I’ve already mentioned how much I love the tulip bulbs I planted over the last few years, which are blooming beautifully now, but there are some other bulbs I recently ordered that I’m even more excited about.
The first one is the Egyptian walking onion which is a perennial onion that you can eat but it also replants itself every year.
If you’re not familiar with these, here’s a great article describing them and why you want them in your food forest/perennial garden.
I also ordered some wild garlic.
It’s also known as the “tree onion” and can be used in cooking as well as a medicinal tea and salve for insect stings. It’s also a perennial and will come back year after year. Both of these grow in zones 3-9, which is perfect for us.
I’m still stocking up on my “safe” store bought dried onions and garlic as well as planting different varieties of them to dehydrate and put up, but adding these will help bulk up our harvest and will hopefully be productive even if we have a bad year with our normal gardening. We are trying to add as many edible perennials as we can every year so this year (so far) it’s the wild garlic, walking onions and elderberries. Last year it was asparagus and another apple tree.
Our goal is to have as much of a food forest as possible for our zone 5 growing area so that we’ll be more self sustaining with less work as we get older.
Speaking of bulbs, I also ordered these nifty rechargeable light bulbs for emergencies.
I wasn’t sure if they were worth the cost but I thought I would buy a few and surprisingly I found they are a great addition to my candles, oil lamps and lanterns.
They work like regular light bulbs (except as you can see, they are MUCH bigger than a regular light bulb) but if the power goes out you can unscrew them and put them into these little hanging hooks that came with them which cause them to light back up without electricity.
They also work if you just hold the end, but the hooks are much easier. I’m testing them out after charging them over the last couple of days and so far they’ve been on for a couple hours and are still quite bright!
So I’m pretty happy with these bulbs, too!
I love having backups for my backups and all of these things definitely fit the bill for that. 🙂
Empty Nest Homesteading 
We are focused on the edible perennials/food forest too. Have you tried Jerusalem artichokes? I have a lot of failures, including those, they don’t make it through the summer. I might try again because our soil is so much better now than when we first started out trying them. Asparagus too, and strawberries. What about blueberries, those like the cool weather more, no? We’ve got some in the semi-shade and are finally having luck with them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We haven’t tried them but we’ve talked about the Jerusalem artichokes and rhubarb but neither of us are big fans of either lol. Blueberries are on our list but since I use the elderberries as a mast cell stabilizer those are our priority. I am looking for strawberries that will come back on their own here. I think we’ll hit the local farmer’s market and see what else we can find! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love elderberries and they are thriving here where I’ve got them. Gotta celebrate those successes—I’ve been giving them away free to anyone who comes over for piglets! 🙂
LikeLike
You have a wonderful idea about planting perennials to make things easier as you age. The less work, the better off you’ll be, not that you should stop moving. The knees are always the first thing to go.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well hopefully by then they’ll have robots we can buy to send out to gather food for us. After we get those flying cars we were promised right? 😄
LikeLiked by 1 person
Right.
LikeLike