Ep. 169 Growing Perennial Vegetables, Asparagus, Rhubarb & More | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are gonna be talking about perennial vegetables. Oh my goodness. You put them in the ground once and they come back year after year.

That sounds too good to be true, and you know I am not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. How you doing?

Hello, Chris. Did you get your seeds started yet going back to last week?

I I did. I I got my a flat of cool season seeds started. I got the warm season flat ready. I got but I have not gotten it planted yet, but I got the cool season stuff going, and I'm only, like, what, two weeks behind on that one. So yeah.

I'm I'm doing better than most years. How about yourself?

That's good. Yep. We've got stuff coming up. I've hey. It's some tomatoes started.

Started my purple tomatoes. Do not have any germination yet. Hey. I'm A little worried.

I'm a little nervous about those too. I so in addition to the the vegetable stuff too, I also have, like, 15 flats of ginger. I also have going, which are using up all of my heat mats. And so I I planned on that's why I delayed my warm season stuff because I plan on taking one of those heat mats from my warm season stuff, which is gonna have the purple tomato in it. And so I let me know how if you get germination or not because I would love to know if it's gonna be worth the heartache if they don't germinate.

Yeah. Or you're gonna have to try yours so I can get some plants from you.

There you go. For folks who are don't know what we're talking about with this purple tomato, they released a a a GMO tomato on the market for homeowner for home growers that they took the the genes of a snapdragon, and they cross that with tomatoes so that it is purple skinned and fleshed throughout. And, yeah, they're really just trying to bump up some of those, what are they, anthocyanin pigments in there with some extra nutritious nutritional value.

Yeah. Going back to ginger, I need to get mine started. It's all cut and ready to go. I just need to get the mix potting mix and get those on heat mats.

Well, I I learned a whole lot about ginger the other day. A colleague of ours shared a handout from University of Florida. And, you know, Ken, those Florida people, they're awfully smart. I do you know anyone that went to school there No. Besides yourself?

Oh, they had a great handout about sprouting ginger and turmeric and galangal, and I think I've been doing it wrong since, like, 2017. So, you know, you learn something new every year, right, when you're growing something.

Yes. I need to read that article then.

Check it out because I I have been putting my ginger in, like, flats as they do this, like, arranged and sort of like a puzzle piece style trying to fit them all together, and then I cover it with potting soil. And they say don't cover with potting soil. You have to keep the potting soil that they're resting on slightly damp, but then you cover that with, like, a humidity dome, which keeps the humidity up, but you're not constantly you don't have water up against that rhizome, which might lead to rot. And so maybe that will cut out some potting soil material that that that you would otherwise be using. So worth a try.

Too late for me, but, yeah, if you need a couple humidity domes, I have some.

I guess yeah. Good thing I procrastinated this year.

There you go. There you go. Give it a try. So I have a a video online that I I give the opposite information. So I I don't know how you change YouTube videos other than get rid of them.

Anyway, Ken, well, let's dive right into this topic of perennial vegetables. And I I think as we we define this, I mean, before the show started, we're, like, talking about, you know, what do we wanted to discuss? And I said, oh, strawberries. And you said, Chris, that's not a vegetable. Strawberry is a fruit.

So we we do have a lineup of vegetables for you today, like, specific to a vegetable, not a fruit. And we're gonna kick it off with asparagus. So, Ken, what's your favorite part about asparagus?

I don't know. I like the way it tastes. Yes.

You know, I and and I always I I do love to eat asparagus, and then I become very self conscious afterwards when you're in the bathroom. So so it makes your pee smell funny.

Yeah. And as an aside for that, so not everybody pee stinks. So what is it? So it's got aspergillic acid, which is broken down into sulfur containing compounds by your body. It causes your urine to smell unique after eating it.

If it doesn't smell after eating asparagus, maybe for part of the forty percent of the population that they can't smell. So I guess everybody does, but some people can't smell it. So

So consider yourself lucky. And also, did you know that when they are going through the astronaut selection program, they they like to select astronauts that don't have that can't smell stuff like that because they know they're gonna be cooped up in this little space in space. And so they want people up there who, like, aren't sensitive to body odor or asparagus pee, things like that. So just an aside, any aspiring astronauts out there?

You know, it must be easier just not to give them asparagus. But

No. No. They have to eat it. They have to eat it. That's a requirement for astronauts.

