perennials

perennials have been the real focus of this garden for the last three years and they are doing well...some of them unexpectedly so...for how long this will last is an unanswered question...but that's part of the point of it all... just how resilient are they? especially the immigrants...the plant/replant perennial jerusalem artichokes are plant/replant only if you're trying to control them...let them alone and they will colonize an area to its limits..i am concerned about the small stature of this year's crop...there will either be a preponderance of tubers or very few...won't know until next month...the second photo is of a two year old stand of zea diploperennis whose continued existence i can only attribute to a mild winter...i will be mulching it heavily this autumn in hopes of preserving it for a third...a second season of root system building may give it a better chance of wintering over...if not it was a gift and a remembrance in one and i will keep the photos prominent...the exuberant gamagrass is in its third season...tough to germinate and seemingly tougher still to eliminate...it will be a relentless fixture for some time...especially if i can find an heir to the garden, if not the project...the chinese yams have been in the ground since the fall of 2009 and are reproducing as extravagantly as the gamagrass...hundreds of bulbs will mean a culling of yams in the spring...i am curious to see what i find at harvest...the asparagus is in its third season as well...properly cared for it has about twenty-two left...that would put me in my eighties and the garden well into the century...i'm game to try to be as perennial as the plants...if things fall out as planned this autumn will see a sea change in the direction of the garden and the disappearance of jerusalem artichokes ( from campus...not from home...i still like to eat them ) and annuals altogether...rootstock perennials will pretty much have the garden to themselves and there will be a shift towards permaculture...at least that's the plan as it stands...we will know the answers in september.