If you've enjoyed this video about the perennial veg we are growing, you may enjoy this playlist about more of them. ru-vid.com/group/PLa6906pLM92n8qDvkCjIYWTwA_qvGKwB4
when my plants are grown a little bit, I let my chickens on the garden. They even keep the huge population of cabbage whites away from the different cabbages. There are so many insects that they generally leave the plants themselves alone. I just have to cover endives, otherwise I can't eat any of that myself.
Liz, I absolutely love your channel. I feel confident that I could grow anything that you have explained and taught how to do, and for some reason I trust when you say that something tastes amazing😂 I applaud your garden and how you do everything whilst sick I feel like it is a kind of therapy for me also and not work, thanks for inspiring me and making me feel like I can really be self sufficient with growing food
That’s awesome that you have so many perennial vegetables there. I am going to have to do more research on what perennial vegetables will grow where I am. I really enjoyed this video. Thank you
You are so patient and good natured with your pesky greedy chomping unwanted visitors. Do you send for the perennials or go to special garden centres.. you are so inspiring, much needed as I’ve also suffered with the dread bouts of depression as I know you have, so I appreciate the way you ( get me going) I guess hard work helps on OFF days. ... Thanks Liz.
Thank you so much for all of your excellent advice on vegetables l've never even heard of. I will have to stick to getting the common veggies right first though.
Ive grown yacon for 2 years. Last year in a huge black pot and they did better with more heat. I pull the plant and cut off the top and put them in a bucket at around 50F. they got sweeter as they sat and i peel them and dice them raw in salads. I pulled the tubers off last week and will put the top in sand in the bucket.
Hello Liz, enjoyed watching and listening to your thoughts and I think its something we all should do. Take care my friend. 🍁Happy Gardening........🍂Terry King 🍁
I'm with you on this Liz, perennial veg has a few niche uses, but unless you have loads of room they really don't compete well with annuals and they make the garden much more difficult to manage. I know you mentioned at the start that they are less work, but that's not really been my experience in many cases, because they need managing all year round, they make it more difficult to weed and shade other plants even when not productive. Our main successes have been perennial kales and asparagus, as well as fruit of course. We do a lot of brassicas without nets, but we do spray with BT, it's not a substitute for vigilance though. My preference is a fine mesh until mid July and then BT for the rest of the year : All the best - Steve
Hi Steve, I don't suppose you have any Chantilly Cream kale do you? I'm on the hunt for some. There are still live caterpillars on the kales and the sacrifice cabbages, so I'm starting to think that I'll need to net all year round for the plants that we want to eat. I've taken 14 cuttings from the Taunton Deane so hopefully some of those will root and give me a nice kale bed for next year.
I'm afraid not Liz, this is what I have ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JFH428usCM8.html. You must have more luck than me with nets, I always find that eventually something gets through and if it's not caterpillars it's cabbage aphid or white fly. Once I take the nets off I find that I'm able to see what going on and manage the plants better and of course harvest from them! This year I'm trying more annual kales that are simillar to the perennials in taste, but are more vigorous: Thousand head and Hungry Gap kale are both doing really well so far and have the advantage of a huge number of florrests in spring. One thing to bear in mind with the Taunton Deane is that it grows very tall and can be quite fragile, so netting it might be a challenge unless you grow a lot of small plants : All the best - Steve
Spot on aboutnthencaabage white caterpillars being the same colour as the leaves, I try and look with my fingers, as wierd as that sounds! I shall look out for some skirret, it's been grabbing my curiosity for a while now. Thanks Liz.
I have calendula between the brassica, and I treat it with garlic tea. The caterpillars don't like the strong smell and I could them see fly around, but they didn't sit down.
Thank you Liz . That was a wonderful video. I’m really interested in the climbing spinach. Those caterpillars have ravaged a lot of my Brussels sprouts too. Lessons learned this year( build Liz’s veg tunnels ) and leave a couple of them for the butterflies 🦋🐛 . X x
Really interesting re your taunton deane. I got cuttings this year for the first time and the taunton deane has done really well (although was in the summer under attack from the cabbage whites, but not as bad as this!). It's so interesting how different pests are in different areas. My biggest trouble was aphids this year. I've got some Daubentons kale too which is doing very well so will be interested to see how they continue next year. We haven't eaten it very often though, the first time we tried it it was rather tough, so maybe we just needed to cook for longer.
The walking stick kale is great. Mine's on it's fourth year, going into it's fifth so it's high and well established. If you pick off the flowers it keeps going. This time of year it produces in abundance, but it is very prone to caterpillar and harlequin bugs. The only thing I've found that works (without using chemical sprays) is to manually pick them off. Being high off the ground they're very productive in the winter, especially as they're out of range of many slugs, which are working their way through my White Russian kale with all this rain.
