Buss Ferver of perfect circle Farms is a very accomplished arborist especially where edible landscaping is concerned.
bluestemfarms doesn’t have a bug problem. If you have enough fertility your plants will out grow the bugs? the squash vine borer, which seasonal planting’s will partly out wit, along with a mix of squash and melons, is the greatest nuisance.
have any tried spinosad for Colorado potato beetles?
too busy to type, robie
”you are a solar powered, biological being, symbiotically co-evolved with plants, fungus and bacteria, primarily functioning to process and concentrate plant soluble nutrients in exchange for fruits, nuts, grains and other foods."
https://www.perfectcircle.farm
Money spent on developing vital skills is never money wasted! I, too, grow vegetables in a manner that is way more expensive than buying them in the store, but the knowledge I gain - mostly by screwing up constantly - is a very worthy investment.
I read somewhere a couple years ago that Hostas are edible. I have many - grow like weeds on the west coast… Does anyone have any knowledge or reference material to share? Thanks!
For my seasonal pantry, I like experimenting with different edible flowers, particularly for use in salads or as a main course garnish. This year I’m adding fiddleneck flowers (phacelia tanacetifolia). It’s noted to be a good pollinator-friendly plant and the (very attractive, IMO) flowers are supposedly edible (and deer resistant, but we’ll see).
My “pet” deer love hostas, particulary when the spring shoots are just about four or five inches tall. I’ve had good luck with Milorganite® as a deterent along with a common minty/herby/stinky rotten egg deer spray for when plants get taller.
“Edible Pantries” – at first glance, I thought it said something else. 
Oh thank you, Cribbage! I will check that out.
Dennis: I know the deer love to eat them so wondering if I can do so as well. If so, my garden output just increased for free! I have many the deer cannot get at! Sweet ?
I had a man come by yesterday to give me a quote on clearing more land and digging a pond. While walking the property he pointed out to me areas where Guinea Weed or Guinea Hen Weed was growing naturally. He told me it had many curative properties. I did some quick reading and found this true. It is said to be effective against cancer and viral infections and many other things. Anyone have personal knowledge or experience with Guinea Weed? Thanks
I couple years ago I found a book at the local library listing many sorts of common nursery type plants that were also edible, though few people realized this. Hostas was one of them. That got me excited because I’ve always loved the look of them, they are perennial, and can grow in shady zones. So I went out and bought several to try and establish some on my property.
I can’t say they are well established and spreading, but mine are still alive. This year I did try a couple leaves from the young shoots coming up and found them to be quite good. I may have to invest in more to try growing in other areas, hoping to find a spot where they’ll thrive.
https://thegrownetwork.com/edible-ornamental-plants/amp/
I had no idea about Hostas, they are in the Asparagus family. I planted some last year and just bought a few more yesterday, along with a raspberry bush. Nasturtium is good, has a peppery zing.
(Hello long-time PP members, remember when I used to do the gardening column?) We’ve been working on our edible landscaping for over ten years. And we’ve incorporated a number of the things that you have suggested, some of them successfully, others as “learning experiences.” We have 1/3 of an acre and went vertical with many things because there isn’t enough space horizontally to grow as much as we’d like. For example, in the 4 foot high/4 foot wide and 45° sloped land next to our driveway we added an 8-ft wide native muscadine grape arbor spanning a gap behind two 2.5-ft high raised beds framed by 10’ x 10’ creosote ties because the insect problem here in the Carolinas is beyond insane. We lined those beds with tarpaper to keep the creosote off of our food, and then filled them with the same sort of soil that our local farmers use. Understand that originally the space only had an inch or two of sand above hard clay; now we have nice deep beds where we can grow things with deep roots. So the first bed has a mix of perennials like strawberries and arugula with drought resistant blackberries on towers on the slope behind them, as well as creeping rosemary. The partial shade from the great arbor protects annual lettuces and kale that we grow from saved seeds: absolutely essential in the fierce South Carolina summers.
