Category: Permaculture Plants
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5 Final Fast Growing Perennials to Quickly Grow Your Edible Landscape
Welcome back to the last installment of this fast growing plants series. These last five fast-growing plants all happen to be perennials. I’ll discuss each plant briefly, covering its benefits and uses, growing and harvesting tips, and design ideas and varieties to consider. These fast growing perennials are excellent options (depending on your climate) to…
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Beloved Bee Balm: Uses, Varieties, and Growing Tips
The Plant of the Month for August is bee balm (Monarda spp.). I love this plant because it’s so pretty and fragrant, bees love it, mosquitoes hate it, and it makes a lovely herbal tea. With all of these great bee balm uses, I just had to plant some in my backyard, and maybe after…
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5 More Fast Growing Plants to Quickly Establish Your Forest Garden
Welcome back. It’s time for part two of this fast growing plants series. If you haven’t already, check out part one, Five Fantastic Fast Growing Plants to Kickstart Your Food Forest. Today we’ll cover five more fast growing plants to help your perennial garden or food forest to fill in quickly. As with part one,…
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Growing Raspberries, the Ruby of the Permaculture Garden
Raspberries take center stage this month, both on the blog and in many of our gardens. Growing raspberries is one of my favorite parts of summer. July is the month these little jewels shine the brightest in my garden, and since they’re one of the yummiest harvests I’m bringing inside these days, I wanted to…
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Five Fantastic Fast-Growing Plants to Kick-Start Your Food Forest
Are you looking to create a thriving food forest or edible perennial garden? Starting with fast growing plants will provide you with some quick successes to get your garden off to a strong start. These resilient plants will rapidly establish themselves and provide you with abundant foliage or harvests in the first or second year.…
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Saskatoon Berry: Beautiful and Useful Plant of Many Names
Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.), commonly known as Juneberry or saskatoon berry, offers a highly nutritious berry, adaptability, and multi-season ornamental appeal. This large shrub or tree, native to North America, thrives in various sunlight, water, and soil conditions, making it a versatile addition to many gardens. The fruits, particularly the saskatoon berry (Amelanchier alnifolia), have gained…
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Maypop (A Hardy Passionflower): Underappreciated Gem of the Garden
What better plant to talk about this month than the Maypop? A hardy perennial vine, also known as wild passionflower, or apricot vine, the Maypop passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is a southeastern United States native admired for its intricate purple flowers, interesting foliage, and tropical-like fruit. Permaculture gardens are designed to be self-sufficient, regenerative, mini ecosystems…
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25 Unusual Perennial Vegetables for Cold Climates
When people talk about vegetable gardening, it’s almost always regarding annual vegetables. But perennial vegetables, once established, require less work than annuals, improve soil health and biodiversity, and provide food for years to come. In this article, I’ll list twenty-five cold hardy perennial vegetables you can grow in your cold temperate climate garden or food…
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Comfrey Uses in the Garden: The Quintessential Permaculture Plant
Let’s talk about the many uses of comfrey in the garden. In permaculture, we give comfrey as a prime example of multi-functional plants so often that it’s now a cliche. I almost didn’t want to write about comfrey for this reason. But it’s an excellent permaculture plant, I have it growing in my food forest,…
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The Remarkable Green Globe Artichoke
The plant of the month this month is the green globe artichoke, not to be confused with the Jerusalem artichoke, which is also an excellent plant for the food forest, but quite different from globe artichokes. I have fond memories of eating artichoke “leaves” (actually bracts) dipped in butter as a child. They taste great…