What are your favorite plants suitable for permaculture?

I will share a few of my favorite species

Indian Potato (Apios americana)

This vining plant is a perennial. A relative of peas, its vines can reach ten feet long. The flowers it produces are similar in appearance to those of wisteria.

In early spring, tubers two to three inches deep are planted and mulch to stop competition from weeds and grass. Provide the young shoots with something to climb on. After one year of growth, several one-inch-thick tubers can be harvested from each plant. The tubers form in a long rhizome, each one attached to the next. When harvested, the smaller tubers are often saved to start the next year’s crop. Larger ones can be replanted or cooked and eaten. It will grow in sun to partial shade and needs moist conditions, preferring sandy or gravelly loams with some humus added.Temperature-wise, it can tolerate up to subtropical heat levels during the summer months. In the winter, tubers buried in the ground under mulch will survive even in snowy areas

The tubers can be used in soups and stews or fried like potatoes, the cooked seeds can also be eaten.

Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus)

Helianthus tuberosus is a perennial growing to 7ft . It is in flower in October, and the seeds ripen in November. The species is hermaphrodite and is pollinated by Bees, flies. It spreads vegetatively via rhizomes and can create sizable populations.

A very easily grown plant, the tubers grow in just about any soil. Plant into well-prepared soil, planting at a depth of 4-6in with tubers spaced 12in apart. When stems are around 12in tall, draw soil around them to a depth of 6in to help stabilise plants as they grow. The first autumn frost kills the stems and leaves, but the tubers can withstand freezing for months. Yields range from 1 - 2 kg per square metre.

Jerusalem artichoke gratin - the tubers are sliced thin and gently cooked in a truffled cream sauce, before being layered and topped with cheese. Love it

Chinese artichoke (Stachys affinis)

is a perennial root vegetable found in the mint family. They have foliage that looks much akin to the leaves of spearmint on low growing plants hardy to zone 5. The sprawling 70cm high plants have grey-green leaves and mauve flowers in spikes. They grow vigorously from spring right through to autumn when the white tubers grow at the end of the roots.

Plant tubers in spring a few centimetres below the soil surface. They thrive in any reasonable, well-drained soil. Don’t over-fertilise or you’ll get masses of leaves and very few tubers. Water well in dry weather. In ideal conditions plants can be weedy and new plants will grow from any small tubers left in the ground. Chinese artichoke plants take about 5-7 months to develop tubers. They are ready to harvest anytime during the fall and winter when the plant is dormant. The top growth may be killed back by frost, but the tubers themselves are quite hardy and can be left underground for later harvest. Chinese artichoke growing is extremely simple and, because the plant is a perennial, will provide with years of delicious tubers.

They can be eaten fresh out of hand like a carrot, tossed into salads, or cooked in soups, stir fried, sautéed or steamed.

Yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus)

Cyperus esculentus is a perennial growing to 3ft at a fast rate.Nutsedges reproduce primarily by tubers. In temperate regions, new growth begins after the spring frost date. A rhizome emerges from the tuber, grows toward the soil surface, and forms a basal bulb from which the shoot and fibrous roots emerge. After several weeks' shoot growth, new rhizomes grow laterally from basal bulbs, giving rise to new basal bulbs and shoots (daughter plants). The process continues for 2–4 months, during which a single overwintered tuber can give rise to a patch several feet across. Nutsedges generally bloom and begin to form new tubers about 7–8 weeks after initial shoot emergence.

Prefers a moist sandy loam. Plants are hardy to about -15°c. We harvest the tubers in the autumn and store them in moist sand, replanting them in the spring.

The tubers are edible raw or cooked. In Egypt, are known by the name Hab el-Aziz and after softening it by soaking in water, it is sold on hand carts as a street food. An edible oil is obtained from the tuber. It is considered to be a superior oil that compares favourably with olive oil

Brussel sprouts.

Cut off the stalk, eat the brussel sprouts, re-plant the bare stalk ... it starts growing again.

Black salsify (Scorzonera hispanica)

Black salsify is a heavy yielding perennial herb up to 3-4 ft tall. The black salsify is native to Southern Europe and the Near East, cultivated in parts of India. In (second) summer a leafy flowering stalk emerges bearing yellow dandelion-like flowers.

