A continuous vegetable garden is about more than succession planting for a longer growing season and a greater harvest. As my returning guest Charlie Nardozzi explains, when a gardener applies certain techniques, a vegetable garden can resow itself continuously for a truly perpetual food garden.
Charlie is a wealth of gardening information. He’s been at it for over 30 years through every form of media and outreach possible, from national television shows to radio shows, speaking at Master Gardener conferences as the keynote, creating video content, and writing books. In fact, he has written eight books, including his most recent one, “The Continuous Vegetable Garden: Create a Perpetual Food Garden that Sows and Grows Itself.”
Charlie Nardozzi’s new book is “The Continuous Vegetable Garden: Create a Perpetual Food Garden that Sows and Grows Itself.”
Charlie lives and gardens just outside of Burlington, Vermont. He leads international food and garden tours when he’s not home gardening or on the speaker circuit, and he was previously the senior horticulturist and spokesperson for the National Gardening Association. He was also previously the host of the national television show “GardenSMART” on PBS — a show that I hosted myself after Charlie.
‘The Continuous Vegetable Garden’
Charlie put together “The Continuous Vegetable Garden” around two main themes, the first being ecological gardening.
“ That’s been very popular in the perennial flower world, the tree and shrub world, growing natives, and changing your techniques to make it more friendly for pollinators and insects and all of those types of things,” Charlie says. “But you don’t see a lot of conversation about that in the annual flower world or the vegetable gardening world, and so that’s why I wanted to have that as a main thrust.”
He kicks off the book with a chapter summarizing no-dig gardening, a subject that he has written a whole book on before. The book goes on to explore perennial vegetables, including obvious ones, such as asparagus and rhubarb, but also more obscure choices for an edible garden, like hostas. And then there are self-sowing vegetables and herbs that aren’t true perennials but will come back year after year if allowed to go through their entire life cycles.
An illustration of a no-dig garden bed.
Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
“These are good chapters that kind of highlight this whole idea of, how do we garden more in tune with nature, making less work for us, and making for healthier plants in our garden?” he says.
The second central theme of the book is the continuous vegetable garden.
“ We’ve all been down that path of growing too many lettuces, too many beans, too many zucchinis,” he says. “You just get overwhelmed with them. You’re putting zucchinis in your neighbor’s car when they’re not looking.”
He wanted to explain how to have a garden that will have a continuous flow of fresh vegetables, herbs and edible flowers without causing overwhelm. So he helps gardeners avoid the “boom and bust” of, for example, planting beans all at the same time, being loaded with beans 60 days later, then not having any more beans the rest of the season.
“ That’s where I bring in these concepts of succession planting, interplanting, and companion planting,” he says.
He also aims for a low-maintenance garden.
“The Continuous Vegetable Garden” promised more food while investing less time and effort. Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
Intercropping
Charlie uses interplanting — growing two or more different crops in the same space simultaneously — to fit more crops into a small area.
“We plant tomatoes in a bed,” he says by way of example. “They’re spaced two to three feet apart for the most part, and you have all this space in between that you actually don’t do anything with.”
He suggests putting some lettuce seeds or Asian stir-fry mix seeds between the tomato plants.
“They do compete with each other, but there’s a compatibility that’s happening with them, too,” he says. ”And so one of the most important things you could do for your soil is make sure there’s things growing on it because soil scientists have now found that anywhere from 20 to 40% of the food that a plant produces, they will push back out through their root system into the soil to feed the microbes there.”
The greens will be productive as the tomato plants grow, and once the tomato plants get big, the greens may flop over and die or will bolt.
“They have created a cover for you to protect that soil, keep it moist, and keep it weed-free, too,” he says. “So you’ve created a garden where you get multiple things from that one bed where you don’t have to work so hard to make it produce.”
Plants that grow roots to different depths make good companion plants for interplanting, he points out. For instance, strawberries and asparagus are two perennial food-producing plants that go well together. Strawberries are shallow-rooted and will mine the nutrients in the top of the soil, while asparagus plants are deeper rooted and will mine nutrients down below the strawberry roots. The strawberries will also suppress weeds and help the soil remain moist, to the benefit of the asparagus.
Aspargus and strawberries make great companion plants for intercropping.
Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
The Wild Area
Charlie has a part of his garden that he calls “the wild area.” It’s where he grows the more aggressive, exotic perennial vegetables. They like to spread, and he lets them duke it out.
This includes horseradish, which spreads, and the orange tawny day lily (Hemerocallis fulva) which has an edible flower that can be stuffed like a squash flower. He also grows stinging nettle, which does, in fact, sting, but when cooked is edible and is rich in vitamins and minerals.
Perennial Onions
Onions are not often thought of as perennials, but there are perennial onions perfect for a perpetual food garden.
Bunching onions, like the evergreen hardy white, will return every year with new little offshoots that can be enjoyed all season as green onions.
