Stopping to smell the flowers
Jerusalem artichokes are sunflowers with bonus edible tubers.
By Arlene Marturano
While everyone enjoys the sensory delights of lowmaintenance perennial flowerbeds from spring through fall, the annual vegetable plot requires much more sweat equity. Soil preparation is followed by continuous attention to weeding, watering, fertilizing, and disease and pest patrol.
Some gardeners opt to incorporate perennial vegetables into existing perennial flower beds. Asparagus, rhubarb and Jerusalem artichokes are the more familiar perennial vegetables in midland gardens. The ornamental edible Jerusalem artichoke is a 12’ tall floriferous fall blooming sunflower producing abundant crisp sweet tubers eaten raw or cooked.
Most perennial beds already contain potential food crops. Daylily and canna are important vegetables in the orient. Daylily flower buds are eaten like green beans in Chinese stir fries and Japanese tempura. The flowers are eaten in salads and soups or battered and fried.
Edible camass roots were introduced to Lewis and Clark by native Americans.
Achira, Canna edules, is a large perennial root crop planted in colonies in tropical America, southeast Asia, and Australia. The baked rhizomes are sweet enough to serve as dessert. Your smaller ornamental garden canna roots are edible too.
Many “weeds” in the United States are popular vegetables in European markets. The highly nutritious leaves of chicory and dandelion are used in salads and cooked in Italian and French recipes. Roasted roots of each make a coffee substitute. Chufa, Cyperus esculentus var. sativa, is a noninvasive clump–forming relative of yellow nutsedge, the bane of farms and gardens. Chufa, cultivated in southwestern Europe, Africa, and Asia, yields over 100 tubers per plant. Tubers are boiled or baked and eaten like pota- toes.
Most people avoid nettles because of stinging hairs covering stems and leaves. This natural defense is to the gardeners’ advantage. The leaves of the stinging nettle and wood nettle are highly nutritious sources of protein, vitamins A and C, iron, and calcium. Cooking like spinach deactivates the stingers.
Two edible landscape plants discovered by the Lewis and Clark expedition adapt easily to midland food plots. Camass, Camassia quamash, grows in blueflowering colonies in spring. The best method for cooking camass bulbs is a pressure cooker; the cooked bulb has a sweet winter squash flavor. Arrowhead, Sagittaria spp., recognized by its spear–shaped leaf, inhabits fresh water ponds. In Asia the tubers are grown in paddies like rice. The nutty–flavored tubers are cooked like potatoes.
Taro resembles it cousin the elephant ear.
Sorrel is one of my favorite perennial herbs. I place the delicious lemon– flavored leaves atop fish and in salads.
Cardoon, Cynera cardunculus, is a show–stopper eight foot tall thistle–like giant on display at River- banks Botanical Garden. This European delicacy is grown for its stalks which are prepared like celery.
Okinawa natives living in Columbia grow taro, Colocasia esculenta, a relative of elephant ear. Taro root is prepared like potatoes. As with many wild plants, taro contains potentially toxic compounds that must be removed through proper preparation methods.
Diversify those carefree perennial flower beds to include a wider array of ornamental edible vegetables throughout the year.
Perennial edibles
for the Midlands Garlic chives Good King Henry Ground cherry Lovage Potato onion Prickly pear cactus Running bamboos Water celery Watercress Water lotus Wild arugula
Sources for seed www.echonet.org www.nicholsgardennursery. com www.rareseeds.com www.seedsavers.org
