but may not tolerate too heavy competition. We tried it as a ground cover amongst other plants one year, and they swamped it out with very little root yield.
  
• Vegetative growth: Leafs out in April or May, generally low growing to about 1', though can clamber up other plants if it needs to gain access to sunlight. Doesn't put on much growth until September, when cooler cloudier weather kicks in, at which time the foliage explodes to 3-4' wide.
  

Asiatic lily (Lilum sp)

• Harvest time: Late fall through early spring.
  
• Harvest method: Compact bulb, so fairly easy to harvest with minimal soil disturbance. Leave large offsets behind to regrow. Can be difficult to find in late winter after top stalks have rotted away.
  
• Like their feet in shade and top growth in sun, thus well suited to combination with a low ground cover.
  
• Vegetative growth: comes up in early to mid spring, grows to 3-4' tall, and dies down in fall.
  

Yellow asphodel (Asphodeline lutea)

• Harvest time: Can definitely harvest in the summer, and I think we can dig roots year round.
  
• Harvest process: Medium soil disturbance, concentrated around center of each plant. The plants make numerous offsets, and each plant has multiple thin roots. So you can harvest some entire plants and leave/replant others, or cut some of the roots off of each plant and replant them all for slower/less vigorous regrowth. Not sure yet of the best method.
  
• I think it prefers full sun, and probably doesn't need any irrigation.
  
• Vegetative growth: somewhat sparse, to about 1.5' tall on flowerless plants, or 3' tall on single flower spike. Doesn't seem to compete all that well with other plants, so may do best with a low growing ground cover for weed exclusion. From the Mediterranean, so well adapted to our summer drought by dying down in mid summer and coming back with fall rains, staying green through the winter.
  

Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus)

• Uses: leaf crop (spinach substitute) and seed crop (used like quinoa, though smaller).
  
• Harvest time: leaves throughout season. Seeds over a period of about three months, July through September.
  
• Harvest process: seeds require periodic picking every week or two as different seed stalks ripen at different times.
  
• Somewhat shade & drought tolerant, though I assume for optimum seed production we should give it full sun and summer water.
  
• Vegetative growth: comes up in late spring, reaching about 1.5' tall and perhaps a bit wider. In our back yard where chickens roam, we have a fairly pure stand of GKH and it does fine. In our front yard, (because chickens aren't eliminating the other plants? or because the GKH hasn't dominated the root zone yet?) the GKH gets crowded out by the early spring growth of nipplewort (Lapsana communis), lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), and wood avens (Geum urbanum) and I've had to weed the bed this year. Like the yellow asphodel, would probably benefit from a low growing weed suppressing ground cover.
  

Jerusalem artichoke / Sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus)

• Harvest time: October through April
  
• Harvest process: Major soil disturbance. Will always miss some roots so that it will regrow the next year. Can be difficult to find roots in late winter after stalks have rotted.
  
• Drought and shade tolerant
  
• Vegetative growth: appears mid spring, reaches 8+' tall. Dies off in late fall.
  

Mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum)

• Harvest time: In theory, should harvest after the first light frost(s) kill the foliage, but before hard freezes damage the tubers. Roots seem much hardier than oca and yacon, though, such that they might store OK in the ground through the winter.
  
• Harvest process: Fairly thorough excavation to dig all roots, storing in cool dark place for the winter. We usually miss some of the roots so that it regrows the next year.
  
• Appreciates some shade during heat of the summer
  
• Vegetative growth: Vining to at least 10' tall, climbing other vegetation. Appears in mid spring and grows at a fairly steady rate until frosts.
  

Groundnut (Apios americana)

(c) 2004 Steve Baskauf

We haven't had much success with this plant, but we haven't totally given up on it yet..

• Harvest time: dormant season, late fall? through late spring?
  
• Harvest method: Extensive excavation required. Leave some tubers behind to regrow.
  
• Fixes nitrogen
  
• Vegetative growth: vining, scrambling up surrounding vegetation. In our climate, appears around June and disappears in September or October.
  

Chinese artichoke (Stachys affinis)

We've only grown these for one year, so I base this mostly on the literature:

• Harvest time: Dormant season (fall through early spring)
  
• Harvest process: Probably requires major soil disturbance, especially since I don't think dead plants leave woody stalks behind to mark their spots. Will regrow in spring from tubers you missed.
  
• Moderate moisture requirements?
  
• Vegetative growth: appears in early or mid spring, gets about 1' to 1.5' tall, runs quickly (mint family) and forms good ground cover. Not sure exactly when it dies down.
  

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides)

• Harvest time: I think we can get usable roots year round.
  
• Harvest process: Fairly major soil disturbance. Need to dig towards the center of the clump to find usable roots. I suspect it will keep regrowing vigorously after each harvest with no need to deliberately leave roots behind.
  
• Very shade tolerant, and competes well with other vegetation.
  
• Vegetative growth: Leaves appear in early spring and make a good source of greens while others are somewhat scarce. Plant reaches about 3' tall and runs vigorously. I think that without irrigation it responds to our summer drought by going somewhat dormant, resuming growth in the fall before dying back for good over the winter.
  

Perennial polyculture designs: five year review

This is part one of a three part series on perennial polycultures:

1. Designs: a five year review
   
2. Species profiles
   
3. New designs
   

Background

When we first moved to this site in 2006, I designed, on paper, elaborate perennial polycultures for tree understories. In each guild I included at least one plant to perform the main "food forest" functions: nitrogen fixation, nutrient accumulation (generally deep taprooted plants), beneficial insect feeding (plants in the carrot and sunflower families), aromatic pest confusing (onion family and mint family with their strong odors to throw off pests trying to find their preferred plant), spring ephemeral for early season nutrient cycling, ground cover, and foot tolerant path cover. I also wanted all the plants to have some direct human use, whether as food or medicine. And I tried to minimize inter-plant competition by matching vigorous runners with taller clumpers, plus designing for a combination of taprooted, fibrous, and flat rooted plants. I placed plants under each tree according to their sun requirements, designing for a fairly mature tree canopy casting significant shade (with some thought to the transition period of full sun in the early years.) And I matched guilds to tree root patterns, so that a taprooted tree would mostly have shallow rooted plants under it, and vice versa. Example polyculture design (1 MB PDF) I can't call these designs complete failures. The exercise of working them out helped me think through all the factors involved, and helped me learn the on-paper characteristics of many interesting perennial plants. I'm glad I did it. However, I never successfully implemented a single design, for several reasons.