In the back of the second raised bed on the driveway, which is much deeper horizontally, we have let the area be taken over by Jerusalem artichokes which we can thin in the area we can reach so that we can grow things like peppers and daikon radishes (the greens are great) in front of them.
In between these two beds is a perennial herb garden which also contains some edible flowers.
Our 1-foot tall bare root mulberry tree is now 30 feet high, and shades our compost pile. Again, in this climate we learned it’s necessary to shade your compost pile or it will dry out too quickly. There is also an extremely shady area next to the second raised bed but under that tree where we grow mushrooms on logs
Our apple trees are not doing well, but we found that pears do extremely well in this area and make an acceptable vinegar as well. We use that for pickling various things.
There is a 10’ x 8’ raised bed in the backyard, on a slope, and that has four cedar trellises we use for green beans and cucumbers – it has to be cedar because bugs will eat any other word in this climate – and the cukes are West Indian gherkins, the only variety we found that is resistant to the insects that plague us. The rest of that box, which has a stone path down the center, is planted with potatoes and sweet potatoes, as well as okra. The sweet potatoes are decorative as well as edible because they produce cascades of leaves and purple flowers down the sides of the raised bed. The sweet potato leaves, by the way, can be cooked and used like spinach.
We’ve also discovered that we have our best results growing tomatoes if we grow them in 5-gallon buckets, where we also grow celery with great success. And we learned that rabbits don’t like Egyptian walking onions, so that’s what we planted in the smaller raised beds in the back of the house.
What hasn’t worked well? We’re going to have to put in a new asparagus bed because the first one was a disaster where we made every newbie mistake in the book! Our hazelnuts did not do well where we put them, and neither did the blueberries– which was really disappointing because we put them where they are based on advice from someone who was manning the desk in our local agricultural cooperative, only to find out later the person was a volunteer and didn’t understand that blueberries needed to be in full sun even if they were close to pine trees for they love to grow in the acidic soil. We’re also too far north for the olive tree that we planted to be very comfortable here, but were giving that to my son who lives in Florida who has a spot all picked out for it.
It was already well established, but our fig tree in the front yard now bears three times as much because we discovered it would like a cup or two of fireplace ash – it does not like acidic soil. We already had concord grapes along the back fence and those enjoy a little bit of fireplace ash as well, for spectacular yields.
Many of our breakthroughs were in how to store and use the things that we grow– and forage, because we can get 10 or 15 gallons of pecans a year from more than one local source for free (at least for now). We used to turn all over figs into jam which we would never be able to eat, as there was so much of it! So it became gifts and now we sell it to a bakery. We now dry many of those figs, and they last for several years. I have learned how to make grape leather out of the otherwise inedible muscadine grape hulls, how to make muscadine grape jelly that doesn’t have a musty taste (you add some citrus), and I learned how to make something called grape hull pie.
We have an Indian Hawthorn hedge along our front fence, which provides us with berries that have medicinal qualities: they can be dried, powdered, mixed with honey & cinnamon, and used to make something that lowers blood pressure. We’ve gotten good relationships with the people that run the local apiary, were we can get local honey in exchange for some of our produce, with the local health food store which by some of our surplus, and with a local horse farm, where we can get manure that isn’t from hay that’s been treated to kill various things were growing – for free.
Our cat is doing a wonderful job of discouraging squirrels, birds, rabbits, and what have you from coming onto our property and eating what would grow. And unlike our previous cat, she doesn’t use the garden beds as a litter box!
Thanks, Samantha! I agree with you to grow own food and making a beautiful landscape at a time and we have to take this opportunity positively. As a lawn gardener, I will follow your edible landscaping ideas.
Reality check: what the author is recommending, does NOT work in most suburban yards and especially in HOA’s. It’s NOT 'landscaping" by the usual definition. I’m working on a true landscaped permaculture, in a challenging climate, and it’s really a LOT more difficult and requiring of deep creativity than it looks.
