Perennial Vegetables Clockwise from Top Left ~ Sunchokes, Linden Buds, Milkweed and Dock.

Perennial vegetables, or crops that are planted once and harvested year after year, are the perfect way to turn a single spring’s worth of work into a lifetime’s worth of vegetables for your table.  Annual vegetables, or crops that are planted again each year in the spring, tend to get all the attention…but why plant for a single harvest when you can plant for a lifetime?

Most gardeners follow the rhythm of the seasons, planting their veggies in the spring, weeding all summer, and harvesting in the fall, only to begin the cycle again the next year. 

Perennial vegetables are different!  Instead of planting them fresh each year, these plants are a long-term investment that pays off year after year.

Permaculture, or permanent agriculture, has been gaining a steady following for the past decade or so.  While I love pouring over seed catalogs each winter, there’s something a little disheartening to me about starting a garden from scratch each year.  

When we had kids, a desire to create something more long-lasting became even more important.  Both as a way to create something to share with them year after year, and as a matter of practicality. 

Little ones take time and energy, and there’s only so much you can tend in a year.  By slowly adding to our plantings each year, we’re able to harvest huge crops without an overwhelming task list each spring.

What is a Perennial Vegetable?

Plants generally come in three types: Annual, Biennial, and Perennial. 

• Annuals live for a single growing season to produce and then die back at the end of the season.
• Biennials, such as carrots, store energy in taproots in the first year and then send up a seed head in the second year.  Most gardeners just grow those as annuals anyway, since the harvestable part develops in the first year.
• Perennials are long-lived plants that set down roots for decades, if not centuries.

Most of the vegetables you find in the grocery store come from annual plants, along with a few biennials.  They’re planted fresh from seeds each spring, and the plants die back completely after one growing season.  Perennial vegetables, on the other hand, are planted once, and the plant comes back year after year.

The most common example that you can find in the grocery store is Asparagus.  Not only is asparagus a perennial, it actually can’t be harvested for at least 3 years after planting as the plants need time to establish roots for long-term harvests.

Pros and Cons of Perennial Vegetables

The main benefit of perennial vegetables is long-term harvests.  Plant them once, and you can harvest them year after year.  This allows you to add new areas to cultivation each year when you plant and gives me a sense of lasting accomplishment.

There are some downsides, however.  Perennials require long-term maintenance plans, and you can’t just till up a whole field each year to start fresh and wipe the slate clean when weeds move in, or pests get out of hand.  They aren’t exactly “plant it and forget it,” and you’ll still need to tend them each year if you expect them to thrive.

That said, perennial vegetables generally require much less maintenance than annual vegetable gardens.  A good bed of mulch keeps the weeds down, and top-dressing with compost is often enough to maintain soil fertility.  Since you’re not disturbing the soils each year, you’re not creating fresh openings for weed seeds, and the soil has a chance to establish a long-term equilibrium.

List of Perennial Vegetables

Since perennial vegetables are grown differently than most other crops in our modern industrial agriculture, many of them have been lost to history.  You’ll only find a few varieties in the grocery store these days.  Many more still live on surrounding monastery gardens, in the side yards of old babushkas and kitchen gardens that have long since outlived the farmhouses they surrounded. 

Just because you can’t buy them in the grocery store doesn’t mean they’re not delicious.  Some of the best food nature has to offer just doesn’t fit well into our modern, prepackaged shelf-stable world.  

I’m focusing on those that can be grown in cold temperate climates like ours here in Vermont (zone 4), but if you live in a warmer climate there are even more options.

Arrowhead (Sagittaria sp.)

A new water vegetable we’re hoping to trial in the pond, Arrowhead produces tasty edible tubers that are prized by foragers.  I’ve been looking everywhere for them locally, hoping to forage some, but then I recently learned you can easily cultivate them as a perennial vegetable in small bodies of water.  Nothing like putting the pond to good use producing food (alongside our healthy crop of hard-working bug-catching frogs…)

The tubers are said to have a nutty, earthy flavor and cook like potatoes.

Arrowhead is hardy to zone 3.

Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis)

One of our most loved vegetables, asparagus is really rewarding to grow at home.  By the time asparagus gets to the grocery store it’s often dried out considerably and gotten a bit woody. 