Reasons for failure

Plant (Un)Availability

Our Process

To create my list of desired species, I diligently went through every entry in the species table at the end of Volume II of Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier, plus all the species rated 4 or 5 in the Plants for a Future database. I added a few plants from books like Simon Hickmott's Growing Unusual Vegetables, local edible plant nursery catalogs, and odd mentions here and there. I came up with a great list of about 175 potential guild plants. I worked from the list to create my polycultures, then began tracking down the plants to implement the guilds. I hadn't anticipated the difficulty I would have locating the plants, even in the form of seeds which posed their own propagation learning curve. Over the last five years I've ordered hundreds of species of seeds from dozens of seed companies, spending hours researching and combing through plant catalogs. (My two most useful plant source search engines: Dave's Garden Plant Scout and UMN's Plant Information Online.) I managed to track down 90-95% of the species on my original list, though I kept adding more species of interest over the years, so that I still have dozens of species I would trial here if we were staying in this bioregion. Of the species I could find, only about 50% grew successfully. The rest never germinated, succumbed to slugs, got outcompeted by other plants, rotted from winter moisture, died with drought, or disappeared while we weren't watching. With the skills I've gained over the years in seed starting and with willingness to provide some extra babying to the most interesting species, I'd probably re-try another dozen or two of those failed species if we were staying here longer.

Repercussions

The long, drawn out process of tracking down seeds over several years, starting them up, waiting for them to get large enough to plant out, and having many of the attempts fail to produce a viable plant meant we never had all the planned species for a given polyculture at once. So my on-paper designs had to adjust to accomodate what I actually had available, with additions over the years as I successfully grew out new plants to incorporate. I still tried to make additions based on the original factors of guild function, top growth, and root patterns, but inevitably my incremental plantings lacked the full integration of my theoretical designs.

Inadequate Knowledge of Plants

I gathered as much information as I could on plant habits, culture requirements, and uses before designing my initial polycultures. But the books can only give so much detail on the intricacies of a living organism's life cycle, don't always accurately describe a plant's response to our particular climate and site, and certainly can't tell us whether we'll actually like eating the plant, or which part(s) we'll value the most, or what time of year we find the plant most useful.

Examples

Size, life cycle, & harvest methods: Skirret

The literature led me to believe that skirret (Sium sisarum) would grow to 3' tall by 1-2' wide. We've found that, on our site, that accurately describes a first year plant with its flowers, but older plants easily reach 5' tall and 3' wide. In mid-summer, after our typical weeks without rain, the first rainstorm or the first irrigation via our sprinkler weighs the foliage down so much that the whole plant flops right over. So my skirret placed carefully 1.5' from the edges of paths fell into them and created a maintenance problem. Other subtle details of skirret's life cycle and harvest methods affect how it integrates with other plants:

• The roots radiate outwards in all directions from the central crown, necessitating a thorough excavation of the soil to find all the roots. So as opposed to something like garlic with a bulb easy to pull out without soil disturbance, skirret does not work well under trees and shrubs, nor next to perennial greens. Instead, it needs to integrate with other root crops or self seeding annuals.
  
• The foliage dies down relatively early in the autumn, before the first frosts, allowing early harvest and potential cover crops or garlic plantings. Many of the roots we grow can't be harvested until November or later, so this timing makes a big difference in polycultures or time niche planning.
  
• Skirret top stalks stay visible for several months into the winter, but by late winter or early spring they've rotted off, making it difficult to find the root locations. So it works best to have predictable locations for the skirret, or situations where it doesn't matter if some plants regrow in the spring where we missed harvesting.
  

Life cycle & harvest methods: Creeping bellflower

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) volunteered in our yard. I identified it, looked it up, discovered it's considered invasive in gardens as it runs rapidly but that the roots are edible, and devised a plan of allowing it to grow in place, with periodic harvesting of the roots from the edges to keep it in check.

Several times I dug up the edges to find the roots, but never found anything larger than spaghetti, tough and fibrous with nothing that seemed actually edible. I wondered whether this was a famine food, or if I had defective plants, or what. Finally I happened to dig into the center of my neighbor's patch of the plant, and discovered numerous sizable roots up to 3/4" diameter and 1' or longer! So apparently the plant only makes large roots over time, and my plan to harvest young roots from the edges won't work.

Parts used: Scorzonera & Dandelion

We originally planted scorzonera (Scorzonera hispanica) as a root crop. Soon thereafter, we learned that the leaves make an excellent lettuce substitute, so the plant became primarily a perennial green, with self-seeded plants as a bonus root crop. So rather than growing scorzonera in frequently disturbed soil in zone 2, we grow it in an undisturbed zone 1 bed. Conversely, we originally considered dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) just a leaf crop, best used during early spring then weeded out. Last year I discovered the roots make an excellent vegetable in their own right, providing a low maintenance root crop in the summer. So now we let the dandelions stay and harvest them from late spring til fall, when more desirable roots become available.

Inappropriate zone placement

I missed a very basic permaculture principle with many of my original polyculture designs. I didn't pay attention to what sort of yields went under which trees in the yard, and their accessibility from our front door. So I had leaf crops designed under trees in the far corner of the yard, which in practice I would almost never get around to harvesting.

Crop balance

When I first designed our guilds, I had no concept of how many leaf crops we would need vs roots, shoots, berries, seeds, etc. Since the perennial plant world offers many greens but relatively few foods from the other categories, I overdesigned leaf crops by default.

