Deciding to plant perennial food plants is easy. It offers get of sun-ripened goodness. You can get shade, attract pollinators, deter trespassers, maybe help out some people in your community who can’t afford enough fresh fruit for their kids.
On the prepping side, you have a food source for long term emergencies, potential barter bait, a source of sweetness, and a way to make wine and/or cider.
This is the first part of a three-part article series. The other two can be ready by clicking HERE and HERE.
Picking Perennials is hard
Picking perennials to plant is hard. There are so many choices, and the whole idea is you plant once and harvest for years, so you can’t just try them all out. Moreover, historical weather patterns haven’t been very good predictors lately.
I’m not going to wander down the path of Why; the plants don’t care why. They care about their water, when it freezes, and how many parasites are trying to munch them.
Tree at The Place, protected from deer by fencing
Variety of perennials
The key point is to have as much diversity of perennials species (apple, blackberry) and variety (Fuji, Golden Delicious) as is plausible. Here are some of the reasons why it matters, and the sorts of differences you should consider:
Weather tolerance: If every peach you grow buds early and you get a late frost, No Peaches for You this year. If you have two and one is more tolerant of late frosts, you don’t strike out. Some years will be too dry, some will be too wet. There will be cold snaps and heat waves from time to time. A variety of tolerances in your perennials gives you something to pick every year.
Pest tolerance: If the Irish hadn’t been so dependent one one variety of potato that was particularly susceptible to one species of blight, we Americans wouldn’t have nearly as much of an Irish heritage to celebrate on St. Patrick’s day … and the Great Potato Famine would not have been a thing. Besides the benefit of not losing as much if your plantings get hit with a disease, you’re actually less likely to get hit at all if your planting is diverse. It’s harder for a disease to spread when it has few good targets.
Timing of harvest: When eating fresh perennials, it’s nice to have something ripe all summer long. When preserving, it’s nice to spread out the work. When eating, it’s nice to have different flavors. Having different species flowering at different times supports a better pollinator population and reduces the impacts from bad weather spells, too.
Climate
When you go to buy perennials, you’ll be invited to look at a map to figure out your climate zone, and plant choices are graded as to what zones they can survive in. If the plan is to be in good shape in the face of odd weather and extreme events, your success rate will be higher if you don’t choose plants that barely make it in your zone. Over the years, having some extreme weather events, atypical for your zone, is a dead certainty.
Pollination needs
Humans aren’t the only species with an incest taboo. Many plants can’t have their seeds pollinated by their own pollen. They need another plant, often of a different variety entirely, to be fertile. If you choose varieties that need outside pollinators, plant several mutually compatible species or one death stops your whole crop. I seek out self-pollinating varieties whenever possible. If your fruit and nut trees aren’t marked for this trait, look elsewhere. Good suppliers let you know.