We live in a time of expectation of instant gratification, expecting next day deliveries, fast food and super-fast internet speeds, Most people are “short of time”. When it comes to growing your own food, many gardeners want plants that will produce crops quickly. At the most, we expect to wait 9 months from planting to harvesting. However, limiting ourselves to quick turnarounds means that we can miss out on the huge variety of long living vegetables. It is all about our mind set regarding time scales.
Take Babington Leeks for example. I planted mine about three years ago. The first year they were single shoots the width of a pencil; hardly anything to get excited about. They died down in the summer and then popped up in the autumn. This time they were around 2cm diameter single stalks. One or two flowered and gave me some bulbils which I could then plant and expand my leek patch. I harvested two by cutting them off just below soil level. They grew back as expected. I found them sweeter and with a garlic undertone compared to annual leeks. A definite flavour winner in my opinion. This autumn they are starting to bunch up. I am looking forward to being able to harvest more of them this year. As the years go on, I should have more and more. They are not affected by any pests so far. Apart from the first year of planting a few bulbils in pots and then putting the seedlings in the garden, then an annual mulch of compost, they require no work. Three years feels like a very long time at the start when you plant the bulbils, but from now on that time has passed and I will have a regular crop with little effort which should only get bigger and better over time.
Caucasian spinach is another plant which takes some time to get established. I still haven’t grown one large enough to be worth picking leaves from (probably due to extreme neglect and overcrowding by other plants. However, it is thought that it lives for over 100 years, so it is still a baby at three years old. For a faster perennial spinach crop, I found that the sea beet seeds which I planted early this year have all turned into large plants which I have been picking since summer. They show no sign of dying back in the winter so are likely to be a good all year green vegetable leaf. The leaves cook like spinach and I prefer their texture. They don’t seem to leave the furry sensation on my tongue like some spinaches and chards do. The seeds germinated well, grew quickly and have not had any pest problems.
As a gardener we may be prepared to plant a fruit or nut tree, knowing it will take a good few years to really come into production. Why not have the same mindset for long living vegetables and get planting seeds or bulbils with the future in mind? Before you know, time will have passed and you will be rewarded with nutritious, low maintenance crops year after year. This is Nature’s time scale.