Difficulty implementing self seeding annuals

I sometimes consider myself a terrible gardener, such as when I have to admit that I failed--several years in a row--to grow pigweed (Amaranthus sp) and lambs quarters (Chenopodium album). You know, those weeds that gardeners everywhere else persistently pull out of their beds year after year. I tried several different species of amaranth, and at least two of Chenopodium, and I don't think I ever got any to grow the first year, let alone persist as an annoying weed. My original designs incorporated several other self seeding annuals: breadseed poppy (Papaver somniferum), miner's lettuce (Montia sp), land cress (Barbarea verna), corn salad (Valerianella locusta), and some biennials like evening primrose (Oenothera biennis). Only the evening primrose has really succeeded here; the rest never got started or have failed to robustly self seed. I attribute the failures to our heavily mulched, rarely dug soils. The first two years (especially the first), everything had a thick layer of wood chips. I tried spreading a thin 1" layer of soil in some places to seed plants like the amaranth & chenopodiums, but those tend to germinate in late spring or early summer with more heat, which coincides with the end of our rains and thus drying out of those 1" layers of soil. In subsequent years, we had heavy slug pressure, and rarely had bare patches of soil with full sun to support such pioneering annuals, especially late in the season. I did include root crops amongst those self-seeding annuals in my original design, to facilitate creation of bare soil, but with the exception of evening primrose (whose root I dig over the winter), those combinations of digging & self-seeding never really came together.

Spring Ephemerals Not So Useful

I made a small design mistake by including, in each guild, a spring ephemeral as suggested in Edible Forest Gardens. These ephemerals begin growing in late winter or early spring, taking advantage of full sun conditions before shrubs and trees above them leaf out. They flower early in the season, then die back to the ground as shade increases. On the east coast, with its harsher winters and frequent late winter snowpacks, these ephemerals play a crucial role in "catching" nutrients early, preventing snow melt or rains from leaching them out before the woody plants come into growth. In the pacific northwest, we have mild winters with many warm spells throughout the winter allowing some plant growth. In Portland we never get a real snow pack. Here it makes more sense to incorporate evergreens or fall planted crops such as garlic and fava beans. The ephemerals I've tried have competed poorly with other perennials and the late winter/early spring annual weeds.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now...

If I had the opportunity to do this all again, I would:

• Design with the plants available to me, so I could plant them all out at once. (I would reserve some areas as nursery & trial beds for new experiments.)
  
• Plant out low growing or easily removable ground covers everywhere I'm not yet ready to implement permanent designs. Selection criteria:
  
  • Evergreens preferred
    
  • Winter leaf crops
    
  • Berries
    
  • Duck forage
    
  I haven't put much thought into this, but some ideas on species:
  • Evergreen violets such as Viola odorata (edible leaves & flowers)
    
  • Evergreen bellflowers such as Campanula poscharskyana and C. portenschlagiana (edible leaves & flowers)
    
  • Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) as a native berry crop. This did poorly in early years, but might succeed now with more shade from maturing trees.
    
  • Various low growing Rubus species, such as R. nepalensis, R. tricolor, R. x stellarcticus, R. arcticus, R. pentalobus.
    
  • Strawberries, both garden variety and species (Fragaria sp.)
    
  • Perennial ground cherries (Physalis sp.)
    
• Plant fewer greens, and concentrate them closer to the house since I pick them once or twice a day.
  
• Plant more perennial seed crops.
  
• Try to design a soil disturbance regime to suit self seeding annual seeds from Amaranthus sp. and Chenopodium sp.
  
• Incorporate ducks to reduce slug pressure on leguminous seed crops of favas, peas, and runner beans.
  
• Include more evergreens in general rather than spring ephemerals
  
• Group root crops together for complementary soil disturbance. I'll post soon with several root polyculture ideas I'm trialing this year.
  
• Skip the nitrogen-fixing function from my list of guild requirements. One person can fertilize 4000-5000 square feet of forest garden with urine.
  

Harvest log - one full year

We've just completed one full year of weighing and recording everything we harvest from the yard. I've uploaded a snapshot of the one year harvest so it's archived even as I update the regular harvest log. We harvested on average each day two pounds of food, providing 675 calories. As far as our goal of self sufficiency is concerned, that means we could choose between feeding less than half of Tulsi (who requires 1500 calories per day) or barely feed one third of me (2000 per day).

I last blogged about the harvest log in September. Since then, we've harvested fall and winter root crops of 105 pounds of jerusalem artichokes, 15 pounds of skirret, 15 pounds of mashua, 2 delicious pounds of lilies, 10 pounds of yacon, and a few other miscellaneous species, for about 170 pounds total.

We harvested 70 pounds of tomatoes since September. We had a first-time harvest of 8 pounds 11 ounces of Jiro persimmons, our largest crop of fruit yet from any of the trees we've planted.

We harvested 2.5 pounds of fennel seed, the equivalent calorie-wise of 25 pounds of greens.

Harvest of greens dropped dramatically with the hard winter freezes, both because we had fewer leaves available, and because I don't enjoy picking them in cold rainy weather with freezing fingers. We picked up again in March with the return of milder weather making happier plants and people.

Egg harvest slowed similarly with the onset of cold weather, as our older hens quit laying. Our new batch of four chicks (purchased in late May I believe) started laying in December, and we've had an average of a little over 3 eggs per day over the last four and a half months, with egg laying accelerating with the spring. (I guess it makes chickens happier, too.)

I've killed four chickens since September, all older hens we received last summer from some folks who were replacing them with a new flock but didn't have the heart to kill them themselves. (These have all been difficult for me, since they've been my first non-mercy killings of healthy and happy animals.)

We harvested 26 pounds of honey (about 3 gallons) a week ago, which gave a huge increase to our calories, taking us from 575 to 675 calories per day on average for the year. As with the other animal products (eggs and meat), this harvest represents a certain amount of imported resources from off-site, since the bees forage from all around the neighborhood to make their concentrated sweetness.

I won't go into great detail analyzing the calorie breakdowns, since I haven't gotten any comments asking for elaboration in the past, and you can take a look at all the data yourself. I'll just note that the vast majority of our harvested calories this year have come from animal products (eggs 25%, honey 15%, meat 6.5%) and roots (jerusalem artichokes 15%, all others combined 13.5%). Greens provided 10%, which speaks to the large quantities we've eaten since they don't actually provide very many calories per pound. Fruits and berries combined provided 9.5%. Seeds, shoots & stalks, flowers & buds, mushrooms, and squash provided relatively few calories.