Oh my goodness. Anyway, well well, Ken, I I've grown asparagus. I kinda grew up like my my parents had an asparagus patch in the garden. We grow it here at our food donation garden in Macomb. I don't grow it currently at home.

Do you have any asparagus at your house?

We do not. We talked about growing it this year, but I don't know if we ever actually added it to our cart because it hasn't shown up yet. So that's one of those things that probably won't come till a little bit later because we're people would traditionally, you're gonna buy the crowns or the roots. You can buy seed, but that's gonna add another year or two before you can harvest. Typically, people are buying gonna buy the crowns or, like, the one two year old plants that you're gonna buy that'll speed the process up for your asparagus.

How much And Good.

And they they all like, you also want the crowns though because they can select for male and female. Right? Like, the seed, there's probably a little bit of genetic mystery there. Like, oh, what are you gonna get? So we want males.

Correct? Because in terms of seed production.

Yeah. I'm not sure how long it takes to figure out if it's male or female. If you can tell that in the first year. And I know a lot of the newer cultivars are more male or male cultivars that you're buying. So if you have the female, they're they're sending a lot of energy into flower seed and fruit production, which is going to kind of sap some of that energy that could otherwise go into producing spears.

So that's why typically and if you can if you if you're looking for one, get them one that's got males, predominantly male plants at the very least. Because they're gonna they're putting all their energy into spear formation, all that's being stored in the roots. They're not say wasting isn't the right word. But I guess from a human perspective, they're not wasting any energy on flower fruit and seed production.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, Ken, if if we go with purchasing live plants or or the crowns, what what type of prep are we expecting for an asparagus patch? Because as a perennial vegetable, this is not like a regular garden bed that can be turned over each year. I mean, you put asparagus there and, well, that's where it's gonna be for the probably the duration of you ever owning that garden at that home.

So give us some site preparation tips to get started.

Yeah. This will go for for not only asparagus, basically any of your perennial vegetables. Site prep is gonna be important. So it's probably not something, you know, so you wanna go out and just buy on a whim. You may wanna do a little planning.

For the most part, all of these are going to want, you know, well drained soil. And most of our pretty much all of our fruits and vegetables, they do not like having wet feet. So having an area that's that's going to be well drained, probably maybe wanting to incorporate some organic matter that year before. So you're gonna have those nice fertile soils. They're gonna want full sun.

So you're make sure that you've got a full sun. And, you know, this could be in the ground for fifteen plus years. So look at the surrounding landscaping, you do have trees nearby. Are those trees mature? Are they still growing?

Is that gonna cast shade eventually? So keeps those some of the things in mind, not just for this year, but ten, fifteen plus years down the line. What is what is that landscape gonna potentially look like when when you're citing these things? So those are those are some important things. I think a lot of times we overlook not only for perennial vegetables or anything like, you know, strawberries or, you know, blueberries is is a good example of people not prepping the soil beforehand and they don't wanna have the right acidity, and stuff like that.

Yeah. We get the phone call of, hey. I got blueberries in hand and a shovel in the other. Now what? I'm like, well, there's a little bit of planning that needs to go in before you get that plant in the ground.

So I it it I I guess in terms of of prepping a perennial veg vegetable bed, a lot of what I hear about is amending the soil to with they a lot of them say, amend the soil to be rich, which a lot of times I it it takes or I'm assuming it's more like amended with some type of organic matter, whether it's compost or, like, rotted leaves, something something to mix into the soil to add organic matter to that site maybe a few months before you even plant it. And I I know at least with our asparagus patch at the extension office here, we used horse manure. Now horse manure, it's a it's a great manure. It's it's got good nitrogen, contents, and it it can provide a a a good vegetative boost to asparagus. You know?

However, manure and specifically horse manure has a lot of weed seeds, and that's something we really had to battle quite a bit over the years when we introduced manure into our soil. And so I I I probably caution folks reading that information about enriching your soil, adding amendments to it. One, do that soil test beforehand, see if you really even need to do that. And then two, maybe skip some of the animal based manures. You know, chicken and rabbit, they're a little bit less weedy, but that horse manure, it's it's giving me a really bad taste in my mouth and calluses on my fingers from pulling all the weeds in that asparagus patch.

Yeah. And if you are gonna be eating manure, make sure it's well it's fully composted.

Mhmm.

Now that's gonna eliminate every seed in there, but that'll go a long way in reducing some of that too.