Homegrown asparagus is infinitely superior, in my opinion, but it’s an investment.  You won’t be able to harvest for the first 2-3 years as the plants get established.

Generally, asparagus is grown from crowns or first-year bare-root plants.  That cuts down on the time to harvest, but they can be expensive to buy.  You can also grow asparagus from seed, and a packet of 50 to 100 seeds usually costs about as much as one or two bare-root crowns.  Wild Asparagus is actually just cultivated asparagus that’s escaped, and the birds have spread the seeds, so it can be grown from seed even without care in the wild.

A seldom mentioned benefit of growing your own asparagus is the flowers.  The plants are covered with tiny bell-shaped flowers in the summertime, and they’re a real haven for the bees.  I love watching the bees work through the asparagus, their pollen baskets filled to the brim. 

Asparagus is hardy to zone 3.

A bumblebee pollinating asparagus flowers on our Vermont homestead.

Caucasian Mountain Spinach (Hablitzia tamnoides)

When I first saw these in the Fedco catalog, I thought I’d had this perennial green in a former garden, then I realized I was confusing it with the New Zealand Spinach, which I particularly dislike.  While new Zealand spinach is only a perennial in the deep south and far west (annual everywhere else), caucasian mountain spinach is much more cold hardy. 

Hooray for new perennial vegetables! We’ll be cold-stratifying these seeds this winter and trying to germinate this new perennial vegetable in the spring.  

According to Fedco Seeds:

“Too new to have an agreed-upon common name, this plant has everything else. Originating in the Caucasus Mountains, it is a very hardy perennial, growing 6–9′ long for 2–3 months in the very early spring when few other edible greens have surfaced. It’s also tasty: both early shoots and subsequent leaves make a delicious and tender spinach-like vegetable without any bitterness. Moreover, it’s beautiful, and was introduced into Sweden around 1870 as an attractive vine to screen houses with its heart-shaped leaves. And, finally, though it is best grown in sun to maximize its productivity, it will also do well in its native habitat, the understory of temperate forests. Best germinated with stratification, and slow-growing in the first year.”

Caucasian Mountain Spinach is hardy to zone 3.

Chickory (Cichorium intybus)

You don’t hear about the vegetable chickory much these days, but it’s making a comeback.  Chickory roots are still ground and used to flavor coffee, especially from New Orleans.  The greens of all varieties of chickory are also edible, and they also have edible flowers.

Belgian endive, escarole, and radicchio are all types of chickory, though they may be annual or perennial, depending on the cultivar.

Try this recipe for sauteed chickory greens, and if you’re looking for more ideas, food, and wine has a list of recipes for using chickory.  

Chickory is hardy to zone 3.

Edible flowers of a wild chickory plant growing on a roadside.

Chinese Artichoke (Stachys affinis)

We’re going to try growing Chinese Artichokes this coming spring, and I just learned about them from Eric Toensmeier’s book on Perennial Vegetables.  It’s a mint relative that forms dense colonies of low-growing dense foliage.  Beneath the soil, they form tiny tubers that are 1-2 inches across and have a mild, sweet crunchy flavor.

They’re supposed to grow in partial shade, and we have plenty of that here on our woodland homestead.

The book notes they’re hardy to at least zone 5, potentially colder, so we’ll be trialing them next year.

Chinese Artichoke

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale)

I know, you’re skeptical now.  Aren’t dandelions a weed?  That’s all in the eye of the beholder! 

Dandelions are edible and medicinal from root to flower, and if you can get past a few decades of brainwashing sponsored by the lawn care industry you’d come to see that dandelions are a darn fine vegetable.  They’re also a perennial, meaning once they’re in place they’ll come back in the same spot year after year.  Why not just embrace them?

Dandelion roots can be cooked like and eaten like carrots, or roasted and made into dandelion coffee or homemade herbal bitters.  The greens fetch a high price at organic markets, and the flowers add lovely honey-like floral flavor to all manner of things. 

Try making dandelion ice cream or old-fashioned dandelion wine.  Even the unopened flower buds are edible, and they make a darn fine pickled dandelion caper.  