We don't expect to be here more than a few months longer, so we probably won't get to see how the harvests of fruit and nuts turn out. If successful, they'll add a lot to the calories harvested. We'll keep recording the data as long as we're around, and I expect to resume similar tracking once we move to a new homestead in a year or two, since this has helped me a lot to figure out how much of what we actually eat, what we're lacking, etc.

Plan for root crops

Here I'll lay out a rough idea of how many of which roots I would grow and eat on this site on an annual basis. I'm only including truly perennial, plant-replant perennials, and self-seeding biennials. We've had very poor success with growing annual root crops (carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, etc), most likely due to a combination of slug pressure and our unwillingness to baby the tiny plants (tilling/killing the soil into a fine seedbed, weeding, and watering).

Seasonal availability

I've found from our harvests this year that we have plenty of roots in the fall, winter, and early spring, with jerusalem artichokes, skirret, mashua, and yacon forming the bulk of our harvests. Wapato, oca, and canna lily all have potential for providing substantial harvests, but I only try in this post to estimate the future contribution of oca. For now I'll assign wapato and canna lily to the category of "minor roots", which add some diversity to our diet and to the garden, without any individual species providing a significant harvest.

We need to plan most carefully for root harvests from mid spring through late summer. Annual roots could fill the gap, but I'm not planning for them in our future harvests.

Summer harvestable roots	Minor roots
Potato	Evening primrose
Camas	Solomon's seal
Dandelion (year round)	Lovage
Yellow asphodel (year round?)	Sweet cicely
Campanulas?	Fennel
Cinnamon vine bulbils	Cinnamon vine taproots
Scorzonera (year round)	Sea kale
Grape hyacinth	Lily
Triteleia sp	Earth chestnut
Brodiaea sp	Woodland chervil
Dichelostemma sp	Burdock
Erythronium sp	Dahlia
Annual roots	Daylily
	Scilla
	Orpine
	Parsnip
	Chinese artichoke
	Wapato
	Canna lily

For details on these plants, see my notes on perennial roots part one and part two.

Consumption

Daily average

I figure I could eat about 2 ounces per day of garlic, elephant garlic, shallots, and other perennial oniony bulbs. On top of the garlic, I'm targeting 12-14 ounces per day of other roots. I suspect I'll eat more roots in the winter, and fewer in spring and summer when I have more greens and fewer roots available.

Monthly root consumption

December - March (four months)
Harvesting skirret, jerusalem artichoke, and minor roots from ground as needed. All mashua, yacon, and oca should have been dug after the first hard frost; now eating them from storage.
Root	Pounds (all 4 months)
Skirret	30
Mashua	25
Oca	25
Jerusalem artichoke	10
Yacon	10
Minor roots	5
April
Skirret and stored roots starting to sprout, so eating the last of them. Relying more heavily on jerusalem artichoke
Root	Pounds
Jerusalem artichoke	12
Mashua	5
Oca	5
Skirret	3
Yacon	2
Minor roots	1
May
Not much available
Root	Pounds
Jerusalem artichoke (preserved via fermentation)	10
Dandelion	5
Scorzonera	3
Yellow asphodel	1
June & July
Early potatoes & some other roots now available as summer drought kicks in. Harvest all camas to cook as one big batch.
Root	Pounds (total for two months)
Camas	20
Potato	6
Jerusalem artichoke (preserved via fermentation)	5
Yellow Asphodel	5
Cinnamon vine bulbils	5
Dandelion	4
Scorzonera	3
Grape hyacinth	2
August
Mostly relying on starch-rich potatoes and cinnamon vine bulbils, with miscellaneous inulin roots providing some variety
Root	Pounds
Potato	8
Cinnamon vine bulbils	8
Yellow Asphodel	3
Scorzonera	3
Dandelion	3
Campanula sp	1
Grape hyacinth	1
September
Similar to last month, but cinnamon vine bulbil production may have slowed down??
Root	Pounds
Potato	10
Cinnamon vine bulbils	3
Scorzonera	3
Dandelion	3
Yellow Asphodel	2
Campanula sp	1
Grape hyacinth	1
October
Skirret available again!
Root	Pounds
Skirret	10
Potato	10
Jerusalem artichoke	8
Minor roots	2
November
Assuming we don't get a hard freeze yet, so not harvesting mashua/oca/yacon yet
Root	Pounds
Skirret	16
Jerusalem artichoke	11
Minor roots	3

Annual root totals

Root	Pounds to eat	Pounds to replant
Skirret	59
Jerusalem artichoke	56
Garlic/elephant garlic	45	5
Potato	34	5
Mashua	30
Oca	30	5
Camas	20
Cinnamon Vine bulbils	16
Dandelion	15
Yacon	12
Scorzonera	12
Minor roots	11
Grape hyacinth	4

Land required

I won't try to give square foot requirements for each root, as I would mostly operate on guesswork. Jerusalem artichokes and mashua yield us about 3 pounds per square feet, and I suspect I could grow them together to make even more efficient use of space. Yacon, potatoes, oca, and skirret in the sun should all yield .5 pounds per square foot or more. So all in all I'll assume a conservative average yield of .5 pounds per square foot, giving a requirement of about 700 square feet of growing space.

Note on jerusalem artichokes

To make the inulin of our jerusalem artichokes digestible, I've started cooking them for 2-3 days as we run the woodstove (usually one fire in the morning, and one in the evening), so that they cook for at least 10 hours total. If we didn't have the wood stove running anyway, it wouldn't make nearly as much sense to rely so heavily on this root as a staple. (Though I still need to experiment with fermenting the jerusalem artichokes--many people do this, and I've heard it helps with the inulin.)

Roots as chicken fodder

Prioritize yield and ease. I think mashua and jerusalem artichoke make the most sense, though I have to admit that our chickens have not been very excited about jerusalem artichokes cooked for 1-2 hours til mushy. I haven't yet tried feeding them roots cooked for 10 hours, or tried feeding them mashua.

If chickens will eat cinnamon vine bulbils, and if the chickens don't peck the young shoots to death, these could work very well as a self-foraged summer starch.