That's true. I I think maybe in this case, the horses might have still been pooping on the trailers. They were shipping it over to us. So yeah. It it was it was it was composted, but the the the worst weed that we got out of it was poison hemlock, which horses can't eat.

You know, they're not processing that. So that is probably a weed seed that blew in onto their their pile of their their stall, you know Mhmm. When they're mucking the stall and cleaning it out. So that probably just blew in, but, boy, it was just full of poison hemlock and all other kinds of weed seeds.

So then as far as, you know so you've got your soil prep. Again, we're probably ideally doing this in the fall the year before, if not sooner. Because typically we're getting these, we're planting them as soon as you can work the soil. So this time of year, mid March to mid April is a lot of times. In Illinois anyway, Central Illinois, when we'd be planting these.

So again, we're getting those crowns, those roots. Typically what we're going to do is we're to dig a trench about six inches deep, 12 to 18 inches wide. We'll make a little kind of a mound in the middle of that trench. We're going lay the roots on there, let them drape over that, and space those roots, those crowns nine to 12 inches apart. And then we'll we'll cover those crowns.

We're not going to completely fill that trench. We're going to cover it, let them grow, and as they start growing, we're going to fill it in. Kinda like what you would have was like killing potatoes as they start poking up. Cover it until you kind of get that trench fully ground or fully covered. And then you're going to let them grow that first year, you know, although they'll die back in the fall.

You can clean that up. Sometimes it's good idea to clean that foliage up because you've got some pests and diseases that could potentially overwinter on that. Clean that up. Second year, they'll emerge. And then there's some I don't know if debate's the right word, but do you see different recommendations on when you can start harvesting?

Some places say you can start harvesting that second year if you're doing going by crowns, and you can harvest for maybe a week or two. And then you let everything go and let them grow. They'll produce their fern the ferns, which are the leaves that are usually fine, kind of like asparagus fern leaves. And you want them to do that together, producing photosynthesized photosynthesizing, producing all this energy, storing that on the roots. Similar to your spring bulbs, you want to leave those that foliage on there as long as possible so they can produce all this energy and all that food that they're going to store.

So second year, maybe a week or two and then let them grow. Third year, up to four weeks harvest and then let them go. And that fourth year you can go full harvest, go through May or June as long as the spears are about three eighths of an inch or larger in diameter. That's one. Some places say don't even start harvesting till the third year.

Some people skip the second year, let them grow and start that short harvest the third year. So it's kind of all over the place, but don't go too crazy too quick. We want them to be able to put in those reserves to the to the roots, let them grow bigger so you get that again. If you're if you're in this for the long haul, again, delay that gratification a little bit and you'll get your your harvest for ten, fifteen plus years.

And, you know, can I say, you gotta let them harvest a little bit that second year? So it's a little bit of a oh, what is to come here if that asparagus patch really gets off the ground and running? And, you know, I when we we planted ours out here, you know, we really made sure to adhere to if it was a spear coming up that was really flimsy looking, that was about maybe the size of a number two pencil in width or less. We really try to leave that alone. But if we saw, like, a a like, kind of a wider spear emerging from the ground, we would pop that off.

The other thing about asparagus, a lot of people think, oh, yeah. Well, I gotta, you know what what's the point of firing up the oven for one little spear of asparagus? Do you know you can eat them raw? And they are just as good raw, especially when you harvest them fresh out of the garden. I I remember doing that.

I I did a a farmer visit here with Extension many years ago, and this farmer, he actually lets his asparagus grow in a a big pasture, which not only has asparagus, but also has strawberries. And it's just like this kind of wild and woolly ground cover. And he said, you know, reach down, pluck off that asparagus beer, and take a bite. And I did. And it was like the best asparagus I've ever had before.

And I think it was just plain old, you know, a regular run of the mill variety. So but it's you can just that second year, just break off a a spear, take a bite. It's it's a good treat.

So when you harvest, you cut or break the spears?

Oh, I I definitely break. Because right is so when you go to the grocery store, they're all cut. Now I heard that they do that because asparagus is sold by the by the weight, and they get a little bit of extra weight when they take that sharp knife and cut right below the soil line right there, and they get a little bit of that woody part there. It's a little bit heavier, so they can charge you a little bit more. So I always break.

What do you do? What what what's the what should we do, Ken?

I think you can do either. I'd I'd say if you're gonna cut I was supposed to do a 45 degree angle kind of it Mhmm. A little bit of that soil line. I think if you do that, you run the risk of nicking the tops of any others that may be coming up Yep. Which could affect the development.

