Thomas Jefferson wrote toward the end of his life “Though I am an old man, I am but a young gardener.” Today I’m writing about Luke of the Mortaltree blog, who, though a young man, is an old, experienced gardener.
Quite some time ago I wrote a post about the lack of genuine permaculture cookbooks to tell people what to do with unusual perennial vegetables if they were to grow them. Luke took me seriously and started writing exactly such a guide. It will be developed more and come out as a book later this year, so follow his blog if you want a notice when that happens, but he was kind enough to publish the preliminary material on his blog. Here are the introduction and Part I, with brief excerpts. Both Luke and I would love to hear reader’s thoughts. The photos here are mine; his are much more artistic.
“Perhaps we could say yield is a ratio of utility to effort. In permaculture, we want everyone to utilize everything to the fullest. It’s reducing waste. It’s increasing pleasure. It’s making more of less, by realizing what we already have.
For the plant-crazed gardener, the efficiency-crazed gardener, the wild-plant forager, or anyone that eats with ethics, here is one look at obtaining your permanent harvest.”
Part I: The Primacy of Perennials
“Many of the best perennial vegetables are weeds that grow in quite inhospitable conditions. They only thrive all the more if given fertile sites. So much effort is put into the art of encouraging a plant to grow. Why shouldn’t we just find the plants that grow themselves. Then we can take our preference of tearing down and removing what we like just to keep the population of weeds in check. Perennial vegetables seem to be the perfect match for how we dream of managing natural resources.”
Part one goes on to describe a number of unusual perennial vegetables and a few annuals that are available very early in the year, during the hunger gap, and gives delicious-sounding recipes for them.
My urban homestead 