Notes on perennial and self-seeding roots, part 2

In my first notes write-up I missed a few roots we sampled at the open house root tasting. I also want to cover a few more roots we didn't have available at that root tasting. Most of these are minor roots with which we have only a little experience so far, and we don't expect to use them as major staple crops. But they help add diversity to our diet and to our garden, and may yield well with further experimentation or breeding.

I've ordered these roughly by theoretical future performance and usefulness to us in our current location.

Roots

Garlic, Elephant Garlic, and Shallots (INULIN ROOTS)

Edibility: Roots and greens raw or cooked

Growth: Clumpers to about 2-4' tall. Foliage grows from late fall or early winter, then dies down with summer drought.

Harvest: Roots dug in summer. Normally one harvests everything and stores the roots for eating. When we miss plants, they seem to perennialize, but we've only harvested greens from them, and haven't tried to work out an ongoing perennial root harvest.

Culture: Most productive in full sun, but we've had success growing them under trees where they get shade from spring til summer. Adapted to summer drought.

Yield: Not sure of pounds per square feet. Supposedly garlic and elephant garlic roots contain more than 600 calories per pound! Unfortunately, that comes in the form of inulin, and of course one can only eat so much garlic per day.

Potato - Solanum tuberosum

We haven't actually grown a lot of potatoes. I have an ideological bias against the carbohydrate-heavy, high glycemic load potatoes provide, since I'm aiming for a paleodiet. Plus I have my doubts as to the long-term yield of potatoes once certified virus-free slips can't be imported.

Edibility: Root, cooked only.

Growth: Clumping, to about 2' tall and up to 3-4' wide.

Harvest: Available from early summer through fall. Seem to store OK in the ground, though normally people harvest the full crop and store it for winter consumption.

Culture: Seems to do OK in heavy shade, though normally grown in sun. I think it needs some watering, but I haven't paid proper attention.

Some people grow potatoes as true perennials, allowing the plants to continue in place while harvesting some of the roots from time to time.

Yield: Can certainly give very high yields, both in pounds and in calories per square foot. We've had moderate yields of about .5 pounds per square foot, without putting much care into it.

Cinnamon Vine - Dioscorea batatas

Although people can and do harvest the actual roots for eating, it takes a lot of digging to access the deep brittle taproots. I plan to use them in the future for their aerial bulbils, rather than the roots.

Edibility: Root and bulbils cooked. Root comes very close in taste and texture to potatoes.

Growth: Deciduous herbaceous vine. Gets maybe 7-8' tall in a growing season here.

Harvest: Bulbils form in summer, and it seems best to lay a tarp under them to catch them as they fall.

Culture: Provide some sort of vertical support in full sun.

Camas - Camassia quamash, leichtlinii, & cusickii (INULIN ROOT)

Staple root crop for northwest native americans. We're still getting our patches going (fairly slow to propagate and spread themselves). See also my report-back on foraging camas.

Edibility: Root cooked. Unlike many inulin roots, these taste very gummy and unpleasantly starchy unless fully cooked (ie, 9 hours in a pressure cooker) at which point they taste like caramel candy.

Growth: Spring ephemeral bulbs to 1-3' tall depending on species. Slowly spreading patches.

Harvest: Dig during dormant time from summer til late winter. Harvest the largest bulbs and leave behind the smaller ones.

Culture: These do fine in winter wet including standing water. Presumably best with full sun access during main growing season, though may work well under late-leafing trees. Adapted to summer drought.

Canna lily - Canna indica

We killed one plant a few years ago, I believe because we grew it in standing water over the winter. (Thanks to the fellow (Matthew??) who mailed me the starts from the east coast!) One year ago we planted a new division from a patch doing well in this climate.

Edibility: Root cooked. Mild starchy taste.

Growth: Slowly spreading clumper to about 3-4'?

Harvest: Harvest in fall or winter after foliage dies down (with the first frost??)

Culture: Likes moist soil (but apparently not full-on standing water!). We placed our start in our main garden area, which got watered once or twice a week through the dry summer.

Yield: Our division definitely made substantial roots this year, and I see potential for good yields.

Parsnip - Pastinaca sativa

We've been trying to get self-seeding patches going, but we haven't seen very good growth from seeds. Perhaps too much slug pressure? Or too much other plant competition with not enough soil disturbance from us?

Edibility: Root raw or cooked.

Growth: Biennial clumper to 3' tall. Seems capable of going dormant during summer dry season and resuming growth with fall rains.

Harvest: Perhaps any time of year?? Considered sweetest after some autumn frosts.

Culture: Full sun, disturbed soil. Supplemental watering probably helps a lot.

Grape hyacinth - Muscari neglectum

Edibility: Roots cooked. I find them very bitter and tolerable only in small amounts mixed with other food. Tulsi detects only mild bitterness, so can eat more of them.

Growth: Bulb spreading fairly quickly. In growth from fall or mid winter through summer, dying down with the drought.

Harvest: Presumably the dormant season, from summer til fall or winter.

Culture: I assume full sun is best. Adapted to summer drought.

Chinese artichoke - Stachys affinis

Edibility: Root raw or cooked, supposedly crispy and nice nutty flavor.
Growth: Running herbaceous mint to 3' tall.
Harvest: In the fall? You'll always miss some, so the plant will grow back year after year.
Culture: Sunny position with moist soil supposedly ideal.
Yield: Plants for a Future database says about .25 pounds per square foot.

Earth chestnut - Bunium bulbocastanum

Edibility: Root raw or cooked (though cooking doesn't seem to add anything to the taste or texture). The best tasting root I've ever had, even a little tastier than skirret! Leaves raw or cooked, available through the winter. Seed raw or cooked as a cumin substitute.

Growth: Slowly spreading clumper to about 18" tall. Takes a while to get established, but our patch has finally formed a dense carpet after 2-3 years of growth from three original small divisions.

Harvest: We've only harvested once, last December, by digging under a dense clump and flipping it over, then removing the marble-sized roots thus exposed at the top of the flipped-over-clump. After harvesting many or most of the roots, I flipped the clump back over, and it seems to have recovered just fine.

Culture: Could possibly be used as a ground cover, though very slow to establish. We have ours in full sun, and give them some water in the summer along with the rest of the front yard. (Maybe once or twice a week.)

