i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Raspberries (rubus idaeus) belong to the rubus family which includes blackberries, thimbleberries, brambleberries, tayberries, etc. and can readily cross breed with them, so new varieties are constantly coming out. Some people find them invasive–but honestly, what’s so bad about a fruit that vigorously propagates itself? …
I hate ornamentals that have no utility other than looking pretty. I’m sorry, but in the event of the zombie apocalypse, everything on my property better have a use so that myself and my family can survive, and tulips and daffodils definitely won’t help on …
Regular strawberries are nice, but sadly we neither eat enough of it, nor have the patience to really protect it from all the creatures that want to devour it. The fruit sizes are varied, some years giving large ones, other years giving rise to strangely shaped and stumpy ones. The only person in our family who is excited to see strawberries regardless of how useful it actually is, is our almost-4 daughter who is delighted when she finds one ready for picking.
That’s not to say I don’t have any regular strawberries on the property–I do, but I don’t protect them nor really pay much attention to them. They’re the leftovers from past years when I thought we’d really get a good crop of it going and I don’t have the heart to kill them. They’re not suitable to my food forest style gardening, where vigor and utility reigns supreme.
Now, the alpine strawberries (Fragraria vesca), of which I have both red and white varieties of–these are the strawberries I can get behind. They are small, maximum size reaching the fingertip joint of my thumb, but they are a burst of flavor in tiny packaging. Very sweet, and very fragrant–when you bite into one, you go, “this. this is the flavor of strawberries.”
They are also vigorous, sending runners every which way, forming a dense groundcover even on poor soil. They don’t compete as well, but it doesn’t matter if you have them in an area where not much else will grow. The foliage and flowers are attractive, thriving even in full shade (as I have a large patch under an awning on the north side of the house, where everything else has died due to a lack of sun.)
They seem to be drought resistant, although they obviously do better with more water. I suppose my only issue with them is their lack of sizeable fruits, which makes them only good for munching in the garden while we work. But they propagate easily, and from an original three plants, I have now hundreds. They are obviously winter hardy, surviving just fine here in NY.
There are both white and red varieties, which the only difference is honestly whether or not birds bother it. Ants love the ones they can reach, while slugs in general seem to leave it alone (although I suppose I wouldn’t know, considering a large slug could make short work of one in a matter of a few minutes.)
One thing to be aware of is that they won’t put their energy into fruits if they’re constantly sending runners around (which they seem to love to do), so if you want them to give more and larger fruit, you should nip the runners. Of course, if you’re like me, enjoying the fact that they’re overtaking an area where nothing else will grow, you might just leave them to run how they may.
I must admit, I was very daunted by the prospect of blueberries (vaccinium cyanococcus), as people complained all over the internet about issues afflicting them and the difficulty in their care. But my hoarding instinct got the better of me and whenever a blueberry bush …
There was a cherry tree at my grandparent’s house that gave tart, dark red fruits that weren’t good for eating directly but made for some fun times when me and my sister would sit on our dad’s shoulders and pick them. I have a very …
Some time ago, when I had been earnestly following bento blogs and the like, one particular poster always had these beautiful, tiny red or white berries that she arranged in the bento she made for her children. I always wondered what they were, looking almost like glass or crystal, until years later, saw them in a nursery magazine.
Currants (ribes). I only knew there were black currants (ribes nigrum), with a strong musky odor that is only rendered palatable (and deliciously so!) once made into jam or jellies. They are relatives of gooseberries, and can be crossed to create Jostaberries (of which I have three bushes, but that will be addressed in a separate post.) It’s a flavor I was actually familiar with, because these old candies we used to get in tins contained it as one of the flavors. Imagine my delight when I found out there were white, red, and pink varieties as well! And they are okay for fresh eating, if you can handle things that are more on the tart side than the sweet side. Most varieties of black currants are too strong to eat out of hand, but there are a cultivars that can be.
Red currants make expensive jellies, called Bar De Luc, and is called the caviar of jams. They are eaten more in Europe than in America. It fares well in shade and sun, although it seems the fruits ripen sweeter in the sun. It does well in all types of soil (but obviously enjoy well drained and rich) and their pH tolerance is wide, although they do favor slightly more acidic soils.