At home, you're probably better off just snapping, but you can cut too.

Yeah. You can you can cut too. Yeah. Mean, it's probably easier to cut. Yeah.

Yeah. Do whatever you want. I'm just trying to share a little bit of market insight into how asparagus is sold. So yeah. Well so alright.

So you you had we got through, like, site prep and how we dig the trench, we slowly cover that trench up as we we want those crowns to grow and develop. Now I had mentioned about I had some really bad weed problems. And and really weed issues, this is the same across the board for what we're talking about today. When it comes to weed control in a perennial vegetable patch, I think it's a lot more difficult in some cases of of controlling those weeds because unlike your annual vegetables, which you can flip those beds over and you can do weed control stuff. Again, you you gotta go in pretty much by hand and and pull stuff in these perennial vegetable hatches.

Now for us, we really utilize mulch as a tool for keeping weeds down, and it worked fairly decently. Another thing we also did is we planted in and amongst our asparagus. We planted zinnia, And we just got, like we got these tall asparagus, and then we got this patch of zinnia on the border. I I think it did pretty good job of shading out the soil and keeping weeds down a little bit. But, Ken, do you got any other tips besides mulch and the random idea of zinnia being thrown on the ground?

I think with with asparagus, you can do some some real shallow cultivation in the spring before they start coming up. And once they start coming up, you start cultivating, you hit those spears, and you're just going to mess up that Garcia. If you need to shallow cultivation in the spring before they start popping and then mulching to keep all that stuff down. It's another reason why you don't necessarily want to have female plants because they drop those seeds, those seeds germinate and they become weeds themselves. You could end up with having you could have too much asparagus and then you get all these seedlings coming up.

So another reason to try to avoid those female plants where you're going be picking seedlings out. And I think a lot of times, I don't know how much it is anymore, but you see here about people adding salt to their asparagus patch to help control weeds. And asparagus does have a higher salt tolerance than a lot of plants, so it can tolerate some of that salt in the soil. But it's not it doesn't have an unlimited tolerance. If you're constantly doing that, you do run the risk of affecting your asparagus.

And adding salts to your soils can cause problems. It can cause it to deflocculate and cause issues with water infiltration and all this kind of other stuff. So probably not a good idea. Would not recommend doing salt. There's a reason the Romans salted the earth and tried the generalist.

They they was trying to starve people to death. So yeah. That's why they did it. So don't do it to your vegetable garden if you wanna eat from it. So yeah.

Yeah. Avoid the salt. One one last thing that comes to my mind when it with asparagus, and that is I love it in the fall because the fronds develop, you get these ferny, you know, kind of wispy, fine textured foliage, and then it turns yellow, like a bright yellow. So I think asparagus has almost an ornamental appeal, especially in that fall color time frame. And I can I have a picture of one of those I can pop up right here?

Just this really interesting yellow fall color with our asparagus patch. So that that I mean, that comes to mind, but I think there might be other pests and things to consider like asparagus beetle. And and I guess that's why maybe we do our cleanup in the late fall as opposed to spring. Is that right, Ken?

Yeah. So asparagus beetles, they'll feed on on the spears and stuff and cause and cause them to be crooked, things like that, feed on the ferns and kind of reduce that that leaf area and stuff. So that's one thing. Cleaning that up and removing that overwintering area can be helpful. And the larvae, I think, are kind of was doing a lot of the damage.

They're kind of like caterpillars, almost kind of slug like beetle larvae on there. Another big problem could be asparagus rust. So you kind of discolored rusty spots on the the plants as well. That's another reason for cleanup if you've got that rust. And there are some varieties that are resistant to rust, that could be something obviously.

If you've never grown it, you don't know if you're going have issues with it. But if you do have issues or you have had issues, maybe looking at a resistant cultivar for rust.

Mhmm. Yeah. And I in in terms of cultivar selection, I know there was a a story that was put out that was at the Jersey series was gonna be discontinued, and that's a pretty popular asparagus variety cultivar, but you that was in 2021. As you mentioned, Ken, you can still go online and find other people selling that. So, we're not quite sure how that is if they are actually doing so legally.

And why is there still Jersey out there?

There's a there's a lot of places selling this. Yeah.

If anybody knows the story behind the Jersey series for asparagus, let us know in the comments.