Yield: Probably very small, since the roots are so small. But perhaps an established clump can yield good numbers on an ongoing basis. Probably lots of potential for breeding work!

Miscellaneous spring ephemerals - Triteleia, Brodiaea, Dichelostemma, Erythronium (INULIN ROOT?), etc

I've tried to start many of these from seeds with very low success (I suspect massacres by slugs), so haven't gained much personal experience. But I think they have potential as an understory crop.

Edibility: Roots cooked. Some may have edible leaves cooked.

Growth: Spring ephemeral bulbs, growing from late winter til summer.

Harvest: During dormant season. Harvest largest bulbs, and leave smaller bulbs to continue growing.

Culture: Suitable as understories to late-leafing shrubs and trees. Adapted to summer drought.

Woodland chervil - Anthriscus sylvestris

See also my crop summary

Edibility: Root cooked (and raw??). Leaves raw or cooked. Maybe seeds raw or cooked?

Growth: Clumping biennial (or perennial?) to 4' tall. Ours stayed in leaf through this past winter. They normally set seed in late spring and maybe die off after that?

Harvest: Dig roots maybe year round??

Culture: Doing fine in full shade with almost no supplemental water.

Sweet cicely - Myrrhis odorata

Edibility: Leaves raw or cooked, usually with sweet anise flavor. Immature seeds raw, tasting like licorice jelly beans. Root raw or cooked, supposedly with the same flavor, though the one older root I've tried didn't taste like much.

Growth: Clumper to about 3' x 3'. May keep a few leaves over the winter, but mostly grows from early spring til hard frost.

Harvest: Probably best during winter? Also possibility of harvesting excess seedlings in summer?

Culture: Full sun to part shade. Probably requires some supplemental water in summer.

Lovage - Levisticum officinale

Edibility: Leaves raw or cooked, a celery substitute. Seed raw or cooked (haven't tried this.) Root cooked; I don't remember it tasting like anything exciting when I tried it once.

Growth: Clumping to 6' tall.

Harvest: Not sure when to harvest the root for best results.

Culture: Full sun to full shade. Tolerates drought just fine.

Orpine - Sedum telephium

Mostly interested in this as a potential ecoroof root crop. We've just begun to grow it, so I don't know much about the root harvest.

Edibility: Leaves raw. Root cooked.

Culture: Supposedly full sun to full shade. Definitely drought tolerant.

Scilla scillioides

Edibility: Leaves cooked (I think they tasted OK the time or two I tried them.) Roots cooked, but I've never really liked them when I've tried them. Not sure why.

Growth: Spring ephemeral bulbs, spreading at a medium rate. Die down with summer drought.

Harvest: Probably best during dormant season, from summer til late winter.

Culture: Full sun probably best during growing season? Adapted to summer drought.

Notes on perennial and self-seeding roots

We held an open house root tasting a couple of weekends ago, to let people taste samples of more than fifteen roots. I wrote information sheets for each root, and thought it might help others if I typed up those notes and shared them here.

See also part 2

As always, refer to the Plants for a Future database for full details on plants. The information I give here is based on our experiences in our particular location.

I present the roots in approximate order of importance or desirability for us in our current yard. I'll make another post soon giving a description of our root strategy (how many of which kinds of roots for harvest in which times of year), based on our experimentation with many roots over the last 5 years.

Inulin

About Inulin

I've noted some roots as "INULIN ROOT", which means the root stores much of its starch in the form of inulin. Humans (some? many? all?) can't digest inulin, so we don't get full calories from it. Good for diabetics and people limiting calories. Not so good for subsistence gardens!

Inulin does feed probiotics in our large intestines, creating a good bacterial balance there. But the byproduct of the bacteria feeding on the inulin is gas.

Dealing With Inulin

Ease yourself into eating inulin roots, starting wtith small portions. Some people seem to deal with inulin beter than others, so see how your body adjusts as you eat more.

Ways to transform inulin into more digestible sugars:

• Wait to harvest til after hard freezes
  
• Could you freeze roots in a freezer to simulate that?
  
• Wait to harvest til late winter or early spring, when the plant has converted its inulin into more mobile sugars in preparation for new growth.
  
• Cook a long time. Native americans steam-cooked camassia 24-48 hours. John Kallas discovered through experimentation that pressure-cooking camass for 9 hours archieves inulin conversion, consistent with other info I've found online talking about 9 hours at 200 degrees Fahrenheit to make the inulin digestible.
  

Roots

Skirret - Sium sisarum

Our hands-down favorite root for its taste and ease of growing. See my previous Skirret Crop Summary post for many more details.

Edibility: Roots raw or cooked. Carrot/parsnip taste, and very sweet. Crisp when raw, smooth texture cooked. Only drawback is woody core of many roots.

Growth: Clumping to 3' tall (first year plants) up to 6' tall (older plants). Foliage somewhat open, allowing some light to groundcovers beneath. Roots radiate downward from crown like octopus tentacles.

Harvest: You need not harvest each year; older plants just keep developing more, larger roots (possibly with less of a woody core than first year plants?) Dig any time from early or mid fall (leaves on some plants die down early) til late spring when new growth has sapped the energy from the roots. Requires serious soil disturbance to get entire spread of roots.

Culture: Full sun to full shade, moist soil to super dry. Quite the low-maintenance survivor.

Yield: Still pinning down numbers, but seems to range from .25 pound per square foot per year in shade/crappy conditions, to a bit more than .5 pound in good conditions.

Mashua - Tropaeaolum tuberosum

A perennial, tuberous nasturtium.

Edibility: Leaves and flowers have spiciness of annual nasturtiums, plus flowers taste sweet. Root tastes very hot when raw, like a white icicle radish, but mild when cooked. The writer at Radix hates the taste of mashua, but ours taste fine to us, and no one at our root tastings has ever complained of a disgusting taste.

Growth: Vigorous vine, can reach at least 10' high. Top growth dies in hard frost.

Harvest: Dig all tubers out after hard frost kills top growth. Tubers too close to the soil surface will probably get killed by winter cold, but plant will probably come back the next year from tubers you missed deeper down. (This applies to mild winter climates such as in Portland, OR.) Store dug tubers in a frost protected place and eat as desired.