Walking onions, or Egyptian onions, have a top set of bulbs that, once they get heavy, weigh down the leaf, and wherever they land, they start rooting.
“It looks like literally it’s walking across your garden,” Charlie says. “I use it mostly as a green onion. I don’t really harvest those little bulbs on the top because there’s a lot of work to clean them. But it’s a fun one to have there.”
Perpetual Containers
Herbs are the classic crop to grow in containers perpetually. Herb containers can be interplanted with eggplant or a pepper, Charlie says, and he also likes containers for growing leafy greens and some root crops like carrots and radishes.
From Charlie’s book, here’s an illustration on succession planting in full sun.
Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
Self-Sowing
I have not practiced the self-sowing concept before. I may let a plant go to flower for the sake of the pollinators, but typically I pull out a plant once I am done harvesting the crop. I don’t let it go to seed with the expectation that it will drop seeds for the next growing season. But Charlie proposes some intriguing ideas to try.
He recalls years ago when hosting a radio call-in show, an older gentleman called in and said he has a unique way of growing lettuce: He sprinkles lettuce seeds on the top of the snow in his garden.
The lettuce seed, the caller said, germinated earlier and the plants grew faster and better than anything he sowed from seed or transplanted later.
Charlie tried this himself, but he didn’t use seed from a packet. He allows lettuce plants to bolt and drop seed to the ground. Then the next spring, he had baby lettuce plants all over the place.
“ Every year, they just drop their seed,” he says. “I only need a couple plants. There’s hundreds of seed in these when they start bolting, so you don’t need a lot of plants.”
In the spring, you can become a “garden editor,” he says, and move the plants or thin them out. And gardeners in a warmer climate than New England where Charlie is may get lettuce crops in both spring and fall.
Lettuce going to seed.
Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
Overwinter a Tomato Plant Indoors
Tomatoes come from very warm climates where they grow as perennials rather than annuals. In climates where frosts kill tomato plants, those plants can be taken indoors for the winter then put back outside in spring.
Charlie says to cut the plant down to a foot, get the soil off it, trim the roots, and bundle them up with moistened peat moss or sawdust in a T-shirt and wrap the root ball in plastic. Leave the plant in a dark, cool place — 40 to 45° — and leave it there until spring. Check every month to ensure the roots haven’t dried out. Then in March or so, pot up the plant and let it grow in a warm sunny room indoors until it’s ready to be transplanted.
More Perennial Food Plants
Fiddleheads are the young furled fronds of ferns — and they are edible.
Ramps (Allium tricoccum), also known as wild leeks are native North American plants in the onion and garlic family.
From Charlie’s book, a vision of an edible backyard.
Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
Perpetual Fruit Harvest
When planning to grow fruit with a perpetual harvest in mind, it requires growing various species and varieties that mature at different times so spring, summer and fall are all covered.
To grow a lot without needing a lot of space, Charlie recommends self-fertile varieties like dwarf North Star cherry. If a crop does require having more than one tree for pollination, dwarf varieties, like columnar apples, are the way to go for the typical gardener who only has so much room for growing crops.
He also likes honeyberries, which will require two plants but stay small and are not invasive. They have a grape texture to them and a little bit of a sour flavor unless they are allowed to really ripen, Charlie says. “You’ll know they’re ripe because they’ll just fall off the bush. And so some people just put a sheet under the bush and shake the bush, and all the ripe ones fall off, and you pull it out, and there you go.”
Plums and peaches can also be grown with only one or two trees required. And Charlie grows blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, and then papaws and persimmons ripen in fall, so something is always ripe and ready.
Zucchini growing vertically on a fence for more production in less space.
Courtesy of Charlie Nardozzi
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Charlie Nardozzi on “The Continuous Vegetable Garden,” you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
Do you have a perpetual food garden? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Episode 045: Succession Planting: Practical Tips for Growing More Food, with Meg Cowden
Episode 194: Easy No-Dig Gardening, with Charlie Nardozzi
Episode 250: Mastering the Art of Succession Planting, with Meg Cowden
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
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Charlie Nardozzi on Instagram | @charlienardozzi
“The Continuous Vegetable Garden: Create a Perpetual Food Garden that Sows and Grows Itself” by Charlie Nardozzi
“New England Month-by-Month Gardening” by Charlie Nardozzi
“Foodscaping: A Practical and Innovative Way to Create an Edible Landscape” by Charlie Nardozzi
“New England Getting Started Garden Guide” by Charlie Nardozzi
“The Complete Guide to No-Dig Gardening: Grow beautiful vegetables, herbs, and flowers – the easy way!” by Charlie Nardozzi
“Northeast Fruit & Vegetable Gardening: Plant, Grow, and Eat the Best Edibles for Northeast Gardens” by Charlie Nardozzi
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