Yeah. But there's I mean, with asparagus, I think you typically think of the the white or not the white, the green asparagus, but there's also purple cultivars. And that's one that we've talked about growing. It was like purple passion would be one that's providing. There's some newer ones as well.

I've heard mention of, like, a pink one. I've never seen that. But I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that there's pink sidle. Admittedly, I haven't looked extensively for it, but rumor has it. Yeah.

And there's also white asparagus, which isn't a a cultivar that's actually been blanched. So they'll cover those spears. If you're doing it at home, you can get a cardboard box or bucket. Put that over there and that'll blanch it, cause them to be white instead of green. So if you like white asparagus, which I think is what more way more more popular in Europe than it is in The US.

But if you want the white stuff, it's not something not a cultivar you buy, you you blanch that cover it to prevent sun getting to it. Kinda like you would do with a cauliflower. If you want that white head, you wrap the leaves around it so it doesn't if it gets exposed to the sun, the cauliflower will turn kinda yellow. So asparagus, you cover it to to keep it white.

Well, I I mean, I did poke my head out earlier today and I did not see any asparagus popping up in the garden yet. But maybe I probably need to move some leaves around. I I bet that it's already started, but I can definitely assure you our next perennial vegetable is up at least at my house, and that is a rhubarb. I have actually a very healthy rhubarb plant because when people come over, the, folks will will look at this plant that's like it looks like something out of the Jurassic, period, and it's the plant is massive. I didn't know rhubarb leaves got that big, but it's I mean, it's they're probably, like some leaves are maybe, like, two and a half foot long.

They're huge. And so, anyway, I have a very healthy rhubarb. And in terms of site prep for that, you know, I did similar things. I we amended it the planting area with compost, and then we we, you know, I planted it, you know, tried to make the soil as rich as I could in that area. The rhubarb seems responding really well.

We mulch with shredded leaves, which break down and, again, add, like, more organic matter to that site. So I I think I got a rhubarb on steroids, so I'm I'm pretty stoked about that. And it's already, like, foot and a half tall, and it's March 26, which is wild. I'm afraid to eat it, though, so I'm I'm not gonna eat it right now.

Yeah. We wanna talk about that now or or wait?

May maybe we'll wait. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. Let's talk about growing it first, yeah, before we talk about how it could kill you or make you sick.

About killed. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Make you sick.

Make make you hurt real bad. So, Ken, do you have any rhubarb in your neck of the woods?

Nope. It's another one I'm trying to work on my wife. Mhmm. It's a plant mainly so that people ask me questions about it. I have some experience of what I'm talking about.

Right. I mean, I I will I will I'll say from my experience, I do almost nothing to this plant except for mulch. Like, I just I'll add some shred leaves to it in the fall, and that's about all I ever have to do. And then, you know, I chop off the foliage in the winter sometime and clean it up. And it it is a pretty easy plant to care for.

And so when we are growing rhubarb and harvesting it, we're actually harvesting not the leaf itself, but the actual, like, the stalk, the petiole that the leaf grows on. And that's the actual part that we use from the plant. And I I would say maybe the only problems we ever had like, I know Japanese beetles will go after the leaves a little bit, but rhubarb, it might grow waist high at at its tallest. And I'd say more like knee high. So it's really easy to just walk around it and pick off the Japanese beetles and throw them in soapy water or something.

So it's it's not a difficult plant to control pests. So I I I think so long as you have it mulched, you have amended the soil, you're gonna be fairly successful with your rhubarb. And the the variety that we grow, I think it is Victoria. I think that's what it was. We actually yeah.

We know the name of it. So, yeah, I think it's a Victoria rhubarb. The stems are mostly green. They're slightly reddish, but I think for the most part, they're green. And I I think the flavor is nothing to write home about, which is why you have to add tons of sugar when you're making rhubarb pie or jam or jelly to make it taste good.

It just tastes like lettuce. So yeah.

And there's some of them have red. Right? Red pity house.

Yep. Mhmm. Ours is a reddish tinge. Maybe more pink, but mostly green.

Yeah. So then other one question I've got a couple times about them is when they start putting out flowers. Do

you Mhmm.

You add those. Do you leave them? Do you cut them?

Yeah. So we the very first year we put it in the ground, we got flowers, and I I cut it off. And the flower stalk, it's pretty massive too. It's this hollow hollow inside tube almost, and you you cut it off. So that's what I've been doing.

Every time I see a flower stalk begin to pop up is I pop it off, and I don't let it flower. I don't know if that's best practice, but that's what I'm gonna do because I want the plant to focus more on root establishment and leaf development as opposed to flower and seed production.