Culture: Full sun, but might benefit from some shade during heat of summer. Provide vertical support. May work well with jerusalem artichokes in a polyculture--we'll try it this year.

Yield: We got 15 pounds this year from 3 plants, each vine occupying about 1 square foot, though they did sprawl a little onto other plants. Very high yield!

Jerusalem Artichoke - Helianthus tuberosus (INULIN ROOT)

A super productive and low maintenance perennial tuberous sunflower. This root would top our list of most useful if not for the inulin content.

Edibility: Roots raw (crispy and juicy) or cooked. Nice flavor, and can be eaten in bulk. The author at Radix describes eating blanched shoots.

Growth: Stalks to 10' tall (some varieties are shorter), with multiple sunflowers. Patches spread outward somewhat slowly.

Harvest: Dig any time from fall (after top growth has died off) through mid-spring when the tubers hollow out, having sent all their energy up into the new shoots. Harvest on an as-needed basis, since tubers store much better in the ground than in the house. You'll never find all the tubers when you dig, so the patch will come back next year just as strong.

Culture: Full sun to full shade. Drought tolerant. Super easy to grow; you'll have a hard time trying to stop it once you get it started!

Yield: Incredibly productive. One isolated plant yielded about 5 pounds per square foot (but it benefited from no plant competition anywhere around it.) We haven't nailed down the numbers yet, but it seems that our main patch in partial sun and with very little irrigation yields 1-2 pounds per square foot.

Wapato - Sagittaria latifolia

Edibility: Root raw (unpleasant taste) or cooked (nice taste, kind of like a potato.) Our friend eats the leaves and flowers. Samuel Thayer eats young leaves and flower stalks, both cooked.

Growth: Aquatic or swamp plant, growing about 2' above the water.

Harvest: Fall through early spring. Loosen the mud with your feet or a shovel, then gather the tubers as they pop up to the surface of the water!

Culture: Pond or some water-holding container, with a few inches of dirt in the bottom.

Lily - Lilium sp.

Edibility: Root raw (I generally haven't liked the taste of raw bulbs) or lightly cooked (sweet, with fine texture). Some species have edible flowers. Asiatic lily varieties supposedly have more tender and less fibrous roots than oriental varieties.

Growth: Clumpers to 3'-6' tall. Reproduces from bulb offsets or seed. Different species or varieties may spread faster than others in different gardens.

Harvest: Can dig in fall after leaves die back, but the bulb tastes sweeter after a hard frost. Leave smaller offsets behind to keep growing.

Culture: Likes full sun for its top growth, with its bulb shaded. May work well in polycultures with lower growing groundcovers.

Yield: Not sure of ongoing sustainable yield. We've harvested large bulbs from each plant, but we started with medium sized bulbs purchased from flower vendors. The determining factor will be how quickly they reproduce and grow from seed or small offsets.

Yacon - Smallianthus sonchifolia (INULIN ROOT)

Edibility: Root raw or cooked. Has a crispy watery texture with slight sweetness. Leaves and stems cooked; we haven't tried them.

Growth: Large clumper. Ours have grown 6' tall and wide when happy. Usually closer to 3' x 3'. Top growth sensitive to light frosts, dies completely in hard frost.

Harvest: Dig after hard frost kills top growth, but before ground freezes enough to damage roots! Must store in sheltered place; roots will die if left in ground over winter. Save knobbly tubers from root crown for replanting. Eat the larger, lower roots.

Culture: Full sun. Wilts if not kept well watered.

Yield: We got 15" pounds from one of our 6' plants, a bit more than .5 pounds per square foot. Not that large a yield, especially considering the high water content and inulin.

Yellow asphodel - Asphodeline lutea

Edibility: Shoots cooked (we haven't tried them), flowers raw (very sweet). Root cooked, with a mild nutty flavor.

Growth: Main leaves clumping and low, spreading slowly as the roots multiply. Flower stalk takes a few years to appear, then grows 3'-4' tall. Main leaves go dormant for summer drought, growing from autumn til the next summer. Fills a useful time niche!

Harvest: Any time of year, but supposedly roots are best during dormant period. Easy to divide and replant while harvesting roots.

Culture: Full sun, maybe some shade? Drought tolerant.

Yield: Seems low so far, maybe .25 pounds per square foot? Great potential though as a winter grower intercropped with plants like oca or good king heny which take over after the asphodel dies back in summer. Also valuable as one of only a few summer harvestable perennial roots.

Oca - Oxalis tuberosa

Edibility: Leaves and flowers raw or cooked (we don't use them). Root raw (oxalic acid flavor, like sorrel) or cooked.

Growth: Low growing clumper, staying small (about 1' around) until late summer, when it explodes in growth and can get up to 4' diameter with dense foliage. Tops fairly sensitive to frost. Should work well as a groundcover with taller clumpers above it, or by utilizing its time niche with something utilizing space until late summer, then harvested to allow the oca to fill out.

Harvest: Dig all tubers after tops have been killed by frost, but before a hard freeze penetrates to the roots and damages them. Store roots in sheltered place, eating as desired. Replant from stored tubers next spring. (Though possibly tubers deep enough in the ground would survive the winter and regrow on their own in the spring.)

Culture: Seems to like protection from the blasting sun of the summer.

Yield: We've had pathetic yields in some years, but a decent yield of 17 ounces from our single plant this year.

Dandelion - Taraxacum officinale (INULIN ROOT)

Edibility: Leaves, flowers, flower stalks, crown raw or cooked. Root raw (super bitter!) or cooked about 10 minutes leaving only mild bitterness.

Growth: You know how a dandelion grows!

Harvest: Root seems good any time of year, and at any age of root, young or old. Very surprised people don't talk about this as a crop!

Culture: No need to encourage dandelions, really! Just let them grow where they like until they're in your way, then harvest the root.

Yield: Doesn't seem huge, but we're not trying to intensively cultivate it. Just harvesting the excess volunteers as bonus crops.

Scorzonera - Scorzonera hispanica (INULIN ROOT)

Edibility: Leaves, flowers, and flower stalks raw or cooked. Root cooked. Skin of root seems to have an unpleasant flavor, so best peeled?

