Perennials That Pay for Themselves
I wash my arugula and dry it well before I store it in the fridge, then it's ready to go for a quick salad.
I talk to a lot of people who like the idea of vegetable gardening, but don’t feel they have the time to devote to it. I am a gardener, but this year, I didn’t plant and tend my usual patch. Still, I got quite a lot of produce out of my garden. How is that possible? Some plants just keep growing whether you tend them or not, and can give you free food for very little effort.
We’re going to start with a hard truth here. Gardening takes time and effort. It also takes a personality that is fine with failure, or better yet, embraces failure. I think we could call it a sense of adventure, odd as that may sound. These days wing suiting or “epic” backcountry four-wheeling seems to be defined as adventurous, rather than poking around your backyard. But planting a garden is a small trip into the unknown. Who knows which plants are going to survive? What pests might decide to move in half way through the growing season and make a buffet out of your hard work? When will an early frost send you scrambling into your backyard with sheets pilfered out of your linen closet to throw over and protect your hard-won vegetables?
Some of us just don’t have the extra energy it takes to add some everyday adventure into our lives. I am usually up for some adventure, but sometimes I’m not. This year, I didn’t plant a vegetable garden like I usually do, but I still saved $105 off my summer grocery bills by scrounging for volunteers that grew despite me. So here’s an idea. Plant a garden with just these plants, sit back, and watch your grocery budget shrink!
Superstar Edibles
So who are these superstar plants in my garden? Many are herbs. Fresh herbs are so tasty and so expensive, that they are great ones to grow if you can. My super herbs are sage, mint, chives, tarragon, parsley, fennel and dill. All of them come up year after year, without my having to do a thing. My other superstars are raspberries, spinach, arugula, chard, tomatillos, amaranth and rhubarb. The raspberries are special, because they taste better than any you can buy, even at the farmer’s market.
Ok, I know. These aren’t all perennials. Some of them are just really good at reseeding themselves. Such plants might give discerning gardeners headaches earning them the dubious title of “weedy”. But is a plant really a weed if you can eat it? I’m not a discerning gardener…I’m more of a throw-some-seeds-at-the-ground-add-water-and-see-what-happens kind of gardener. I’m thrilled when I get something….anything edible, so I really like these plants and their progeny.
Now I apologize, but I did slightly exaggerate earlier in this article. You can’t just sit back and watch these plants grow—they need a little management sometimes, but it’s minimal. They do need water, so if you live in a land of little rain, you’ll have to toss them some moisture now and again. I need to watch my mint so it doesn’t intrude into other sections of my garden (it spreads by sending subsurface shoots out under the soil to poke up somewhere else). I did do 2 passes through the garden of weeding and thinning early in the summer—it took about 2 hours each time. I do have to dig up the tarragon plant every 4 years or so, else it becomes a giant 3-ft. tall shrub with lazy branches that use the adjoining plants as a couch. And I do sometimes clear out dead leaves to discourage buggy critters. But that’s about 4.5 hours per of work. For $105 of food, that works out to an hourly wage of just about $23 per hour. Not bad for a few hours of fairly pleasant weekend work in the sun!
For each type of plant, this is what I got this year and how much it was worth:
| Dill greens | 1 package (0.66 oz.) | $1.99 |
| Dill seed | 0.25 oz. | $0.26 |
| Fennel greens | 1 package (0.66 oz.) | $2.99 |
| Fennel seed | 2 oz. | $2.54 |
| Mint | 10 packages (0.66 oz.) | $19.90 |
| Parsley | 4 bunches | $5.96 |
| Tarragon | 3 packages (0.66 oz.) | $5.97 |
| Amaranth greens | 5 bunches | $9.95 |
| Amaranth seed | 5 oz. | 1.75 |
| Arugula | 8.2 bags (7 oz. ea.) | $16.32 |
| Chard | 3 bunches | $5.97 |
| Raspberries | 8 pints | $20.00 |
| Rhubarb | 2 bunches | $8.18 |
| Tomatillos | 3.5 | $0.49 |
I know. How can you grow a half a tomatillo? Mine are smaller than grocery store size, so I had to adjust amounts to compare prices. Also, I could have harvested more fennel seed and greens, mint, tarragon, arugula, amaranth greens and rhubarb, but like I said before, this year I was a very lazy gardener. Other years, I have harvested volunteer chamomile and tomatoes, but these are not as reliable. I didn’t get any spinach this year because we turned the patch under for other uses, which I’m deeply regretting right about now.
At this point, I’m pretty sure I know what some of you are be thinking. Tarragon? Tarragon? What is that, and why would I want to grow it? I say this because that would have been my response about 10 years ago, and I’m hoping I’m not alone. I would rather have fresh basil volunteer in my garden, but it never has. However, I have learned to love and use what does come up on its own. Here are some ideas.
Lots of Mint? What Do You Do With It?
Tarragon: I use tarragon to season my gazpacho, and combined with a basic vinaigrette, it makes a great dressing for a French-style coleslaw. It also is excellent just sautéed with mixed vegetables (especially zucchini) and a little salt and olive oil.
