Team Annual, or Team Perennial?

Annuals are plants that complete their life cycle every year. This means that they germinate, flower, set seed, and die all during one year.

Perennials are flowers that come back from the root and/or stem year after year. Plant them once, and they are here to stay (assuming the best case scenario, of course!).

Which team do you garden on? Is your garden filled with primarily annuals or perennials?

Here at the Whitinger Farmstead, we garden primarily on Team Perennial. The children grow some annual flowers for the biannual Master Gardener plant sale, and the left-overs go in the ornamental gardens, but otherwise no other annuals currently reside there.

The herb gardens lean heavily on the Perennial Team, but do host some annuals such as basil, as well as the sage that I grow fresh from seed every year, and other things like the sunflowers that sporatically pop up and the biennial parsley.

The vegetable gardens are, of course, annuals. New this year for us will be some of the perennial staples that we've been wanting to get started. Both strawberries and asparagus beds will go in a few weeks from now.

Which team are your gardens?

~Image thanks to "huggergirl"!