Growth: Basically a giant dandelion. Leaf pattern different, but flowers very similar. Grows to 4'-6' tall. Prolific seeds, so should be able to self-seed well. Seeds germinate in spring or autumn.

Harvest: Root seems good any time of year.

Culture: Full sun or partial shade. Seems drought tolerant.

Burdock/Gobo - Arctium lappa (INULIN ROOT)

Edibility: Leaves, shoots, flowering stem raw or cooked. Root raw or cooked, but older roots supposedly best cooked.

Growth: Biennial taproot, aking basal rosette of leaves in first year, then tall flower stalk (to 3'-5') in second year. Self seeds well.

Harvest: Dig first year roots after hard freeze kills top growth. Roots can grow up to 3' deep, so expect a lot of digging if you want to get it all.

Culture: Full sun to part shade.

Sea kale - Crambe maritima

Edibility: Leaves and flowers raw or cooked with nice mild flavor and fairly tender texture. Roots cooked, with mildly sweet flavor, pretty nice.

Growth: Clumper to about 3' tall and wide.

Harvest: Probably best to harvest only during dormant season in late fall and winter? You can steal some roots from the edge of the plant and leave the main clump, or dig out the entire clump for root harvest and division/replanting.

Culture: The literature says full sun to partial shade, but our neighbors have a very happy plant in heavy shade.

Yield: Probably not high; treat the roots as a bonus crop when you want to divide a plant or knock back its size a bit.

Camas - Camassia sp. (INULIN ROOT)

Edibility: Roots cooked. When fully cooked to convert all the inulin into sugars, the roots taste very sweet.

Growth: Spring ephemeral bulbs, growing from early or mid spring through early or mid summer. Foliage generally 1-2' tall, with flower stalks a bit higher.

Harvest: Ideally dig during dormant season (summer through early spring). Leave the smaller bulbs behind to keep the patch going.

Culture: Full to partial sun. Can handle waterlogging during the winter and go dormant for the summer drought.

Solomon's seal - Polygonatum commutatum

Edibility: Young shoots cooked (basically a shade tolerant asparagus substitute). Root cooked (some sources describe a bitterness, but our first sample tasted sweet and delicious!)

Growth: Colony spreading at medium speed, growing to 3' tall.

Harvest: We harvested a small sample in the winter, after a hard freeze. Samuel Thayer only likes the roots in early spring.

Culture: Full shade to partial sun.

Yield: I wouldn't expect a large yield, especially if you're harvesting the shoots as a spring vegetable. But the roots tasted delicious enough for me to look forward to harvesting some from time to time as a means of keeping a patch in check.

Dahlia - Dahlia pinnata , Dahlia rosea (INULIN ROOT)

We grew this a few years ago, but the taste of the roots didn't excite us. The plants failed to regrow from the roots I left behind after the harvest, and we didn't care enough to seek out new starts. However, I've thought it'd be worth exploring available varieties to find some that taste better, and an article by William Woys Weaver confirms my hunch.

Edibility: Flower petals raw, root cooked.

Growth: Clumper to about 3' tall. Top growth sensitive to frost; roots may need some protection to overwinter in the ground.

Harvest: Dig roots as needed any time after top growth dies. May require serious soil disturbance?

Culture: Full sun.

Evening primrose - Oenothera biennis

Edibility: Leaves, flowers, seedpods, and seed raw or cooked. We use leaves and flowers heavily in salads. We haven't harvested many seeds, since they're small and fiddly. Root cooked.

Growth: Clumping biennial self-seeded. Makes basal rosette of leaves the first year, then tall stalk to 4'-5' tall with leaves and flowers the second year.

Harvest: Dig root of first year plant in fall or winter.

Culture: Full sun? Drought tolerant. Seed needs disturbed ground to germinate; harvesting the roots does the tirck.

Creeping bellflower - Campanula rapunculoides

Edibility: Leaves and flowers raw or cooked. I find the leaves to taste slightly unpleasant raw, so I mostly cook them. Roots raw or cooked.

Growth: Aggressive runner to about 2'-3' tall. Died down for s last year in summer drought, then again after hard freeze.

Harvest: We have not found substantial roots at the edge of a patch, only in the center. Roots may be available year round?

Culture: Full sun to full shade, though not sure how well it yields in shade. Drought tolerant (dies down.)

Unknown bellflowers - Campanula sp

I received seed supposedly of Adenophora lilifolia and A. pereskiifolia, but as far as I can tell, both turned out to be some Campanula species. They could be the same species, or maybe two separate but similar species!

Edibility: All Campanula species have edible leaves and flowers, raw or cooked, often mildly sweet. Some species have edible roots, raw or cooked.

Growth: Clumpers to about 2' tall, very slowly spreading. Make many seeds, so may self-seed well. Ours died down with the summer drought, then again with winter freeze.

Harvest: Maybe usable as a summer root? Definitely harvestale in winter.

Culture: Full to part sun. Seems drought tolerant by dying down.

Yield: Doesn't seem high for roots, though we've harvested abundant flowers.

Daylily - Hemerocallis sp (INULIN ROOT)

Edibility: Leaves and young shoots cooked (we haven't tried these.) Flowers, flower buds raw or cooked. Root raw or cooked.

Growth: Medium fast runner, about 3' tall.

Harvest: Roots during dormant season (only?). Maybe year round?

Culture: Full sun to par shade. Drought tolerant.

Yield: Low root yield, more of a bonus crop when you divide or reduce a clump.

Giant sea kale - Crambe cordifolia

Edibility: Flowers raw or cooked, leaves raw (though too tough for me to enjoy them raw) or cooked. Roots cooked, but unpleasantly bitter.

Growth: Clumper to 6' tall and wide.

Harvest: Probably best to harvest only during dormant season in late fall and winter? You can steal some roots from the edge of the plant and leave the main clump, or dig out the entire clump for root harvest and division/replanting.

Culture: The literature says full sun to partial shade, but our neighbors have an extremely happy plant on the north wall of their house.

Yield: Probably not high; grow this primarily for the leaves, with the root as a bonus crop.