Annuals - What is nature telling us? What are we doing wrong?

Okay, so permaculture/food forest is all about the perennials.  I totally sympathize with that - I want to plant it and have it keep coming back.

But then again, permaculture philosophy begs the question, "Well, how does nature do it?"

There is obviously a wild scenario wherein annuals come back year after year - otherwise the species would have died off.

So if I plant my annual tomatoes, corn, jalapenos, etc... (and presuming I don't eat all the seeds) why don't I have that same thing growing there next year?

Is the problem really just that they're annuals or is it something more subtle...  Non-indigenous species to the area?  Historical breeding creating weaker varieties?  Other...?

Because if we nail down the "five whys" of the problem's origin, we can then seek out appropriate steps to remedy it, rather than saying a blanket "no annuals".

K Eilander wrote:Okay, so permaculture/food forest is all about the perennials.  I totally sympathize with that - I want to plant it and have it keep coming back.

But then again, permaculture philosophy begs the question, "Well, how does nature do it?"

There is obviously a wild scenario wherein annuals come back year after year - otherwise the species would have died off.

So if I plant my annual tomatoes, corn, jalapenos, etc... (and presuming I don't eat all the seeds) why don't I have that same thing growing there next year?

Is the problem really just that they're annuals or is it something more subtle...  Non-indigenous species to the area?  Historical breeding creating weaker varieties?  Other...?

Because if we nail down the "five whys" of the problem's origin, we can then seek out appropriate steps to remedy it, rather than saying a blanket "no annuals".

i think it's mostly a matter of numbers.  In the wild, all the plants that aren't eaten by animals drop their seeds, and the ones that are eaten by animals have their seeds spreads by that animal.   My milkweeds drop thousands and thousands of seeds, maybe millions, and the next year I have a few hundred milkweed plants.  A seed left to it's own devices has an uphill battle on the road to germination.  The temperature, moisture, and soil conditions have to be right.  The seed needs to sprout before it dries out, rots, or is eaten.  Same with the sprout if it does manage to hatch.  I would think only a very small percentage survives to make an adult plant.

Now let's look at your garden. Maybe you plant 10 or 20 or 200 tomato plants.  How many do you leave to plant seed?  Picture if you planted 1000 tomatoes, and didn't eat any of them, letting all the seeds land on the ground to have a chance to sprout the next year into a plant.  I'm thinking you would get quite a lot of tomatoes.  I've had tomatoes and squash especially sprout and grow into plants in my compost bin, so they can survive.  Last year my lady and I left some pumpkins out as decorations.  As they rotted, my dogs dragged them around, some got thrown to the edges of the yard, some put into compost.  This spring, we had volunteer pumpkins growing all over the place.  If you want volunteer annuals, I think it's as simple as planting 2 or 3 times as many plants as you want or need, and let most of them rot right in place.  Personally, I think it's an inefficient way to do things.  I would rather save enough seeds to simply plant them in the next growing season.  Planted in my garden in the spring when growing conditions are right give them a far better chance of surviving and growing.

For myself, I don't think that planting annuals is in any way anti-permaculture.

But also remember, not all plants that are annuals for us are also annuals in their native ranges. Peppers are perennials in their tropical jungle homelands. I assume that's true for lots of plants, though obviously not all.

K Eilander wrote:So if I plant my annual tomatoes, corn, jalapenos, etc... (and presuming I don't eat all the seeds) why don't I have that same thing growing there next year?

Is the problem really just that they're annuals or is it something more subtle...  Non-indigenous species to the area?  Historical breeding creating weaker varieties?  Other...?

Because if we nail down the "five whys" of the problem's origin, we can then seek out appropriate steps to remedy it, rather than saying a blanket "no annuals".

This is really well written and a great question.

Where I live tomatoes and pepper will grow almost all year.

I have eaten lots of tomatoes in December though we pick the fruit when a freeze is forecasted.

I don't understand the "no annuals" in your last question.

Is it because many people do not plant annuals in a food forest?

Or do people say "no annuals" in a food forest?

I once has a really good cherry tomato that came back from seed every year.  Then we moved and I have not found a variety that I like.

