Overview
How to Grow Perennial Vegetables gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetables, from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants. Perennial vegetables are a joy to grow. Whereas traditional vegetable plots are largely made up of short-lived, annual vegetable plants, perennials are edible plants that live longer than three years. Grown as permaculture plants, they take up less of your time and effort than annual vegetables, and extend the harvesting season - avoiding the hungry gap between the end of the winter harvest and the start of the summer harvest of annual vegetables. Unlike annual vegetables, perennials cover and protect the soil all year round, which maintains the structure of the soil and helps everything growing in it. Humous levels build up, nutrients don’t wash out of the soil, and mycorrhizal fungi, critical for storing carbon within the soil, are preserved. Perennial plants also contain higher levels of mineral nutrients than annuals because they have larger, permanent root systems, capable of using space more efficiently Written by gardening expert Martin Crawford, this book gives comprehensive advice on how to grow and care for both common perennial vegetables like rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish and asparagus and unusual edible plants such as skirret, red chicory, nodding onions, Babington's leek, scorzonera, sea kale, wild rocket, coppiced trees and aquatic plants. With plenty of cooking tips, colour photographs and illustrations throughout and an A-Z of over 100 perennial edibles, it is an inspiration for all gardeners.
Full Product Details
Author: Martin Crawford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Green Books
Dimensions:
Width: 16.80cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 23.40cm
Weight: 0.567kg
ISBN: 9781900322843
ISBN 10: 1900322846
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 05 April 2012
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
This lovely book makes it clear that we are not just missing a trick, we are missing a feast. -- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall I admire tremendously the first-hand experience which informs Martin Crawford's writing. This book leads us down the path to a wealth of perennial vegetables and tells us how to combine them successfully. -- Anne Swithinbank A really useful book... Let us start freeing outselves from the tyranny of the annual sowing, thinning and planting regime. -- Bob Flowerdew At last an indepth book on perennial vegetables combined with Martin Crawford's usual diligence of research - essential reading. -- Ben Law
Author Information
Martin Crawford has had broad and varied horticultural/agricultural experience over the years – experience that led him to the concept of forest gardening as a sustainable system that can flourish in our changing climate conditions. This led to the founding of the Agroforestry Research Trust, a non-profit-making charity that researches temperate agroforestry and all aspects of plant cropping and uses, with a focus on tree, shrub and perennial crops. At his forest garden in Dartington, Devon, Martin systematically researches plant interactions and unusual crops. He also runs a commercial tree nursery specialising in unusual trees and shrubs, and has a large trial site, researching fruit and nut trees.
