It's mid-May. I've already planted 90 plus plants. I've already had some transplanted grafted trees fail - cedar, apple, rust gets them, even if the book says that this variety should be resistant, (I guess the tree didn't read the book). So this year I started to convert some of my garden, the peripheral parts, into perennials, with annuals in the middle.Regular greens in my garden bolt quickly when it gets hot in early summer.

• Options to augment those with perennial greens - dock, sorrel, lambs quarters, both narrow leaf plantain and a wider leaf plantain. Perennial are more bitter than annual greens. Dock and sorrel have a slight lemony after taste.
• Hazelnuts, goji berries around the outside edges. Walking onion, Solomon seal, plantain, dock, with annual lettuce in the middle of one bed.
• Another perennial bed has hazel and elderberries around the outside edges, walking onion, plantain, dock, lemon balm, horseradish in the middle.
• Planting Milpa garden or regular annuals in the middle.
• More info on how I am using Milpa gardening to start new beds, cover crop with produce in the first year. I used a broadfork to turn over grass, spread Milpa seed, covered with a layer of wood chips. It leaves a natural mulch and builds soil.

Like this episode? Shoot us a tip on Venmo @ThrivingtheFuture.

Join the Thriving Patreon at Patreon.com/ThrivingtheFuture.

Last week to get $5 off the Thriving Garden Planner. This includes a breakdown on How Much to Plant to live off your garden as a primary food source. It calculates how much space, how many plants/seeds you need for each crop. There are also tabs to track what you plant, inputs, first and last frost dates, and the food costs that you have saved by growing your own food. It's all customizable. It's available now on ThrivingGardenPlanner.com and is currently on sale for $5 off through the first week of June.