Plant These 5 Perennials NOW For Insanely EARLY Spring Harvests!

In this video, I share 5 early fruiting perennials you must grow for the earliest spring harvests possible! Waiting for that first big harvest of the new growing season can feel like an eternity after a long winter. These perennials cut the line and produce immediately in spring with little to no waiting! Plant these 5 perennials now for insanely early spring harvests each year!

How To Plant Asparagus: https://youtu.be/FtDoPyIrqL0?si=F4jFSR2OfBilEroq
How To Plant Strawberry Roots: https://youtu.be/Gj-W5HCMsMs?si=9hjtKJa8TZdhI3lH

The following bare root plants* were featured in this video (Seller is Hand Picked Nursery):
Purple Pacific Asparagus (10 Crowns): https://amzn.to/49PjLCg
Jersey Knight Asparagus (10 Crowns): https://amzn.to/4aghCiN
Quinalt Strawberry (10 Bare Roots): https://amzn.to/49R6klc
Quinalt Strawberry (25 Bare Roots): https://amzn.to/43jG40w
Albion Strawberry (10 Bare Roots): https://amzn.to/3wQmpZU
Albion Strawberry (25 Bare Roots): https://amzn.to/43ov8hZ
PrimeArk Freedom Blackberry (4 Plants): https://amzn.to/3ICsyLO

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Earliest Fruits For Temperate Climates
3:29 Early Perennial #1
5:36 Early Perennial #2
8:51 Early Perennial #3
11:56 Early Perennials #4 & #5
16:28 Early Perennial #5
20:48 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about growing early fruits in your yard and garden, want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #fruittrees #perennials

What’s growing on gardeners it’s Wednesday March 13th and spring is right around the corner here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina but even though the spring is just about here it may feel like an eternity before we’re harvesting anything more exciting than cold hearty leafy greens from our

Yard and garden what about the really exciting fruits that we love well for most of us they’re not available until the middle of summer which is months away but wait I’m here to tell you that’s not exactly the case and on this video I’m going to share with you five

Different perennials that will give you fruit immediately in the spring these are insanely early things to get you excited that you can start harvesting right away if you’re new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spread

Shop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed toar and other gear your support is greatly appreciated but before I begin we are not going to focus on subtropical and tropical fruit trees that can bear fruit during the winter we’re not going to talk about

Avocados we’re not going to talk about mangoes we’re not going to talk about some varieties of citrus that are able to fruit throughout the winter because frankly if you’re able to grow things like this throughout the winter your Winters probably aren’t that harsh I’m going to focus specifically on temperate

Species things that places with long hard Winters have to wait for because if you’ve ever lived in a location with a long hard winter where there’s 3 four or five months of everything being cold or dead you really look forward to Summer so the point of this video will be to

Focus on temperate species of fruit that fruit early in the spring that way you can really look forward to Spring earlier than ever before because you’ll get some nice fresh fruit on your plate when we think of summer we often think of big flashy fruits like peaches pears

Plums and nectarines but there’s a problem with those fruits they take forever to Bear you have to wait for your trees to wake up out of dormy you have to wait for them to flush green growth produce flowers the flowers have to be pollinated then they have to set

Fruit the fruit have to turn mature and then ripen on the tree it’s just a really long process and because of that if you live in places with long harsh Winters when March and April roll around you may not be all that excited for spring because you’re not really going

To be eating anything until Midsummer that’s really truly exciting that’s why I’m really excited to share these perennial fruits with you they start flowering and bearing fruit when it’s still pretty cold out so these fruits are ready to go even before the consistently warm temperatures of summer

Are here so you can get excited for early in mid-spring you don’t have to wait until the heat of Summer to have something good to eat one more final disclaimer I live just outside of Wilmington North Carolina Zone 8B and our last frost date is on average about

March 30th if you live in a climate that is significantly north of mine and you have a much later last frost date there’s nothing I can do to make it so your Harvest come in as early as mine that’s not the point of this video the

Point of this video is to make your harvests as early as feasible in your climate so if you have a last average frost date of May 15th you’re probably not used to picking very many fruits until sometime in August so if I can have you harvesting food in late May or

In early June that is a massive wind so keep in mind all of this is relative to your growing season this is to make things as early as possible if you’re in a much colder Zone there’s really nothing you can do Sands growing indoors or getting a greenhouse to catch up to

Me now right off the bat perennial number one is technically not a fruit although it is very sweet but no list of early perennials would be complete without it and that is asparagus asparagus is the first perennial in my garden to break dormy and provide me a