If the question is "why can't we get annuals to come back year after year by self seeding?" then the number of answers are as many as the gardens we have.
One basic answer is that many of the plants we grow as "annuals" are not annuals at all, they're not even perennials, but biannuals. They grow one year (we eat them) and if let be they would flower and set seed the second year. Think most root vegetables: carrots, parsnips, turnip, radish; also leafy veg: spinach, cabbage, chard. At some point in the recent past gardeners decided to outsource this part of the growing cycle and rather than growing their own saved seeds we buy in seed that someone else had grown to maturity and saved for us. This way we get to use more of our (limited) space for growing food, or flowers.
Another factor touched on above is competition: annuals have to produce hundred or thousands of seeds for the one or two to grow successfully and reproduce again. With falling in the right soil, not getting eaten, dried out, frozen or drowned as seeds, seedlings, or plants, having a suitable partner plant to breed with and pollinating insects to carry out said cross fertilisation, it's amazing that it ever happens, and the work we do as gardeners helps tip the balance towards having a surplus.
Having said all that, I'm determined to try and achieve some self seeding crops. I have achieved it with parsnip in the past and got good success with germination, partly because they do better with fresher seed, but for some reason did not carry on the experiment for more than one year... It may be that some seed collecting will be necessary for my scheme. That will help with spreading out desirable Landrace characteristics anyhow from year to year.

Other than all the above-mentioned factors, you also have the fact that the "proper" annuals (the ones that only live one year regardless of climate, and seed at the end of that year) are often early-succession species.

These plants germinate prolifically, either from the soil seed bank or from seeds carried by wind or animals, right after a major disturbance that leaves the soil bare. This is the reason that many annuals (and biennials) do well in standard agriculture, where massive, human-made disturbance (aka tilling) is used as a means to get rid of "weeds". Some "weeds" belong to the same successional stage as the crops, but a lot of them belong to the next one, the herbaceous perennial stage. These are also the main target of tilling practices, as in ecological terms the function of tilling is precisely this: to set succession back to the prolifically-seeding annuals stage where most common crops (including all grain crops) belong. Without tilling or other disturbance, the herbaceous perennials will eventually outcompete the annuals in most circumstances. (In many contexts, these first perennials will eventually themselves be outcompeted by woody plants and late-succession herbaceous perennials, but that's a bit beside the point.) In nature, after a disturbance (fire, landslide, etc) the annuals of the first couple of years will produce copious amounts of seeds, which typically either go into the soil seed bank to wait for the next disturbance or are spread on the wind to fresh disturbance sites.

All this is probably the reason that permaculture focuses on perennials, as the goal for most permaculture systems is to achieve a later-succession state, without bare soil that is subject to erosion and nutrient leach. In a forest garden this applies even more, since a forest garden aims towards, well, a forest. A typical, undisturbed forest contains very few annuals, and none at all of the early-succession type that tend to produce a lot of seeds and therefore potentially make good grain crops. That said, there are probably ways to work annuals into a forest garden system, but they likely will involve a bit more effort.

If you select for annuals that self-seed, you'll get more annuals that self-seed.

I have a variety of grape tomato that I haven't had to plant for 4 years now. It's a favorite of the local wildlife, so they spread the seeds for me. But it also produces enough that I harvest around a pint per plant per day during peak season, in spite of the critters eating their fill.

(It's also my chickens' favorite treat, so they help spread the seeds too.)

Last year the variety "Black Vernissage" also replanted itself nicely.

The downside is that these volunteer plants can sometimes foster pests and diseases. Both the varieties I mentioned were hit by the same blight that swept through the rest of the garden, although all the tomatoes continued producing right through it.

Hi Eilander,
I don't see food forest as opposed to annuals. A food forest is a managed cultivated land where you work with Nature instead of against it, using animals, diversity, shadowing trees and everything you'd see in the wilderness, but with selected species so most of them are benefitial to humans.
Does it mean we can't use annuals? I don't think so.

The more work you put into it, the most efficient the outcome can be. If you let it completely wild, it will give some yield, but it would be very small.
However, Nature does not work only with annuals, so if you want to mimic Nature you have to combine annuals and perennials. A smart permaculturist will see what will happen in the land and will help Nature to get there faster, using useful species.

I think it was Billison who said that you may forage a 20% of your food forest yield and never use any input anymore. I think this depends on the climate, but it's something worth considering: your self-seeding plants will not self-seed if you take too much.
Also, Ernst Goestsch suggests that people should do whatever gives us pleasure, and in his view, humans are fruit eaters and seed spreaders, so it's completely fine to pick seeds, select and seed them.
Since the food we like most is found in the interface of the forest and the prairy, a good system forms as many thresholds as posible, so the annual plants we like most found more good places to grow.

If you want to see a good system balancing annuals and perennials, I would suggest to see David the Good's Grocery Row Garden system. It's not proved that it works, but you can see an example of a food forest mixed with conventional farming.

In the end, it's up to your needs and desires. If you are going to sell your produce and make a living only from that, the more food you grow in your land the better, so you can work on it as much as needed. However, if you want to process your food, or sell it yourself at the local market, or caring for your children or whatever, then you probably want a system that frees you from working too much, while at the same time giving you a decent production. In one extreme you have conventional farming of annuals, in the other you have a wilderness foraging. So choose whatever system works best for you and your resources.