I'm in zone 4 in the Adirondack Mtns of NY, where the growing season is blessed by lots of daylight hours but it is also too short to grow a lot of storage crops well (this morning it was 55 F and the tomatoes are just starting to ripen). Things like winter squash are possible if you get a good head start and are careful protecting them and get lucky with the weather (this was a bad year for that), and on a small property of about an acre there's not much room for nut and fruit
trees, so I've been looking for
perennial food sources that will produce something substantial
enough to justify giving up space where I could grow beans or greens and such annuals - my staples here - and that can be stored or preserved for eating through the spring and early summer.
It seems like we get a slow start and then suddenly are flooded with lots of healthy annual crops, but most of that either isn't well-suited to canning or preserving, or doesn't really give enough results to justify the investment in time and
energy. I love chard and greens but they don't preserve well (fresh steamed or sauteed chard is amazing, canned chard muck not so much), and dried fruits like raspberries just aren't as appealing as fresh. My staples are beans, beets, onions, and the usual annual crops but I'd love to find some perennials that would give me production without the cost and effort required for annuals. There's a limit on my indoor lighted shelf space for starting seedlings and I backed the current kickstarter and am watching to see how I might build a similar
greenhouse in the future with high hopes, but that's a ways off. The fenced garden space is at a premium as it is a big buried
wood bed based on what Tracy Wandling posted about a few years ago here, and with the investment of so much space and energy and resources I try to maximize my harvest in there. I haven't found any perennials that can compete with the output of the annuals, so the big garden will remain annuals for now. I have been creating other growing spaces tucked in with the flowers and landscaping where I can make smaller beds using the same buried logs/branches/compost recipe, and so far the wild garlic, walking onions, and asparagus are doing good in those. The next step would be to find more things to try in those smaller spots that can produce a good harvest in this climate and that can be stored or preserved for use when the main garden crops are gone.
What perennials do you grow that are good choices for storing or preserving?
