What is an Edible Landscape?
More and more people are moving away from the idea of simple lawns and towards making their outdoor space into more natural landscapes including useful, even edible plants! A lot of edible plants happen to be quite aesthetically pleasing; some vegetables and herbs also have ornamental varieties. It's great to have your own vegetables - fuel costs are driving up the price of all food products, and produce is no exception.
The majority of people who build edible landscapes utilize perennial vegetables, since they return every spring with no need to replant. After they're planted, they'll go on providing beauty and food for as long as you tend them.
These plants require little in the way of care; just watering, feeding, a bit of weeding, pruning and keeping any insect pests under control will be sufficient. There are plenty of perennial vegetable plants which are great choices. Remember, perennials do die back in the winter, so don't be alarmed when your plants appear to go away in the fall - they'll come back in the spring!
You might not want the responsibility of caring for a traditional garden. Normal gardens are a lot of hard work. A traditional garden will require constant activity - weeding, raking, hoeing, watering, fertilizing, and spraying. However, edible landscapes require scarcely more work than traditional ones.
You can utilize various kinds of edible plants to substitute for the features of more traditional landscaping. Try a fruit tree instead of a regular tree. Perennial herbs can serve as ground cover or small bushes. Decorative vegetables can be used in place of flowers or landscaping borders.
Beautiful mixes of edible and non-edible plants are also possible. Herbs are great edible plants to add to traditional flower garden beds. To achieve a different look, you can combine different kinds of plants together.
Sage and oregano work very well as small shrubs, especially as edging for larger shrubs. Try planting curly parsley among flowers such as lobelia, dianthus and pansies. Strawberries also work well in flower gardens.
Planting beds of leaf lettuces can easily create accent areas. Edge with a border grass and then fill the plant bed with your choice of multi colored varieties of leaf lettuce.
Plants with edible flowers come in many varieties. A lot of these plants may have more than one edible part. They can be very attractive pieces of a garden while in bloom. Sugar snap peas produce white, pink and purple flowers, plus they make really good peas.
Fava beans grow white and red flowers. The purple globe-shaped flowers produced by chives make them stand out from other herbs. The blossoms on the dill plant are a delightful shade of yellow. Savory nasturtium flowers come in a wide array of bright colors. The herb sage produces purple and blue flower blossoms. You can also find blue and purple blooms in salvia.
Perennial vegetables and herbs are great to plant in edible gardens, since they dont call for much maintenance. Perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, chives, fennel, garlic chives, ginger, and asparagus are excellent examples.
Article Source: http://www.search-raven.com
About the Author
Sarah Duke is publisher of The Vegetable Patch at http://www.vegetablegardensite.com, where you'll find lots of information for starting a vegetable garden.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entirety, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE links (without "nofollow" tags).
by: SarahDuke
Total views: 12
Word Count: 512
Rating: Not yet rated