Perennial Vegetables

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier (2007)

Toensmeier's groundbreaking guide is destined to become the bible for this new class of edible gardening.

—Carol Haggas, Booklist Advanced Review

There is a fantastic array of vegetables you can grow in your garden, and not all of them are annuals. In Perennial Vegetables the adventurous gardener will find information, tips, and sound advice on less common edibles that will make any garden a perpetual, lowmaintenance source of food.

Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as the flowers in your perennial beds and borders—no annual tilling and planting. They thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season. It sounds too good to be true, but in Perennial Vegetables author and plant specialist Eric Toensmeier (Edible Forest Gardens, Vol I and Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. II) introduces gardeners to a world of little-known and wholly underappreciated plants. Ranging beyond the usual suspects (asparagus, rhubarb, and artichoke) to include such “minor” crops as ground cherry and ramps (both have found their way onto exclusive restaurant menus) and the much sought-after, antioxidant-rich wolfberry (also known as goji berries), Toensmeier explains how to raise, tend, harvest, and cook with plants that yield great crops and satisfaction.

Perennial vegetables are perfect as part of an edible landscape plan or permaculture garden. Profiling more than a hundred species, with dozens of color photographs and illustrations, and filled with valuable growing tips, recipes, and resources, Perennial Vegetables is a groundbreaking and ground-healing book that will open the eyes of gardeners everywhere to the exciting world of edible perennials.

Eric Toensmeier has comprehensively filled a huge gap in the sustainable landscape. Perennial Vegetables lets you put away your tiller, and covers everything you need to grow, harvest, and eat vegetables and greens that will keep coming back year after year.

—Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden.

About the Author

Eric Toensmeier, coauthor of Edible Forest Gardens, has worked as a small farm trainer at the New England Small Farm Institute and currently manages the Tierra de Oportunidades new farmer program of Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke, Massachusetts. There he is designing and installing a permaculture landscape in concert with immigrant farmers who are starting farm-based enterprises in an urban context. Eric is a graduate and former faculty member of the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont.