Martin Crawford

How to Grow Perennial Vegetables (eBook, PDF)

Low-maintenance, low-impact vegetable gardening

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

How to Grow Perennial Vegetables gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetables, from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants.

Perennial vegetables are a joy to grow. Whereas traditional vegetable plots are largely made up of short-lived, annual vegetable plants, perennials are edible plants that live longer than three years. Grown as permaculture plants, they take up less of your time and effort than annual vegetables, and extend the harvesting season - avoiding the hungry gap between the end of the winter harvest and the start of the summer harvest of annual vegetables.

Unlike annual vegetables, perennials cover and protect the soil all year round, which maintains the structure of the soil and helps everything growing in it. Humous levels build up, nutrients don't wash out of the soil, and mycorrhizal fungi, critical for storing carbon within the soil, are preserved. Perennial plants also contain higher levels of mineral nutrients than annuals because they have larger, permanent root systems, capable of using space more efficiently

Written by gardening expert Martin Crawford, this book gives comprehensive advice on how to grow and care for both common perennial vegetables like rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish and asparagus and unusual edible plants such as skirret, red chicory, nodding onions, Babington's leek, scorzonera, sea kale, wild rocket, coppiced trees and aquatic plants.

With plenty of cooking tips, colour photographs and illustrations throughout and an A-Z of over 100 perennial edibles, it is an inspiration for all gardeners.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Juli 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780857840936
• Artikelnr.: 38239461

Autorenporträt

Martin Crawford has worked in organic agriculture and horticulture for more than 25 years. His experiences span from working for the Yarner Trust in North Devon, teaching small-scale organic agriculture to restoring the walled gardens of a manor house to running an organic market garden and tree nursery in South Devon.

Martin is director of the Agroforestry Research Trust, a charity that researches temperate agroforestry and all aspects of plant cropping and uses, with a focus on tree, shrub and perennial crops. He runs a commercial tree nursery specialising in unusual trees and shrubs, and has an 8-acre trial site, researching fruit and nut trees.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword by Hugh Fearnley
Whittingstall Introduction Part 1
An introduction to perennial vegetables Why grow perennial vegetables?
What is a perennial vegetable?
The case for growing perennials Growing perennial vegetables
Types of perennial plant
Soils
Perennial beds
Planting patterns
Perennial polycultures
Perennial grains
Perennial tuber and root crops
Perennial vegetables and ground
cover plants
Forest gardens
Growing perennial vegetables under existing trees
Growing aquatic perennial vegetables
Native and non
native plants Maintenance of perennial vegetables
Feeding
Soil pH
Disease management
Pest management
Harvesting and yields
Propagation
Maintenance Part 2
Perennial vegetables A
Z Appendix: Common and Latin names Resources