Amaranth greens: A somewhat esoteric-seeming vegetable for people in the U.S., but is very common in Asian cuisines. When it’s young and tender it is very mild and it can replace spinach in anything from lasagna to smoothies to salads. As it gets bigger, it tends to take on a grassier flavor, but is still pleasant; it’s tougher though and should be eaten cooked (again replacing spinach). I particularly like it rolled up in the stuffing for manicotti. Or you can just admire it. It will put on a striking pink show in your garden by late summer.
Amaranth seed: If you’re a baker, it’s a great addition to seedy bread or muffins. You can also pop it like popcorn (though in a dry pan) and use it as a high-nutrient topping for things like yoghurt (nutritionally, it beats whole wheat in almost any category you’d care about).
Sage: Pan-fry the sage in olive oil (or butter, if you’re feeling frisky) until crisp and use it as a gourmet topping for pasta dishes. Make sure the pasta dish is somewhat bland on its own, because you’ll want this sage to take center stage.
Mint: It’s not just for mojitos. I use mint as a flavoring for smoothies (especially green cucumbery-spinachy-kaley ones) or as a garnish on Asian soups. It’s nice for mid-summer salads like tabbouleh or you can make a fruit salad with diced watermelon, feta and mint (thanks for teaching me that one, mom!).
Dill: A novel herb for summer salads. I like to use mine to make refrigerator pickles. If you like pickles and haven’t ever made your own, stay tuned, I’ll post an article next summer, when the dill is out again.
Fennel greens: Use as a garnish for making pasta primavera special, or pair it with the tarragon in that French-style coleslaw I mentioned above.
Raspberries: Stop! Don’t do anything. Just eat them.
Some of these plants preserve well too. The sage I can pick all winter, because we are not constantly buried in snow here in Colorado Springs. If you chop the mint (or parsley, or any herb for that matter), it preserves well by putting it in an ice cube tray and filling the air spaces with water to make little herb blocks. You can remove the cubes from the tray and store them in a Ziploc storage bag in the freezer. This is how I keep my mint for smoothies and parsley for soups.
Chopped rhubarb freezes very well for use in pies and crumbles as do the raspberries. The amaranth and parsley freeze surprisingly well simply rinsed and spread in a flat layer within a Ziploc storage bag for use in cooked dishes.
Other climates may have plants that volunteer more readily than those I have featured here. If your climate is not as dry as Colorado, sage and tarragon may not grow as well, and blackberries may work better than raspberries. If your climate is not as cold as Colorado in the winter, rosemary can grow like a perennial and you may have more choices for trees that will grow you fruit year after year. So hey, are you a gardener? Do you have plants that just keep giving despite neglect? I would love to hear from you! If I get enough responses, I’ll write an update with more ideas for specific regions.
So are you ready to go plant a small garden? This spring, go for it! No failure is required with these plants.
Get Started
If you are not going to go for it (yet), you’re done reading. But if the time is now, here are my picks for the best varieties and sources for these types of plants. Seed ordering season is in the winter, when seed organizations have the most varieties available, so I like to place my order after Christmas. Two seed companies sell heirloom seeds that grow very well in the dry conditions and high elevations of Colorado. You can order seeds directly through these companies or for my particular varietal recommendations, check out the links below.
Seed companies:
Native Seeds/SEARCH is a Tucson, AZ based seed bank specializing in preserving seeds from the gardens of Native American tribes and the descendants of Spanish migrants of the desert southwest.
Botanical Interests is a Colorado-based seed company that has heirloom and organic options for most of the seeds it sells.
If you are not in the arid west (or even if you are), another good source is Seed Savers Exchange, based in Iowa. Like Native Seeds, they are a seed bank focused on preserving seed lines from heirloom and open-pollinated crops.
Varieties that have worked well for me:
(click on each picture to follow a link to buy the seeds online)
Native Seeds/SEARCH sells Hopi Red Dye amaranth, which has beautiful red leaves for an accent in your salad. You can eat both the greens and seeds with this variety.
Botanical Interests carries a spicy variety of arugula called Wild Rocket Salad, which bolts (goes to flower) slowly, sprouts from old roots, and reseeds readily. You’ll never have to plant again.
The Five Color Silverbeet Botanical Interests chard mix powers through dry conditions and fairly heavy frost like a champ.
I scattered Botanical Interests Bouquet dill variety around my cabbages one year (to discourage caterpillars), and it has reseeded itself (and I have collected extra seed) every year since.
Fennel Florence Finocchio hasn't created bulbs in my garden, but came up in the same place for two years producing abundant greens and seeds.
Parsley is a biennial, meaning it grows only greens one year, and then blooms and seeds the next. This Italian Dark Green Flat-leaf variety has both come up again the 2nd year and grown from seed dependably for 5 years in my garden.
We've grown Botanical Interests Bloomsdale Longstanding spinach through the winter in our south-facing garden plot with only a cold frame protecting it. This way, we get abundant greens late in the fall and very early in the spring.
Native Seeds/SEARCH Mountain Pima tomatillos may be small, but they are flavorful! I let them grow wherever they come up in my garden.
You can only get tarragon by digging up and dividing an existing plant, so look for it at your local nursery. But once you have a plant, dig it up every once and a while and share with people you know!