Harvest it is March 13th and asparagus Spears are coming up from the crowns all over this bed and if asparagus does not seem very exciting to you I don’t think you’ve ever had fresh asparagus right out of a garden you probably have only had the stuff at grocery stores which is

Tough and chewy and doesn’t taste very good at all fresh asparagus is so sweet it is just delicious about 3 or 4 years ago I can’t believe it’s been that long already I showed you how to plant asparagus crowns in this very bed and I will link to that video above and down

In the video description it’s very important that if you have a decent size yard and garden you grow asparagus because it is one of the easiest things you will ever plant it pretty much just sustains itself all I really do is prune it back in the winter and amend it with

A little bit of compost and organic fertilizer and in the spring and that’s really all I do an asparagus will produce for you for at least 20 years they’re a pretty long living perennial The Roots get very very large and they’re very very productive now I’m

Going to harvest one of these pieces of asparagus with uh for you but I want you to hear just how crisp this is listen to that snap and now listen to The Chew this is legitimately sweet like sugar it’s like honey so because of how early asparagus

Is the ease of growing it how productive they are and how delicious they are no Garden is complete without growing asparagus and these are one of those things that truly will get you excited for the spring if you’re curious where I purchased my asparagus crowns I’ll put direct links

Down in the video description as to where I got them perennial number two to get you the earliest possible harvests is strawberries the strawberry plant is probably the earliest of the fruiting plants that I’m aware of at least that I grow in my climate now strawberries are obviously delicious they are very easy

To grow but to get early harvests you do need to know a few things now there are three types of strawberries June bearing strawberries everbearing strawberries and day neutral strawberries the large strawberries that give you big Harvest all at once are the June bearing type so if you want overwhelming baskets of

Strawberries you kind of need to get the June bearing types because they focus all of their energy for that big single Harvest however they are not going to be the earliest strawberries for you to grow in your yard and garden because they focus all of that energy into one

Big Harvest if you want to have very early strawberries you should get yourself either everbearing strawberries or day neutral strawberries and plant them because they spread out the blooming over the course of an entire season so instead of focusing all that energy to get one big harvest in summer

They spread out that energy and they give you handfuls of strawberries here and there now if you want to have big bushels of strawberries because you want to process them into Jam like I said you want to get yourself a big bed full of June bearing types but you should also

Supplement them with another growing area that has day neutral or bearing varieties that way you can have nice handfuls of strawberries early in the spring now in my strawberry bed I have two different varieties of strawberries the strawberries over here that are not blooming yet are albian strawberries but

If you notice this entire section of strawberries right here are a totally different variety they are called quinnel and they are all flowering at the exact same time this is a day neutral strawberry that produces very large delicious sweet strawberries and as you can see I have flowers all over

The place and if you zoom in even more closely you will see that a bunch of these have already set fruit so I have strawberries there on that plant I have strawberries there on that plant ooh I have some really large strawberries that have formed down here so these early day

Neutral varieties they have already set strawberries for me and I will probably be able to start picking them in a matter of only weeks and hey now that I looked a little bit closer I noticed that my albian strawberries are starting to flow as well I believe these are a

Day neutral variety as well they’re just a little bit later they are starting to set fruit as well ah there are little baby strawberries there so this is the nice benefit of growing multiple varieties that way you have a staggered Harvest here in my climate I start picking these day neutral strawberries

As early as April so I will be out here probably only in about 3 or 4 weeks harvesting my very first strawberries they are one of the earliest fruits that you can plant so if you are not growing strawberries be sure to plant some day neutral or everbearing strawberries in a

Nice patch to give yourself really early harvests and if you want to process things into Jam start a June bearing bed as well just understand that they will be a little bit later perennial number three that you simply must grow for insanely early harvests is the blueberry

Believe It or Not blueberries are second only only to strawberries in my yard when it comes to earliness of the fruit and this should come as no surprise to you because my plants are absolutely loaded right now believe it or not most of the flowering is already complete and

I have tremendous fruit set with hundreds of berries on every single Bush now what is really amazing About Blueberries is I have no idea what the cold hardtin of the blooms are these bushes all start flowering for me in January and it gets pretty cold here in

In January we had back-to-back nights of 17° and 19° back in January it did absolutely nothing to the blooms and keep in mind I’m growing rabid eye and Southern High Bush varieties of blueberries so they’re not as cold hearty you can get half high or Northern High Bush varieties of blueberries that

