This brand-new perennial salad garden was in my recent video on The Great South Florida Food Forest Project. Here’s a diagram:
Most of these species can be forced to grow up into North Florida, but they hate it. The best stuff, as usual, is tropical.If you live in South Florida, you’re in luck!
The great benefit of a patch of perennial greens is that you don’t have to slave over it year after year. You plant these once… then eat nutritious for years afterwards.
On my own property, I’ve mixed together plants with leaves that can be eaten raw (like Florida cranberry) and plants with leaves that are toxic until cooked (like chaya). However, not everyone is as plant-savvy as I am. In the case of the above installation, it made sense to me to simply group together plants that were all non-toxic raw. Anyone can go out there and pick without worry.
In a few short months, the tiny plants should be reaching for the sky and providing an abundance of delicious salads.
10 responses to “A Perennial Salad Garden”
I am not familiar with gynura procumbens. Looked it up on the interwebs and got an idea of its nutritive value. Do you use any part other than the leaves? Raw or cooked, and what kind of flavor does it have? Looked up Monk's Cap- can't find an edible with this name, can you fill me in a bit for this plant? Awesome job. Love hibiscus and katuk.
Gynura is a really good edible. I mostly eat it raw right now – I don't have enough at my place to make a good mess of greens with it.
The "Monk's Cap" is another hibiscus that has sweet edible flowers. It's mostly just a pretty addition to salads.
What is monks cap? purple flower plant?
I should have called it “Turk’s Cap”. Red flowers usually, but they also have a rare pink variant.
http://flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Sleeping%20Hibiscus.html
Do you have sources for these plants? Were they grown from seed or purchased locally? I’m in North Miami and would love to do a little perennial green garden. Also thinking about callalo but having a difficult time finding it.
Thanks for your help and for sharing your experiences.
Sometimes callaloo is a leaf amaranth, sometimes it’s the cooked leaves of the malanga plant. You’ll have to hunt your local gardening groups for the other plants.
Doesn’t anyone grow vegetables? Tomatoes green bean etc.?
Yes, lots of them.
Living in S. Florida my meyer lemon struggles after transplanting from pot into the ground. Have been told to clear away any ground covering to keep roots from suffocating. Recently just started sprinkling around its base with coffee grounds as I found my pomegranate tree began producing large amounts of fruit this year (best ever). Back to my lemon tree, it seems to be struggling. Blooms fall off and are sparse. Any help is appreciated.
Send me some pictures if you get a chance and I’ll write a post on it: david@floridafoodforests.com.