I suffer from white cabbage butterfly on brassicas here too, netting usually fixes it but it is difficult when you have tall plants. I didn't think we could grow asparagus in Brisbane but saw it growing last weekend in the kitchen garden at our local botanical gardens, so might give it a go.
Oooh Nicola, asparagus would be exciting, it would look fabulous planted in a mixed border among big bold some flowers :-) Fingers crossed that it grows for you.
Hi Liz, very interesting video to watch. I am in the UK (Lincolnshire) and suffer the exact same fate with anything from the brassica family. I have tried netting and they still get in!! This coming season I am ready with my Neem oil, I watched the Robotic Gardener (Terry) do really well with it last season so I ordered some. Also unfortunately for the last 3 seasons my leeks have been decimated with the Allium leaf miner, Neem also stops them in their tracks! Happy gardening and your videos are getting better every time you post a new one.
Thank you Andy, that's really nice of you to say. I aim for each video to be a tiny bit better than the last and hopefully one day I won't look back and cringe like I do now when I see my old videos from almost 3 years ago. Neem oil - have tried it and had varying amounts of success, I'll go and watch some more of Terry's videos to see exactly how he's using it. Good luck with keeping them off next season :-)
You don't need Neem, you need BT (Bacillus thuringiensis). Dirt cheap and totally organic. Spray dilution once every 6 weeks, it gives caterpillars extreme indigestion and kills them. It works 100% of the time in 100% of climates etc. Totally safe and fine for anything other than a caterpillar. You're welcome. ;)
I am very intrigued by the oca! The only perennial veg I have is asparagus but I really don't get many from my small patch. Wonderful video, and it definitely gives me something to think about! Thanks for sharing Liz! Take care!
I was really excited when I first found this one, it's been slow to get started but now seems to be happy in the soil and growing away nicely. I'll keep everyone updated with how it's doing in the new year.
I was just reading about it on the catalog for Peace Seeds in Oregon: Hablitzia tamnoides Caucasus Mountain Vine Spinach 20/5.00 Hardy perennial salad plant, unusual and making long running leads with edible leaves. Thanks to Stephen Barstow and Trixtrax for our initial seed supplies. See Barstow's book Around the World in 80 Plants if you like edibles and biodiverse adventure. Our seed supply was collected from three different cultivars provided by Barstow and Trixtrax and grown in our home organic garden.
I tend to do a mix. Lots of fruit bushes and trees because fruit is expensive to buy. Some annuals but lots of herbs. In my new garden I'm going to do a good mix of flowers as well, especially for bees. I'm knocking on a bit and so I'm going for easy to maintain, as I build the garden, it's not an easy site on a hillside. Like you my cabbage was decimated even under cover. I'm going for kale it seems less of a problem. I was out yesterday covering my frost scarred broad beans. It can be heartbreaking sometimes. Grrr. I lost the visual towards the end.
Oh thanks for letting me know that the visuals went funny - I know the sound was awful in the last little bit because a helicopter kept going over and there's only so many times I could walk up and down the garden trying to say the last piece!
Nice video thanks. Sweet Cicely with rhubarb doesn't seem to work for me. Working up the courage to dig mine up to try the roots. Skirret easily propagates by splitting off some of the roots and replanting them. I found growing them from seed hard only getting 4 plants s the other year I split one and replanted the offshoots into a new bed which is coming on nicely. I had a little nibble of a root at that time and it was sweet (not a sugar sweet as the lore would have you believe) with a hint of carrot. One thing about perennials is that with some it can take a while to get them to a size you can give them a really good try. My Daubentons Kale just sat there for years as a little lump but this year it's suddenly exploded and has taken over half the 20 foot long bed - the Taunton Dene has been swamped by it. There's a couple of other short lived brassicas that might be worth trying. Asturian Tree Cabbage which I grow and has a mild cabbage flavour and produces loads of leaves and Portuguese cabbage, which I haven't grown yet.
I just love your garden! Too bad about the brassicas though. I always kept caterpillars at bay with bacillus thuringiensis. This year I didn't even need that because I have hordes and hordes of birds in the garden, since I started regularly feeding them year-round. They seem to have really cleaned up, and it's the first year where I literally didn't have a single caterpillar on any of my plants.