Everything I've spread is yeah. You want them to bloom, that's fine, you're sacrificing some of that. You know, that just like asparagus, that energy is going into seed formation, flower formation instead of into the roots to grow more more leaves and stuff, which is what you want to harvest. So Mhmm. Maybe if you end up with too much rhubarb, you can let it flower.

Yes. I don't know if don't think it's a weedy like asparagus does if it the seeds all drop. But

So far it hasn't. The crown has just slowly started to expand outward just little by little. And so we've had it probably this will be our third year. Will this be our third year? Might be our fourth year.

Oh, it's our third year with it. This will be so we've already had it two years. This will be our third growing season, and it's already a massive plant. You know, I probably could have harvested from it that first year that we put it in the ground, but I didn't. And so it's very similar recommendation with asparagus.

You know, don't harvest it that first year that you planted. Let it develop those leaves. Let it develop that root system, and then also remove those flowers before they develop. And but, boy, mine mine really just it as soon as it got its roots in the ground, it just went nuts. And so, you know, we we've harvest from it last year.

Definitely gonna harvest from it this year. And, yeah, like I said, that that that crown, that base of that plant's really just sort of slowly been expanding in size. So it'll probably need to be divided maybe soon. And then, Ken, I'll bring you some of the divisions here after we divide it.

Alright. I think it's about like usually five years or so. You divide you wanna divide that before cancer is growing in the spring. Yep. So early in the spring.

And then like you would with a lot of other things, cut it up and make sure you've got growth points in those individual sections.

Yep. Yep. Make sure you got any mushy spots, you got anything that's suspect in that root cluster, just throw it out, get rid of it. And so I did allude to the I'm a little bit scared to eat my rhubarb right now. Do you get this question, Ken?

People I mean, I every spring it happens. There's at least, I'd say, like, five to 10 people call the office and they ask, is it safe to eat my rhubarb? And I I don't Do you do you experience that?

Yeah. We usually get them, especially, you know, when they really get going and we get a late frost. That's usually when that when that comes in.

Mhmm. Yeah. And because the rhubarb has emerged so early this year, I I I'm pretty sure it was up in the first part of March. And, you know, we are definitely not outside of the frost window, at least the normal frost window. And so, like I mentioned, we we harvest the the stalks from the rhubarb.

We don't eat the leaves. That's because the leaves contain oxalic acid, which is not great for our kidneys. And so they kinda gums up our kidneys. And when we get a frost, that oxalic acid moves from the leaves down into those petioles and because it it helps protect it from freezing damage. And so that's why we tell folks, you know, when there's a freeze, just cut just chop off what leaves were exposed to the freeze and let it start over again, or or leave those leaves there and and harvest the new stuff that comes up afterwards.

And I I don't think the the oxalic acid is necessarily enough to kill you, but definitely would hurt you. And especially, like, you know, I I know my wife's uncle, he like, he had gout, you know, and he would get flare ups at the drop of the hat. So, I mean, if you have issues with your kidneys like that, you probably don't want to be taking any chances with accidentally eating too much oxalic acid, which they're not gonna like that. Your kidneys at least.

Yeah. If in doubt, say throw it out. But if in doubt, don't harvest.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't eat it. Rhubarb will throw out more growth, especially if it's good and healthy and established.

Plenty more to come.

So, Ken, as we were discussing perennial vegetables, we got on this topic of artichoke. And I think last week we discussed artichoke. You you showed us some of your seedlings of artichoke. And the the the question came up about perennial artichoke, which I didn't even know that was a thing. Describe artichokes as a perennial plant and can did have you done that before?

It's just my asparagus slash artichoke from last week.

Yeah. There's a little misspeak there.

Yeah. Yeah. I had this episode on my mind. Even though they look nothing alike. So artichokes are actually perennial vegetables.

There's I mean, think like tomatoes and stuff. I don't know if I necessarily perennial, but they live a lot longer than they normally would in our garden. So artichokes, like globe artichoke are perennial. I've usually seen them listed as zone seven, lot of times zone eight. So they're not going to be hardy for at least Central Illinois, maybe down in Southern Illinois.

You may be able to get them over winter. You probably if you're going try to get them over winter, you probably want to provide some protection to those plants. Maybe if you got like a low tunnel or something, some cover over that. Up and slam a little bit, especially if we're going to get real cold. You know, we're getting below zero.