Are even more cold hearty so it is impressive how early these things Bloom and start setting fruit and the cold the freezing temperatures it does absolutely nothing to them I start harvesting blueberries in April here in North Carolina blueberries require cross-pollination so you have to grow the same blueberry type with different

Varieties that are compatible to cross-pollinate so these are my Southern High Bush varieties I grow star and O’Neal the short Bush right here is an O’Neal this bush right here that is very tall and loaded with fruit is star you can see the blooms and fruits all over

The place and then the other short Bush right here is an O’Neal variety as as well so they intermix with their pollen and they cross-pollinate each other and for me the southern high Bush varieties are very early I’m picking them by mid April then over here I have rabid eye

Varieties of blueberries these are a little bit later so when I plant the two different types of blueberries uh I kind of get an early Harvest from the southern high Bush and a later Harvest from the rabbit eye for the rabbit eyes I grow creu Titan and something called

Pink lemonade this right here is a pink lemonade it’s one of the few self fertile blueberries and they are absolutely delicious and pink like the name implies but these are like I said they’re later so you can see they have more blooms on them but they’re still

Loaded with fruits so even the later rabid eye varieties are super productive and super early if you’re north of me you’ll probably want to grow Northern High Bush varieties instead of Southern High Bush varieties they have more chill hours so they flower a little bit later that way they avoid the really painfully

Cold nights of Winter the southern high bush will flower earlier that’s why they flower in January here but my januaries just aren’t cold enough to kill the blooms that’s responsible for the early harvests now if you need help growing blueberries I will link to a guide both

Above and down in the video description that will teach you everything you know about growing blueberries the hardest part is just picking compatible varieties once you get the right varieties in ground they are a breeze to grow and they will feed you for probably the rest of your life and perennials

Four and five that you should grow for insanely early harvest in Spring are primocane fruiting blackberries and raspberries what does that mean exactly the vegetative growth that grows up from the roots on blackberries and raspberries the branches if you will they’re actually called canes and there are two different types of canes

Primocanes and fuic Canes the big Hardy canes that grow right up out of the ground immediately in the warm weather they’re called the primac canes then later in the life of the primac cane they will have offshoots that shoot to an angle at the different nodes and then

They will produce flowers those little offshoots are called the Flor canes now most traditional varieties of blackberries and raspberries produce their fruit on the flu canes and they often don’t develop until the following season unless you’re in a really warm climate with a long growing season so

Typically the first year you plant your blackberries and raspberries they will grow primocanes from the roots and then the paines will overwinter you’ll prune them back a little bit and then they will shoot out side growth come the next spring and then that will have the flowers on them they will be the

Floricanes if you have a really long growing season you may be able to get florane production that first year in the fall if you’re lucky enough breeders are developing new varieties of blackberries and raspberries all the time and some of the new characteristics that they’re breeding into these

Varieties are the ability to fruit on the primes that first Year’s growth that initial growth and this is a huge game Cher No this is not GMO or anything funny like that this is just natural breeding processes sort of like seed saving when it comes to growing vegetables they’re just inbreeding

Certain traits that they want to express and these varieties are just amazing this is the very first Blackberry that I ever planted and this is a variety called Prime Arc Freedom that stands for Prime Arkansas Freedom uh it was developed in Arkansas it’s a very humidity and heat tolerant variety and

This is a primocane fruiter right here it is very vigorous it makes absolutely enormous fruit next to it I planted a traditional Blackberry called Navajo thornless much smaller fruit takes a lot longer to wake up and a lot longer to grow really kind of not all that happy

With that variety so much did I like the primarch freedom that I saw one at Lowe’s the following year and I planted another one in ground here just look at the difference in Vigor between that plant and that plant you can see the Primark freedom really is a winner in

Terms of growth so because the prime canes develop flowers on them and you don’t have to wait for the prime canes to be mature and produce floranes to flow they flour and fruit absurdly early just look at this Blackberry right here it is covered in flowers as far as the

Eye can see and some of them are already starting to bloom in fact it looks like a few of them already pollinated and right there I think you can see I actually have my first Blackberry forming already for the season now that Berry plant was 3 or 4 years old this

One is only a year or two old and it doesn’t matter it is flowering just like the other one you can see the power of these priman fruiting varieties they develop fruit so early and again it’s only March 13th and my berries are flowering now just like with my

Blueberries I have no idea what the cold hardiness of my blackberries are that’s because despite the fact that we get down into the teens every single winter here I’ve never seen mean a temperature where the blackberries die back they keep their leaves for most of the winter