Not to discourage anybody or say it can’t work, but there’s a strongly imbedded and and unfortunate ideology in the perma community that says that unless it looks semi-wild or obviously NOT traditional, it’s not good. This keeps a good number of people tuned off to the idea, It also does nothing to help the masses of people who have to abide by rather stringent rules in planned communities.
Suburbia now makes up the third largest biome in North America! If permaculture is going to succeed, it MUST adjust to accommodate the huge numbers of suburbanites who are simply not allowed to plant wheat and peppers in their front or even back yards. I’m trying to help work out edible permascaping that looks sufficiently controlled and ornamental to be snuck into most HOA yards. If we can’t devise such a workaround, permaculture will remain a pipe dream for most people.
Take nitrogen fixers, for example. They’re essential in any permascape, but most are big, weedy looking and potentially difficult to control (goji and sea berries, I’m looking at you!) Native (NOT Japanese!) wisterias, however, are both beautiful and manageable. Place a few wrought iron arbors in strategic places around your yard, cover with native wisteria vines, and voila! You’re feeding your grass and veggies serreptitiously while pleasing your neighbors with tresses of gorgeous, insect-friendly vines draped luxuriously over your attractive arches.
Like grass? Why not create several small, decorative islands here and there and plant them with Indian Rice Grass, a native grass with nice ornamental appeal and nitrogen-fixing roots? Everybody likes ornamental grass, and this one will feed the plants around it as well. Pop some edible lilies and small Magellan barberries around it, and you have classic-looking landscaping - with food and seasoning as a bonus!
There are also some plants so beautiful that nobody would ever guess they were actually edibles. Calosia argentea is a perfect example. It’s been grown as a heat-tolerant, nutritious green in central Africa for milennia, but it’s a show-stopping annual plant with huge pink candelabras of gorgeous flowers that drive the bees mad. Nobody would ever accuse it of being edible! My experience is that the leaves never get bitter even in the worst heat, and it’s fairly drought tolerant as a bonus. Sesame is another annual that you can blend into your more casual flower beds. Edible onions and garlic can also be grown en masse at the back of the flower bed - just be sure to clip off some of the flower heads before they open so you can pull out those plants when the tops die back and enjoy the bulbs to eat. Nobody will notice a few missing plants, I promise! And they will help deter Japanese Beetles and other pests if you should choose to plant a rose bush in the middle of your bed, hint, hint. To kick it up a notch, , plant an old-fashioned apothecary’s rose, because you can make medicine out of the petals.
These are just some ideas. If you live someplace where strawberries thrive, why not mix alpine strawberries in with violets and other little flowers to line a path? Alpine strawberries form clumps instead of runners, so they can make an edible edging. Speaking of violets, some have smooth, edible leaves that can be used as mild greens in cooked dishes. So why not plant a bunch of those in your flower beds or under shady shrubs? Nobody would object to a planting of violets. And use real sweet potatoes instead of decorative vines in planters. Just use a bigger planter than you normally would, and harvest both the leaves and tubers to put in the cookpot.
There are many possibilities. But, it takes time, effort, creativity and a LOT of research and experimenting around to figure out what will really work for you. The reality is that most permaculture “landscaping” as currently conceived simply won’t work for many suburban yards. And there’s just no way to disguise certain things like potatoes. But if you search hard enough, you CAN find varieties of common edibles like tomatoes and basil that can be disguised enough to get a pass in many settings. Just please, don’t put out a bunch of fruit trees and veggies loosely organized to look like a “forest” and expect to pass muster if your neighbors expect a groomed lawn and ornamental flower beds. Let’s up our game and try blending in instead of always having to stand out in everybody else’s faces. Sure, we want to change the world for the better, but sometimes that means working more with the status quo and walking a little bit less to the tune of our own drummers.