Creating an Edible Garden

David Epstein: Hi, I’m David Epstein. This is Growing Wisdom and we’re here at one of my favorite places, Garden in the Woods with Kristin Desouza. You’re a horticulturalist here. And we’re going to talk today about some of the perennial types of things you can grow and eat.

Kristin Desouza: Today I’d like to talk about the three brothers. It’s new to permaculture. It’s take on the three sisters. So as a child lots of people grew up growing corns, beans, and the squash. So we have the Jerusalem artichoke which replaces your corn. That’s your trellis which is your ground nut, Apios Americana will grow on. And then your ground cover which replaces the squash is an Asarum Canadense and that is native ginger.

There’s a symbiotic relationship that’s going on, and we’re trying to mimic what happens in nature here. That’s a lot of what permaculture is looking at nature for some clues. And so, we grow these three together and same growing conditions, same soil. And they grow quite nicely.

David Epstein: Alright. So I need a little help. I have the Jerusalem artichoke but now it’s gone nuts through my garden. What do I do?

Kristin Desouza: So what I’ve done with my Jerusalem artichokes to limit some the aggressive tendencies that this plant has. I have place them in five gallon bucket containers and I’ve thrown some soil in there, thrown a couple of Jerusalem artichoke tubers and it makes it really easy for harvesting. You just pull up the five gallon bucket and you also have a contained plant.

So Dave, I’d like to take you over and show the three brothers. Here we are at the three brothers. This is the Jerusalem artichoke, this really tall sunflower looking plant. And you can notice winding its way up is the Apios Americana, the ground nut. It’s actually flowering right now. And down here if you look low, the Asarum Canadense and this our Canadian ginger.

David Epstein: So Kristin can you use this as a ground cover as well?

Kristin Desouza: Asarum Canadense makes a great ground cover. You can put it in woodland garden, it takes partial shade, it takes full shade, and we have it full sun here. So, it’s great ground cover.

David Epstein: Kristin, thank you very much. This is great. It made me a little hungry talking all these food.

Kristin Desouza: Uh-huh.

David Epstein: And what I really like is the ability to now plant things and let them kind of go year after year as supposed to planting things like tomatoes and peppers, every singles framed.

Kristin Desouza: Exactly, it definitely limits the work you have to do in the springtime.

David Epstein: Thank you very much. Pleasure to meet you.

Kristin Desouza: You’re welcome. Thank you.

David Epstein: We hope you enjoyed this tip here at Growing Wisdom.