We plant the seeds for black salsify growing at a depth of ½ inch in rows 10 to 15 inches apart. Black salsify is a perennial but is usually grown as an annual and is cultivated just like parsnips or carrots. Seeds of Black salsify are sown mostly in April. The harvest begins in October. This extends right into the April of the following year. When harvesting, please ensure that the black salsifies do not break. Otherwise, they will not last as long, and the roots will dry out more easily. A Spading Fork is perfect for digging them out. Wear gloves when harvesting. The sap from any damaged roots is hard to remove, and leaves unpleasant and persistent stains.
Black salsifies sprout rapidly. Therefore it is recommended to prepare these root vegetables as fresh as possible. However, the vegetables can be stored for several days in the refrigerator.

Black salsify is often eaten together with other vegetables, such as peas and carrots. But it is also popular served like asparagus in a white sauce, such as bechamel sauce or mustard sauce. Boiled salsify roots may also be coated with batter and deep fried. Leaves obtained from the plant during growth are used as salad.

If you have your favorite plant suitable for permaculture gardens, do not hesitate and share them. It would be great to make a list of our favorite permaculture plants. Preferably with a brief description and possibly a picture of each plant.

Billyn said:

I will share a few of my favorite species

Indian Potato (Apios americana)

This vining plant is a perennial. A relative of peas, its vines can reach ten feet long. The flowers it produces are similar in appearance to those of wisteria.

In early spring, tubers two to three inches deep are planted and mulch to stop competition from weeds and grass. Provide the young shoots with something to climb on. After one year of growth, several one-inch-thick tubers can be harvested from each plant. The tubers form in a long rhizome, each one attached to the next. When harvested, the smaller tubers are often saved to start the next year’s crop. Larger ones can be replanted or cooked and eaten. It will grow in sun to partial shade and needs moist conditions, preferring sandy or gravelly loams with some humus added.Temperature-wise, it can tolerate up to subtropical heat levels during the summer months. In the winter, tubers buried in the ground under mulch will survive even in snowy areas

The tubers can be used in soups and stews or fried like potatoes, the cooked seeds can also be eaten.

Click to expand...

Mcintosh apples
Pears
I'm just south of this guy

https://youtu.be/ckaYjKhRV1Y

Japanese Silverberry (Elaeagnus umbellata)

Japanese Silverberry is a medium to large, multistemmed shrub, often reaching heights of 20 feet. Sometimes there are a few thorns on the twigs. Resistant to -30 ° C (If the aboveground part dies due to frost, shrub usually survives due to vital shoots from the base of the trunk), the Japanese silverberry quickly reaches 4 meters high and 3 meters in diameter. It likes well-drained or even dry soils and tolerates pruning.

Japanese silverberry, it has specialized “nitrogen-fixing” root nodules that allow the plant to thrive in poor soil - it can even enrich soils by nitrogen and benefit nearby plants, and when grown in orchards, it can increase yields of adjacent fruit trees up to 10%. For example, it is possible to plant them from the south side with Chinese chestnut trees, apple trees, etc.

During the Spring it offers clusters of creamy coloured flowers that are of a sweet scent. The flowers are followed by unusual orange-red fruits. The berries have a sweet flavour, they can be eaten ripe or they can be cooked and used in jams. They are high in vitamins A, C, and E, and the anti-oxidant carotinoid lycopene.

Sunshineinabag said:

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Very nice

I almost forgot about the Black Goji (Lycium ruthenicum)

Black goji, belonging to the Solanaceae family, has traditionally been a high value medicinal plant. Black goji is a long-lived perennial shrub widely distributed in Central Asia, southern part of Russia, throughout Northwest China, Northern India and Pakistan. Black goji contains the highest concentration of oligomeric proanthocyanidins, group of powerful antioxidant (compounds mostly found in blueberries and grape seed) known to fight damages caused by free radicals.

Black Goji Berry likes full to half-day sun and well-drained soil. Plants thrive in zones 5-10. It grows as a shrub reaching 4-6 feet in height. The flowering time is June to August , fruits mature from August to October.