That's fantastic, but did you see many butterflies flitting around looking for cabbages? I worry about them declining as we all get better at keeping them off our brassicas :-)
@@LizZorab I saw quite a number of them, actually - the white cabbage butterflies, I mean, and those are pests! They're also the only butterfly-caterpillar variety I know of that eat brassicas (monarch butterflies, for example, eat things like milkweed). There must have been loads of caterpillars but apparently the birds just picked them right off before I even saw one. I see plenty of other butterflies in the garden too, like monarch, swallowtail and so on, but their caterpillars don't destroy food plants and so I don't see many of their caterpillars around. Probably for lack of host plants for them in my garden, since I don't have the space for those and wouldn't want the birds to eat those varieties when they see them on my plants (though I do sow plenty of wildflowers or flowering herbs like borage, etc., so the adults can feed on the nectar/pollen). I know I sound mean, but I wouldn't mind the cabbage butterfly population to decline; they really are pests. I do encourage the beneficial pollinators though, like bees, non-damaging varieties of butterflies, etc. :)
I've seen really mixed reviews of skirret, some folks love it, other don't. I'm going to wait for a little longer before I get to find out which camp I'm in!
Have you ever thought of Micro-herbs and smaller vegetables Liz? Things that can be grown in abundance in the polytunnel and always available. I have used micro's in the kitchen over the years and the colour and fresh taste is worth it I think, but then again each to their own. I'm just thinking small area and getting more from it. I've never cooked Skirret although i've used Salsify a lot in many dishes.
You need more trees and shrubs (preferably the kind that grow berries for birds) on that lot to attract more wildlife. Having a caterpillar problem like that could easily be mitigated if the general ecosystem was more balanced--more birds, less insect pests.
Hi, I get what you are saying but I'm not sure I need more trees and shrubs, what I do need is for the hundreds that I have planted is to mature a little more and to provide more nesting and resting places for the birds. When we moved here 4 years ago this was a bare field with just 6 trees in it, no other plants apart from grass that had been heavily grazed, I've planted hundreds of trees and shrubs around the perimeter and across the food forest, but it will take a bit of time for them to mature :-)
So many of these things I've never heard of! I'm wondering if they have different names here or if they just haven't come to America? Thank you so much for sharing!
Megan, I hadn't heard of most of them until fairly recently and yes of course they could have different names (although the Latin names should be the same worldwide). If you want the Latin botanical name for any of them, just drop me a message and I'll get it to you :-)
Hi Liz. I grew Skirret for the first time this year. I got 6 small plants in spring from Incredible Vegetables and an ebay seller. I harvested them this week and they had nice sized crowns (when I bought them the roots looked like any other plant, not tuberous at all). I've replanted the crowns minus the harvested roots plus divided the numerous offsets that they have produced. I am an amateur so I hope that they all survive and I've not done the wrong thing! I've just followed you on Instagram, can send you photos if you are interested? Oh, they're delicious by the way, more potato/chestnut than carrot.
Hi Andrew, nice to meet others growing skirret! Yes please do send a photo or two of your skirret harvest, I'd be really interested to see how much you got or what it looked like 😀
Sorry about your Taunton Deane. All my brassicas get completely destroyed by beasties of some kind. Even the ones I cover get some damage. But my Taunton Deane seems to remain relatively untouched. A few leaves have holes, but most are fine. I wonder why. I leave it entirely to its own devices - no spray, no feed and rarely any water.
Hey Liz, I've read that Asparagus and strawberries make good companion plants in the same, bed. I was just wondering if you had any experience of this? I really like to maximise space where I can, and also LOVE strawberries. :)
Yes, they certainly do make good bedfellows, I have strawberries growing in the asparagus bed. The ferns don't grow so fast that they block the light to the ripening strawberries and the strawbs help to reduce the number of weeds growing around the asparagus.
When plants are decimated, I see it as a sign that the plant is weak. Something in the environment is missing for that particular plant. Because of that, I would not grow perennials that suffers too much insect damage. I suggest trying different locations in the garden to see if it grows well somewhere.
I've heard that theory a lot, but I've had beautiful hugely vigorous plants that have had plenty of caterpillars so I'm not sure that I really believe it. Have you seens any tests that demonstrate that it's true and which types of plant it applies too? : All the best - Steve
@@SteveRichards no true scientific tests, but personal experience. I grow Rutabaga. They usually have a few holes in the leaves but not serious. One year I had delayed thinning them. When I decided to do so, there were a few holes in the leaves, but not serious. When you thin tightly growing seedlings, the remaining ones are weak for a bit. I thinned them and the next morning the entire bed was decimated by caterpillars! I've had two current bushes placed not far apart. One growing well and one struggling. The struggling one was repeatedly attacked by caterpillars. I worked a landscape maintenance job. One site had many plantings of roses. I wanted to clean out the old growth. The supervisor wanted me to just go over the outside with a hedge trimmer. (The greenery would hide the lack of proper maintenance). While she wasn't on site, I managed to get two areas cleaned out. A caterpillar infestation went through the area. They were eating everything. The last to be attacked on that site was the two Rose bush plantings that I cleaned out. That's all I have right now.