Probably would be a good idea to to protect those. So they are perennial. I would say for the most part, kind of our northern growers, we're not going to get that perennial plants unless we're doing something special. So what I do is I grow cultivars that are intended for annual production. So they're much quicker to harvest than our perennial types.

So the one I grow is Imperial Star. That's eighty five days to harvest. Whereas Green Globe, which is one the more common ones, more the it's a longer season, it's one hundred and twenty days. So right off the bat, I'm shaven almost forty days off off that harvest by growing these that are bred to that. There's another one called Wonder.

That's eighty eight days to harvest. A little easier, you're compressing that growing season. And with with artichokes, you still have to get them you have to get them some cold. So usually it's a week or two of temperatures in the fifties and that'll stimulate them or trigger them, give them the signal to start flowering. So if you don't get that cold, you may not get much, if any, flower production.

So if you're starting them inside and you keep them in until you you wait and put them out, and we're not getting any more cooler temperatures, you may not get flower production. So right now, started mine early February. So now if you watched the podcast last week, saw that they're pretty good size. So now I'm putting them outside because we do keep dropping down into the twenties and stuff. I'm bringing them back in at night a lot of times.

But if it's staying in the upper thirties, low forties, I'm just leaving them out at night. That way they get their cold. I'm drawing a blank on what the term is for that.

All only thing that comes to mind is vernalization.

Vernalization. There you go. So you're getting that cold vernalization so I can get that flower production on them. And I think some of these annual ones, flowers, the artichoke that you're harvesting may not be quite as big as the more perennial types, but you get artichokes a lot easier.

I I remember the year I grew artichokes, and I did not expose them to cold, and I had some really just pretty foliage plants and no flowers. So, yeah, you don't get that cold exposure, you at least still have quasi ornamental plants. Yeah. They don't look too bad in the landscape.

They're another kind of prehistoric, like one of other big so we've tried growing cardoon last year, which is kind of like Archok, which are harvesting those for the leaves and the stalks and stuff. We only got one plant and I never harvested any. So I can't say. But they they will get they're pretty decent size. So if if you're going be growing them, you want to give yourself a little room and I can send you some pictures, Chris, and you can pop them up.

Okay. What they look like. And I think so last year with the drought or with hot weather and dry conditions, we didn't have any success with our districts. But the year before, we got some I only harvested a couple. I I left a lot just for the flowers to see what they look like.

And if you if you don't if you end up with more artichokes and you need to let those flowers bloom there, they're very pretty like a giant thistle without the problems. So can be be very ornamental too. So that another one would be a candidate for that kind of that edible landscaping, in my opinion.

So possibly can be done with perennializing your artichokes. Select the correct type of artichoke for the job. We're kind of at that that northern margin of where it would be successful, so maybe invest in some season extension for those really cold nights in the winter.

Yeah. We're probably looking Southern Illinois further south. You're gonna be a lot more successful with with getting them to perennialize. But with with a little work, you may be able to for the North. No guarantee though.

So if you can't, don't get angry at us.

Well so I I mean, I think it's I think that would be fun to try. And but our next one, our perennial vegetable, which we just threw it in there because we're just like, chives. Chives, you know, they're there. They don't die. They just keep coming back doing their thing.

We have chives here that are extension office, and they're like the most reliable plant out there. We know they're gonna come up. We let them bloom. We have very often, we'll get, you know, skippers and other types of butterflies and things like that on the flowers. And so we we use them more for ornamental purposes, but, yeah, you can go out there any time of the year and just take some scissors and, you know, cut off some chives, spruce up a potato salad.

You know, I I I have nothing about chives except for yeah. They're chives. They that's they're great. Yeah.

Low maintenance. We've had some in a pot for, I think, about six, seven years now in our garden. Pots starting to fall apart because it's been outside for seven years. But the chives chives keep going. They've they've rooted through it into the ground and stuff.

So I even if I wanted to get rid of the pot, I don't know if I could.

They've consumed it.

And it's they got pretty flowers. That's another one that got some ornamental appeal and pretty about as low maintenance as you can get, I think.

Oh, yeah. Takes takes a lot of abuse and just doesn't care. Yeah. Well, Ken, this last perennial vegetable we have is is one that I would love to grow. I'm just really scared to grow it because it's kinda like asparagus.