Need more inspiration?  Here are more than 30 ways to use dandelions for food and medicine.  If you’re going to pull dandelions, do it to harvest them, and you’ll feel a lot better about the whole situation.

Dandelions are hardy to zone 2.

Daylillies (Hemerocallis fulva)

Another edible flower that’s not often considered for the table, daylilies are actually more than one perennial vegetable.  Every part of the plant is edible from the tubers to the shoots to the flowers. 

The flower buds are often cooked as fritters, but my favorite way to eat them is fresh off the plant once they’ve opened completely.  They’re sweet just like snap peas, but with a lovely floral flavor that’s out of this world.

For tips on eating the other parts of daylilies, this article on Edible Daylilies by Hank Shaw covers just about everything you’d ever want to know.

Daylilies are hardy from zones 4 to 9.

Daylilies growing in our Vermont garden.

Dock (Rumex Sp.)

Dock is a very generic name for a group of perennial plants in the Rumex species.  They’re more commonly called by their specific names, Yellow Dock or Curly Dock (Rumex crispus). Other common edible rumex species include:

• Rumex obtusifolius – Bitter Dock or Broad Leaf Dock, as the name suggests, this type is generally quite bitter and has large broad leaves.
• Rumex patientia – Patience dock or Monk’s Rhubarb, this species is mild and is eaten as a vegetable in southern and eastern Europe.
• Rumex triangulivalvis – White dock, willow dock or narrow-leaved dock is identified by it’s long, flat, narrow leaves that vaguely resemble willow leaves in shape (only much larger).
• Rumex longifolius – Yard dock, dooryard dock or northern dock, this species looks very similar to curly dock, but the flavor is considerably more bitter.

All of these dock species are edible and medicinal.  The whole plant is useful, with the greens cooked as pot herbs, the roots used in medicinal preparations and the seeds of dock plants can be ground into a flour that’s a bit similar to buckwheat.

Dock can be really invasive, and it’s actually listed as an invasive species in many areas.  Odds are you already have some growing in your yard, so there’s no need to go out of your way to plant it.  We keep a few plants growing right outside the back door since they tolerate poor, compacted soil.  In the spring months, I’ll harvest the leaves, and then the seeds later in the fall.  For the roots, I just use any of the weedy ones that sprout up elsewhere.

A better known Rumex species is French Sorrel, which tastes very different but has a similar growth habit.  That one’s also a perennial vegetable listed a bit further down.

Dock species are hardy to zone 3.

Fiddleheads (Matteuccia struthiopteris)

Most often thought of as a wild foraged edible, there’s no reason you can’t grow your own.  When I set up my first annual garden in Vermont, I spent the better part of the early spring digging out these black fuzzy mounds from the soil.  I tossed all the plant masses into a pile at the edge of the yard and went to work planting lettuce like any “normal” gardener.

A few weeks later, the pile sprouted into a huge mass of fiddleheads, along with half my yard.  In the right conditions, fiddlehead ferns grow like weeds, and it actually took a good bit of work to keep them in check so I could grow anything else.

Like ramps, they’re only edible for a short period in the early spring before they’ve fully unfurled.  That’s one of the things that makes them so special, they’re around when vegetable pickings are slim.  

Setup a small fiddlehead patch in a shady, wet part of the yard, and you’ll be set on early spring greens for life.  They taste quite a bit like asparagus, but they must be fully cooked before eating.  That way you can forage fiddleheads right in your own garden.

We can pickled fiddleheads to extend their season, but you can also blanch and freeze fiddleheads easily.

Garlic (Allium sativum)

While garlic is generally grown as an annual, it’s actually a perennial.  Normally, garlic is planted in the fall, overwintered in the ground, and harvested the following summer.  Unharvested bulbs will die back in the late summer, only to resprout again in the fall (like freshly planted garlic). 

The main problem with growing garlic as a perennial vegetable is that it forms dense clumps that need to be periodically divided and thinned.  That’s convenient because you’ll always have a source of garlic cloves for planting from your thinned perennial beds.

We grow big patches of perennial garlic in our orchard, which helps keep pests off the trees.  We’ll harvest garlic scapes in the spring as a bonus vegetable, eaten fresh, made into pesto, or canned as pickled garlic scapes.  Or, often enough, we’ll let the scapes form bulbils and plant those as garlic “seed.”  

