With some patience and planning, you can have a source of various vegetables year after year with just one planting. Ever dream of a perpetual vegetable garden with rows of varied produce that you only had to plant once? With some planning and patience, this can be a reality. The key is to plant perennial vegetables.
In Charlie Nardozzi’s new book, called “Continuous Vegetable Gardening” (2026), he dedicates a whole chapter to growing perennial veggies. And the choices go beyond the common ones we know best, like rhubarb and asparagus. This practice can also make for less work in the garden, as you’ll just need to plant crops once and then enjoy a constant source of vegetables all season long.
And while crops like asparagus, rhubarb, horseradish and Jerusalem artichokes are some to try, while you’re looking through seed catalogs or at your favorite local garden center, seek out these unusual perennial vegetables. An easy spring green to plant is Good King Henry spinach. This one is not actually spinach, but is a perennial. It’s in the chenopodium family, which includes plants like lambsfoot. It also flowers in the summer and will drop seeds and self-sow. This perennial needs a year to get established, and once it is, it will last up to five years in your garden. This plant will grow up to 3 feet tall, is hardy to Zone 3 and grows with a tap root. In the spring, the plant has spinach-like leaves. Harvest those to eat raw when they’re small and tender. As they get older, you can harvest and cook them.
If you’re looking for some veg to spice things up, certain onions are perennial, like scallions or bunching onions. The evergreen hardy white is a tough plant that will grow in Zone 3 conditions. Plant these in spring and instead of harvesting all the onions the first year, eat some but leave some behind to form bunches. After a couple of years, dig some of the bunches up in the spring, and divide them to replant in other garden spaces. These scallions will set flowers, which pollinators like and they’ll drop seed and self-sow. The Egyptian onion is another perennial to try. Also called the “walking” or top-set onion, it grows to about a foot tall. At the end of its long hollow stem, you’ll see a bulblet. As it grows, the bulblet gets heavier until it weighs down the stem and drops to the ground. Wherever it falls, the bulb roots itself and begins to grow in that new place. The effect looks like it’s walking across your garden! You can eat this onion’s greens in the spring or its bulbs in summer.
And finally, plant some sorrel in your perpetual vegetable garden. Sorrel is a hardy green in the buckwheat family. You might be familiar with this lemony and bright-tasting one, as it is a common green in spring mix. You can look forward to less planting and more variety this year by planting perennial vegetables.