We can eating the Black Goji Berry directly or putting it in a bottle of wine and consume after 7 days. It is popular to make black goji tea - tea colored with 5 - 10 berries. Black Goji Berries are highly loaded with anthocyanin and using hot water above 60ºC to brew it would destroy it's nutrients and benefits due to the fragile of anthocyanin. Though ripe fruits are edible, some caution should be applied when eating leaves and unripe fruits.

...So these are my favorite plants. They usually do not require much care, (sometimes they can even be weedy) and they are usually very profitable in my conditions - zone 5.

I'm learning alot from u please proceed

Garden orache (Atriplex hortensis)

Orache also known as Garden Orache, Mountain Spinach, French Spinach and Sea Purslane. Massive, more than 2 m tall plants, often red-violet in color. There are deep red or light green varieties, thanks to the color you can easily distinguish the orache from other plants and weeds. Orache is grown and used similarly to spinach. Unlike spinach, it grows faster, but blooms much later, so it can be harvested much longer. This is a major advantage.

From a single spring sowing we can harvest leaves throughout the spring and much of the summer. That is, at a time when spinach has long bloomed. We collect young leaves and sprouts for salads, add to spinach, or wok vegetable mixes. If you let it bloom and bear fruit, they will grow again next year from seeds that survive the winter in the soil.

Chinese mallow (Malva verticillata var. crispa)

Chinese mallow grows up to 2 m tall, originating in East Asia. Young leaves are harvested from spring to mid-summer. Chinese mallow is suitable for moderately moist and permeable soils. The leaves are gradually plucked in the period from May to December. The leaves gradually grow on the lateral shoots. The plant is slightly frost-resistant, so the first ground frosts do not burn it and you can use it for a longer time, similar to leeks and Brussels sprouts.
The leaves are very suitable for vegetable soups and salads. Curly mallow blooms with tiny white flowers. Mallow seeds can also survive the winter and germinate in the spring. It is therefore advisable to grow it in a separate flower bed.

Egyptian Walking Onion (Allium x proliferum)

Rare interspecific hybrid created by crossing Allium cepa X onion Allium fistulosum.

Egyptian Walking Onion also known as Tree Onions or Winter Onions. Egyptian Walking Onion is a perennial. In the first year, one plant will grow from each pacibule, which will grow in the following years. Once the flowers have flowered, tiny onion bulbs will form in a tight cluster, slowly growing in size. Then the stem bends and the onion bulbs take root and a new bunch grows here next season. In this way, the plant "walks" around the garden, every year, one step.

Plant the Onion bulbs about five cm deep on a well-weeded bed. The ideal planting time is from September to the end of the year.

The stem is harvested and used similarly to chives. While bulbs can be stored all winter after drying, green leaves can be harvested directly from the garden in winter. Onion bulbs that form in a tight cluster, are edible at all stages, taste like classic onions, only they are smaller, you can also use them for further planting.

Edible Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum coronarium)

Or also called Garland chrysanthemum, it is an undemanding and very hardy plant. It is very popular in Asian cuisine. The plant is rich in vitamins, minerals and essential oils.

Young leaves and shoots are added to salads, as well as to heat-treated dishes. Tea is brewed from the flowers or roots of the plant, which helps with headaches, colds or diabetes.

The first harvest occurs after about 5 weeks, when the plants grow to a height of 5 - 10 cm. Larger plants are harvested after 2 months. The plants are cut at a height of 5 cm, then quickly regenerate and plant new shoots repeatedly.

Sowing from spring to late summer. It is grown outdoors as an annual.

Caucasian Spinach (Hablitzia tamnoides)

is the only surviving species of the genus Hablitzia (the so-called monotypic genus). It is related to beets, chard, orache and gooseberry, as they belong to the same family of Amaranthaceae. The original area of ​​occurrence of this plant is the Caucasus. It has taken root in Scandinavia and is grown there as a crop. It is a perennial growing in spruce and beech forests among boulders, in ravines and along rivers at an altitude of 900 - 2100 m. It prefers shady habitats.

Seeds need to stratify in moist soil for at least 2-3 weeks for germination, or preferably outside in a pot over the winter. The seeds are sown about 1 mm deep in a pot into a mature humus substrate and placed in the refrigerator or outside in early winter. In the spring, the seeds begin to germinate, the difference in germination between individual seeds can be 3-4 weeks.