The flavor… is hard to describe. It tastes like currants. And although they make for a fun snack while working in the garden, their value really is for their delicious and fragrant jellies. I love the way they look, and find myself dreaming of using them for plating, if nothing else. They are prolific, and one bush can provide a lot of fruit.
They do quite well in our LI weather, and I have them coming back year after year even though I moved them around a lot until settling on the perfect area for them.
Scientific Name: Ribes sp. (nigrum, rubrum)
USDA Hardiness Zone: 3 – 8
Perennial fruit bush, fruiting on canes. Somewhat drought tolerant, part shade tolerant and do well with some shade during the hottest time of the day. Not picky about soil. Clusters of tart berries ripen in summer. You should prune them every so often to encourage fruiting. Easily propagate by seeds or by cuttings.
Every Chinese family I know has garlic chives (allium tuberosum) in their garden. It’s a species of onion that hails from China, and is one of the earliest spring vegetables to come out, harvested beginning of March here on Long Island so that they are …
My birthday is in June, and I’ve been wanting a Juneberry (also called serviceberry, or saskatoon) for my edible landscape. As luck (or bad luck) would have it, my husband, in his over-excitement at using a chainsaw to do yard work, accidentally chopped down my …
If there is one thing that I’m always looking for, it’s an edible perennial green that also tastes good. Dandelions are great, but they’re bitter (which not everyone in my family likes) and not suited to cooking because they shrivel up into tough strings, better lending itself to pesto that goes divine with brie and some crusty french bread (but that is a post for some other time.) In comes a plant from my ancestry of China–edible chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum Nankingense.) It is one of the few, hardy perennials suitable to Long Island that provides delicious dark greens that are mild in flavor all year round, and can therefore be used similarly to spinach, except that it doesn’t dissolve into a slippery mess the way spinach does if you cook it for too long. It’s one of the first vegetables out in spring, coming up from the ground where the tops had died down the year before.
I sautee it, stuff dumplings with it, put it in soups, make panjeon (savory Korean pancakes) with it etc. I usually pinch off the tender new leaves, which also helps it bush out. It comes back year after year, becoming bushier and bushier until you decide to split it so now you’ll have two of these useful plants instead of just one!
In Chinese, we call it Ju Hua Lao, and not only are its leaves edible, but its flowers smell amazing and make delightful tea. When we go dimsum (a Chinese style breakfast in which we order things off carts that come around), chrysanthemum tea is our go-to drink, slightly sweet and flowery, without the astringency of regular red or black tea. Edible Chrysanthemum flowers are smaller than regular tea chrysanthemums, about the size of your pinky fingernail, but twice as fragrant. If you ever go to an Asian supermarket, you might find a small bag of the dried flowers for an extortionate price. Chrysanthemum is touted as a cooling herb, so the flower tea is often sweetened and chilled during the summer to help beat the heat. It does require full sun to be truly happy, and very drought tolerant once established. It is also suitable to all sorts of soil and tolerates a wide range of acidity.
To propagate, you can either do it by seed (which I have had no luck), or split from the roots. It will look as though it is wilting when you first plant new splits, but if kept well watered, it bounces back and becomes as vigorous as the parent plant. Thankfully, it is not invasive at all, and will not spread if you don’t propagate it. I haven’t seen any plants for sale, or even seeds but it seems the Chinese community always has some floating around–I got mine from my parents who got their from who knows where. If you want something nice for your edible permascape, this is one plant you can’t skip out on!
A word of caution however, chrysanthemums do have some toxins in them that can cause gastrointestinal issues if eaten in large quantities. While I have eaten them throughout my life, itโs always a good idea to try a little first before you dive in. As always, everything in moderation!
Scientific Name: Chrysanthemum Nankingense
USDA Hardiness Zone: 3 – 9
Perennial, leafy vegetable with edible flowers. Drought tolerant. Requires full sun. Dies down to the ground every year. Leaves are used in dishes during the spring, and flowers are dried and made into tea. Propagating by root division is more reliable than by seed, but can also be propagated by cuttings.
Shiso (perilla frutescens) is one of my favorite annual herbs. It’s much more commonly seen and used in Asia than it is in the US, and for the longest time I had been hunting for the green variety called ohba๏ผๅคง่) in Japanese. I finally found it two …