Interesting, I think it's definitely the case that strong plants will have a strong immune response to attacks, but whether it's a big enough difference to change the way we manage plants is another matter. Even if I have healthy plants I'm still going to net them. As I walk around the allotments I see a huge difference in plants that are attacked and ones that aren't, the biggest difference seems to be whether they are harvested or not, brassias that are not harvested - they are neglected - seem to survive better : All the best - Steve
One word...insect netting! It also looks more like Japanese Beetles skelletonizing your plants! Weeding needed so as not to allow insects from hiding, including snails.
They were on the screen in the original videos when I planted/sowed the seeds and are listed in the video description and information box for this video.
Hi James, there were a few that I didn't update. Sadly the Chinese artichokes were an absolute failure, they all rotted in the ground. But I will get some more and try again in 2020, I will start them in pots instead of open ground and as soon as I see some growth I will transplant them.
Hi Jane, I haven't grown turmeric or ginger yet. I can't eat turmeric but it would still be interesting to find out about growing it - perhaps for my veg box customers!
Hello Billy and thank you for subscribing! I haven't used nematodes, I'm going to continue with netting the new cuttings I take and will do a bit of research into nematodes for caterpillars. For reasons that I can't pinpoint, I always feel a bit uncomfortable at the idea of introducing predators that I'm unfamiliar with to the garden (not that I know the others by name of course!).
I agree. It just doesn’t sound right. Like when animals are introduced into environments that don’t belong there and they decimate the indigenous animals
Liz where did you buy your yacon? Im thinking of ordering some plants for next year but its quite hard to find, especially for delivery to northern ireland, cant wait to see what you think of the taste
Hi Laura, I got mine from Real Seeds, but if you can wait a couple of weeks you could have some from me 😃 Drop me a message via our website BytherFarm.co.uk
I don't think it's feasible for me to grow perennials. The past 10 years have been so wet over Winter and we've got floods again. Very few plants seem to survive the wetness. My garden is so wet that I've got moss growing everywhere
Kamil Olczak When you have lots of organic matter and manure you are guaranteed an abundance of soil microbes which do all the work for you. They are responsible for temperature, moisture, pH and pest control. Plant roots in turn develop a healthy rhizosphere which send out chemical messages to pests. I moved into a new house several years ago with a garden that was water repellant and had a magnitude of diseases - from gall wasp in the lemon tree to fungal, viral and bacterial infections. I spread a cubic meter of Surecrop from a nursery supplier over the garden (which includes horse, chicken and cow manure) and watered it in after a few days. The sandy soil became hydrated immediately, and within 2 weeks all diseases and pests disappeared - even hundreds of snails! I've never needed any other remedy. nB Crop rotation is very important (plants thrive in beds previously occupied by legumes eg), and companion planting is also worth looking into
I've been encouraging more and more natural predators into the garden and changed what I grow beneath the brassicas and that seems to have helped a bit too.
Tukeys adore Colerado Beetles! As they dont scratch much, well not like hens! So you can let them into your potato patch, even in fullplat growth! Not sure if I would reccomend in a tomato bit,. Turkeys also like tomatoes! Muscovies, I have a variant on Pekins and Silver Appleyards at the moment. If you want duck type9 people, get Muscovies they are, NOT geese (33 days hatch period max), NOT(mallard parent) ducks (28 days max) Muscovies I think originally came from South America, (35 day incubation). Eat grass, slugs etc. But really adore all the flying insect types of pest and are embarrasingly friendly! Look like elongeted normal ducks, sound like geese, a bit. A decent sized male fuuly feathered(live weight ) is about 4kg-5kg. females 2-3kg. Lay loads of eggs, the most wonderful mothers, although they dont speak normal quack,quack duck, so get a bit confused! They are a perching duck, so especially the males, have long claws, be aware! In the UK are completely cold toerant! Even if you cannot get them down from you 20m high roof..Did I mention that they fly really well.. In Bulgaria where the seasonal drop can be minus 20c not so good. Ok, to about minus 10c, but but not really happy below that. Sorry, gardening and poultry my thing! Love Tam
Hi, I do usually subtitle nowadays, if I get time I will go back through this one and edit the automated subtitles so tha they read the correct names. You can also get a complete list of all the species and varieties that we grow by subscribing to our newsletter. Link in the video description of each video.
Have you come up with a better way to deal with the caterpillars/moths ravaging your brassicas? Why continue growing brassicas with such an unresolved pestilence?
Yes, I noticed that the nasturtiums growing underneath the kale were also covered in caterpillars. The second year of growing the kale I removed the nasturiums and the caterpillar attack was much less. This year the plant is so large and healthy that it will withstand some level of pest activity without an issue.
I have thought about trying something like this, I can't use chili water as I'm highly allergic to chillies, but I'm looking at things like neem oil (once I find out what it's made from).
Liz Zorab - Byther Farm I heard about that oil too I also heard of papaya leaves 🍁 mix with lemongrass leaves water works too I’ll get all of them ready just in case I need to use it
