Bare Root Plants for Sale
Thank you for your interest and happy growing!
PLEASE READ: If you are local or regional to the Finger Lakes area (able to pick up in person), feel free to reach out to hello@edibleacres.org with a clear wish list of plants and we will work to arrange a pickup.
We update our inventory on March 1st for Spring bare root sales and September 1st for Fall bare root sales. If you are visiting this page and see everything as sold out, please make a note in your calendar to revisit at our next ‘opening’ and pick up some lovely plants!
Our Fall offerings tend to have higher numbers of trees, shrubs, cuttings and a medley of our abundant and fall appropriate herbaceous perennials. Spring offerings will generally have more herbaceous perennials, grasses, etc and a smaller number of trees and shrubs. We weight our inventory in large part based on seasonal appropriateness for establishment. We hope you understand and visit again if you don’t find what you are looking for this time.
If you are super eager to get plants now, we now have a Permaculture Nursery page that lists friends of ours with ethical and thoughtful growing practices. We strongly encourage you to check them out and get some awesome plants from them too!
TIP: Use the tags above to help filter our offerings by characteristic (ie. click on ‘fruit’ to find any fruit bearing plants we offer, etc.) As we add more and more it is a helpful way to find a plant to fit your goals…
Good King Henry
Good King Henry
Chenopodium Bonus-Henricus / Blitum Bonus-Henricus
Good King Henry. An incredible perennial spinach analog. Leaves can be harvested and cooked like spinach and taste rich, deep and nourishing. Unlike spinach, this is a powerfully tap rooted and hardy perennial! G.K.H. comes up super early in the spring, generally when dandelions and nettles are just waking up, making it one of the very first and lovely greens of the season. They will ‘bolt’ or flower as the season warms, but the good news is the young flowers can be harvested and cooked up and taste great, too! The seeds can be collected and cooked like a wild quinoa if you wanted as well…
We’ve trialled GKH in a number of contexts and it can handle most every place we’ve planted it. Ideal location is rich, well drained soil in full(er) sun early in the season and shadier for the heat of the summer. This can be accomplished by planting it near young orchard trees or on the east side of shrubs, etc. We’ve tested it’s ability to compete with lawn and as an edge plant it can really hold its own against grass and other weeds. Easy to expand by seed if you collect enough to sow thickly in a nursery bed and let them sporadically germinate as they are ready, or simply let them lean their flower heads over as the seeds ripen and drop and grow around them. Seems to be uninteresting to both rabbits and deer and no pests seem to bother them. They can get sun scalded and sad looking in peak summer but perk right back up in the cool moist times of fall. A real winner of a perennial vegetable for sure.
Good King Henry has just about fully satisfied our desire for spinach in the garden and at this point we’re hard pressed to put in the work of starting spinach from seed each year!
Size:
2-3’ tall, generally 2’ in peak flower
Site Preference:
Enjoys rich, evenly moist but well drained soil in full sun to part shade. Deep mulch around them keep them happy as summer warms. If you are in a much warmer climate than zone 5B you’d want to provide them shade from mid-day onward during most of summer…
Hardiness:
Zone 3 to 7 (or up to 9 if planted in cooler microclimates)