They only lose about half of them the other ones stay kind of like a greenish purple they turn colors they turn some type of protectant purple color and then as soon as it warms up after Valentine’s Day they all turn green again and these start flowering for me often in the

Middle of February once we get a warm spell and then it gets freezing again we get nights in the 20s maybe even the upper teens and it does nothing to the blooms at all so because of this I get absurdly early production on my fruit I start harvesting blackberries here on

These priman fruiting varieties in May early May and they are huge enormous big blackberries absolutely delicious there one Berry is a whole mouthful it’s utterly astounding so if you want something that is really cold hearty really vigorous and fruits for you immediately both the first year and

Right away as the plants wake up from dormy get these Prime cane fruiting varieties it’s absolutely incredible now I have to be a little bit honest about something when it comes to raspberry varieties I’m far from an expert and that’s because I’m not the biggest fan of raspberries I love raspberry jam I

Love things with raspberry put into it whether it’s raspberry barbecue sauce raspberry cookies whatever love that but when it comes to actually eating the fruits themselves they’re not my favorite I tend to like blackberries a whole lot more so because of that I’ve been kind of late getting into the

Raspberry game I picked a plant about three years ago hated it dug it up threw it out and I replaced it this last fall with a new variety and this is a variety called double gold yellow and as the name implies this is actually a golden raspberry not a red raspberry and

Believe it or not I planted this last year but it did fruit for me the very first year probably because our growing season here is long enough now the reason why it’s double gold yellow is because it has two harvests it doesn’t just fruit on the floricanes it fruits

On the primocanes so what you do with this variety is as follows you allow the prime canes to grow as you typically would and they take the season to grow uh and then they should fruit for you in the fall but then you overwinter all of that growth and then they will produce

Floricanes in the late winter early spring the following year and you should have an early Harvest of spring berries basically on the old growth so because of that you would not prune these flush to the ground at the end of the season you would allow these plants to grow

Throughout the fall and then you would evaluate them come the end of winter and only remove any kind of dead growth you’d want to save whatever you possibly can because that previous year’s wood is going to fruit for you again The Following Season then when the old wood

Fruits from you that is when it will die back and you remove it it wouldn’t be an easy pruning job like the prime cane fru and blackberries that you can just cut down every single year but that being said if you do the pruning correct with these raspberries and you preserve the

Previous Year’s wood they will fruit for you come the middle of spring so because I just planted this over one year and uh it didn’t get a chance to really harden off it looks like it did take a little bit of winter damage as to be expected

In fact right here you can still see some of the uh the old raspberries from last year uh this was the old growth so I failed to remove that but the point being look for some of these varieties of raspberries that give you two harvests the first year you’ll only get

A late harvest in the fall but then if you preserve that old Year’s wood you’ll get something really nice and early in the spring the following year and that right there are five different perennials that you can grow to have the earliest Harvest as possible in Spring

Well relative to your spring anyway I know for me these are all the earliest things in my yard and garden now that being said I’m not saying that these are the only tempered fruits that are really early these are just the earliest things that I can vouch for that I grow

Personally I know that things like mulberries are supposed to be very early but I have no experience with them I haven’t grown them before and there are probably a bunch of other smaller fruited berries that will fruit for you very early as well maybe I’m just not

Familiar with them and of course there’s a ton of subtr Tropicals and tropicals that if you have the climate that can grow them throughout the winter they can flower and fruit for you in the winter as well so if you’re in a warm enough climate the world is your oyster but I

Wanted to make this video specifically for the people in temperate climates with very long Winters we kind of have medium Winters here in North Carolina but I used to live in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and when I dealt with those Winters that went on for about 5 months

I know how desperate we are come the spring that we bite into something delicious in our garden so hopefully these will give you some ideas to extend your Harvest and get fresh fruits as early as possible so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you

Did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these if you’re curious about any of the products that I use in in real life in my garden and to grow

These various fruit trees and perennials that I showed you in this video I’ll link to everything down in the video description below in my Amazon storefront so click on the Amazon link you’ll see everything I use in real life and while you’re down there check out my

Spread shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video Dale something terrible happened I went outside and I filmed a video and then I realized I am all out of

Adventures with Dale I need another one Dale can you do something cool is that all you’re going to do you’re just going to chew on your stuffed animal oh you have a cow hoof the stinkiest of all the Dale chews oh they’re stinky but he loves them

Probably why he likes him so much with that big old nose you are such a good boy