Here’s everything you need to know about growing garlic as a perennial.  Plus, a guide to choosing garlic varieties.

Garlic is hardy to zone 2.

A cluster of garlic growing as a perennial vegetable.

Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus)

This tasty perennial vegetable is related to the south American grain quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), as well as the common edible garden weed lambs quarter (Chenopodium album).  While both of those are annual plants that must be replanted each year, good king henry is a perennial.  It’s an old-time European vegetable that can still be found growing in medieval gardens surrounding monasteries. 

It’ll grow in full shade or partial sun, much like most salad greens.  For the best growth, plant good king henry in rich soil amended with plenty of compost.

The leaves, shoots and flower buds are all edible.

Good king henry is hardy to zone 3.

Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus)

Groundnut (Apios Americana)

It’s not quite a nut, but this tiny nitrogen-fixing tuber is a hardy perennial vegetable that’s native to North America.  The tubers grow like a string of pearls underground, and the plants vine up roughly 6 feet tall.  The groundnuts themselves are high in protein, and they have a nutty, somewhat potato-like flavor.

Groundnuts can be foraged in the wild, and can be found in sandy soil alongside streams and other water bodies.  They’re most commonly found growing up shrubs for support.  The easiest way to grow them is to mimic this environment, ensuring moist sandy soil and plenty of space for the plants to climb.

Tubers are harvested in the fall, and left in the ground will continue growing in the spring.

Groundnut is hardy to zone 3.

Groundnut tubers about to be planted. They came packed in sawdust, and quite a bit still clings to the outside.

Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana)

Though it’s not commonly used today, old-school recipes often include horseradish to add a zip to foods.  You’ll still find it on a good deli roast beef sandwich, and really I think it should get more play in our modern kitchens.

The roots are exceedingly easy to grow, and I’ve had great success just buying a hunk of supermarket horseradish and storing it in the back of the fridge until it sprouts.  Later I found out that wasn’t necessary, and just popped a few hunks of the horseradish root in a pot.  They sprout within a few days.

Even if you never harvest horseradish roots, I think they’re still worth growing, as a pest preventative and pollinator attractor.  

Once they’re in the field, horseradish will help keep bad bugs at bay and defend the rest of your garden.  They also send up flower stalks that act as a nectary for beneficial insects. 

Horseradish is hardy to Zone 2.

Horseradish Plant in Flower

Jerusalem Artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus)

Though they’re not from Jerusalem, and they’re not artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes are a tasty perennial tuber.  Also known as sunchokes, they’re a member of the sunflower family that’s native to the United States. 

They generally spread through underground tubers, that more or less resemble a warty potato.  The plant itself grows quite tall, sometimes 8-10 feet and eventually puts out sunflower-like flowers. 

Once established, sunchokes spread vigorously and they can be difficult to kill.  Just how I like my food plants, pest-free and resilient.  Still, it’s good to keep them away from other crops because they’ll take over and choke out anything nearby. 

They’re a good crop to try growing in large containers (ie. trashcans or totes).  We keep a patch in our back forty and we can harvest them as we please with no tending.

When you dig them up, they’re mildly sweet and starchy, and you can cook them just about any way you can a potato.  If you’re interested, here’s more on growing sunchokes. 

Sunchokes are hardy to zone 2.

Planting sunchokes in a trashcan to keep them contained.

Linden (Tilia sp.)

I know, you usually think of vegetables as something small and low growing…but when you’re thinking perennial vegetables you’ve got to broaden your horizons.  Linden is a tree, and a huge one at that.  But it also has some of the tastiest leaves and leaf buds you can find on any plant. 

The leaves themselves are sweet and juicy, a bit like sugar snap peas.  They grow huge, about the size of your head, and you only need a few to make a tasty sweet tree salad.

Every part of the tree is edible, and survivalists even cook up the sweet inner bark (cambium).  That said, it’s much more sustainable to just harvest the tasty leaves and let this salad tree grow big.

Linden trees are hardy to zone 3.

My daughter munching some tasty linden leaf buds in the early spring. They’re sweet like peas, and the little ones can’t get enough of them.