In the spring, we plant pre-grown seedlings outside in a suitable place in the garden, somewhere in partial shade. It is better to avoid sunny habitats. Plants do not grow as well in full sun and have much smaller leaves than plants in partial shade to shade. In the first year, growth is slow and the plants may appear weak. From the second year onwards, growth is more lush. Every spring, dozens of new shoots sprout from one plant, which can be harvested or crawled on the ground or stretched on a support. It grows to a height of 2 - 3 m.

The most delicious part of the plant are the young reddish shoots, which begin to sprout from the ground sometime in the winter and especially during March to April they can be harvested as a salad substitute. They are fragile, and very delicious. Older leaves can be cooked as spinach, or for example in soups, risotto, etc.

Now for a while on a separate note., they are not plants, but their cultivation is very simple and the yields are large - various types of mushrooms that we can grow on wood, such as oyster mushrooms and shiitake, or on straw in the case of King Stropharia. Growing them is fun, mushrooms are very richly rewarded if you provide them with a suitable substrate.

So, growing mushrooms on wooden logs...

We use logs of deciduous trees for cultivation. The logs must be fresh, no later than 3-4 weeks after the felling of the tree, as there is a risk that other types of fungus begin to populate the logs. Which would mean that all subsequent work would prove useless. It is therefore advisable, in the case of older logs, to cut a thin slice of the exposed cutting surface of the log with a chainsaw just before inoculating the log.

Suitable woody plants from which we will use logs for cultivation mushrooms are beech, aspen, birch, poplar, willow, apple tree, but can also be used elm, maple, walnut. Logs are best if harvested during the fall or winter because the sap is contracting to the roots. The most suitable log size is about 4 feet and a diameter of 10 inches. The bigger it is, the longer it will take to be colonized, but the bigger the mushroom production will be. And conversely. Likewise, hardwood bears fruit for longer, about 5-7 years, and softwood for about three years. The growth time of hardwood can be up to a year, softwood grows 4 - 6 months.

When we have selected a suitable log, we drill holes along the entire surface of the log into a clip of about 6 x 6 inches. Holes deep enough for Spawn Plugs to be hammered into the wood, so that the diameter of the plug = the diameter of the drill used. There must still be room for tapping slightly below the surface, for subsequent isolation with a drop of wax. Instead of Spawn Plugs, you can also fill the holes with Mushroom Grain Spawn with a volume of, say, about two little fingers in each hole, in which case we insulate first with sawdust created by drilling the hole and then dripping with harmless wax for perfect insulation.

For at least 4 months, it is advisable to have the logs stored in a heat where the maximum does not exceed 29 ° C and sufficient humidity, in most cases it is necessary to moisten the logs regularly by sprinkling with water. During this time, the mushroom colonizes the log enough to prevent possible weed fungal species.
We inoculate the logs, for example, in the spring, and leave them moist until the autumn, and then bury one third of them in the ground.

If we inoculate the entire surface of the stump in a 6 x 6 inch clip and cover the cutting surface with food polyethylene foil, we can ensure a harvest for many years.

However, it may be more appropriate to have the log "pre-grown" with mushrooms at home: let the log be colonized with mushroom and store it in a food polyethylene bag at room temperature over the winter and the cold part of the spring. We place a circuit breaker in the bag and add water to keep it moist. The bag should be ventilated once every two weeks. Following the arrival of spring, we take the log out of the bag and bury it in the ground one-third horizontally or upright in a damp place in a very shady place in the garden. ((It must not be waterlogged in any case, the mushroom would die)) In this way we can achieve the harvest for the first season, even with hardwood.

Once the log is completely overgrown, the mushroom is ready to bear fruit. However, a fertility trigger is needed, which means that low average autumn temperatures are below 10 ° C. In the case of indoor cultivation, we can transfer the log to a room with such a low temperature. Yields of oyster mushrooms, for example, reach 10-30% by weight of the substrate.

When everything is done, and you have, for example, 3-5 logs of hardwood (beech is the most suitable) and 2-3 logs of softwood, you have a supply of mushrooms for at least 5 years.