Once you got it in the ground, it's kinda tough to get rid of it. So horseradish. We did a whole show about horseradish before. We had doctor Elizabeth Wally on. We talked about this, so you can link to that one below if people wanna know the details, the in-depth stuff about horseradish.

But but this is a a root vegetable. You harvest the roots. You leave a little bit of the roots in the ground, and then it will sprout every year. And that's that's how it stays perennial. And but but the issue is you can never really get rid of it, especially if you ever accidentally till that area.

You actually might have spread in those roots in a wider area, and every little chunk of that root is gonna sprout, and you're gonna have a a yard of horseradish. And I like horseradish, but I don't know if I like it that much. So, Ken, where should we be planting our horseradish in our gardens?

So I guess another one, you know, that could soil prep, that that could soil. I have read some stuff that that can take a little bit of shade, so maybe a little more tolerant than some of our others. But again, full sun, well drained conditions. And then you're planting you plant those like 45 degree angle. Mhmm.

Right? From that podcast with the growth point up.

Mhmm. Yeah. And so the interest and and again, weed control is is is important. But I think horseradish is a tough enough plant, maybe kinda like chives where it's like, I don't really care about weeds. I'm still gonna grow.

And and probably be able to outcompete at least anything within my root space. So I I would say horseradish is one of those that maybe that first year you plant it, you might need to it might depend upon the size that the plant gets, but you you you could probably harvest it, but I don't think you would get much from it that first year. So it's probably gonna need to wait till that second year. You really put on a good mass or size with that root system. And then as you pull that root system out with a potato fork or something, harvest what you want, but then make sure that you re replace some of those root pieces back into the soil, cover them back up, and let them keep growing.

So that's you can keep that horseradish going.

Yeah. I don't that's the one we we probably won't grow. We don't use that much horseradish to I don't know what I'd do with with a whole bunch of horseradish.

Yeah. I I I I don't know. I we we do like horseradish on our house, but like you said, I don't think we use it that often. And I think I would just rather have other people prepare it for me because the the preparation process, you know, you have to grate it, which I've I've heard it's even worse than, like, onions and stuff and how it gets into your eyes and makes you cry. So as you grate it, you break those cells.

It actually that's what sort of activates that heat in the horseradish. And you can let that heat build and build and build, but then to stop that heat from building, you have to add vinegar. So that kills that chemical reaction that's happening right there. And so you actually can control the level of heat that you get with your horseradish. So I think that's what I learned from when Elizabeth was on our show that one time.

I was like, I didn't know you could, like, control the heat output from your horseradish simply by just, like, letting it sit and waiting to add vinegar, which you again, I like it, but we don't eat that much of it. So yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was all just hot. Maybe I should brew my own.

You forgot about put the vinegar in the my goodness. Well, I I love it when it's a mix. When you take horseradish, you mix it with, like, mayonnaise. I like that creamy horseradish sauce, I guess. That's that's me.

Yeah. That's one of my favorite things to do. You can take any, like, lunch meat sandwich, put a little bit of horseradish on it, little bit of mayo. Makes it pop very good. Put a tomato on there.

It's like summer.

But the only time we use it is well, not even use it, but it's cocktail sauce.

Oh, yeah. That's true. When you're making your Bloody Marys, you mean? Or when you, you know, you have eaten shrimp or something. Yeah.

Yeah. One of those times. Mhmm. Well, that was a lot of great information about probably some of our more common perennial vegetables, mainly that of, like, asparagus and rhubarb. That's what a lot of people do grow in their gardens.

They come back year after year. People if you want to know more about some of these perennial vegetables, we will link to our Illinois Extension website that covers these different vegetables, plus the podcast where we did with Elizabeth about horseradish. Also, if you grow something that we did not talk about that is a perennial vegetable that comes back year after year, let us know. Maybe we could do a little bit of reading about it and a show about those in the future. Well, the Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Enroth.

A special thank you to Ken Johnson hanging out with me today, chatting about all those vegetables that we put in the ground and come back year after year. Thank you, Ken.

Yes. Thank you. I'm gonna have to one of these days, I'm gonna get the asparagus and rhubarb. I can can join the club, man.

I'm bringing them to your house later on this year. Make it happen.

All right. And let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. You got bagworms in your trees and shrubs? Well, Ken is gonna talk to you all about what to do about them odd little Christmas ornaments that are left hanging around all summer long. Do they hurt? Can you do anything about them?

Ken will let you know next week's Garden Bite. So listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening, or if you're watching this on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.