11 Edible Plants That Spread and Grow Like Crazy

Most beginning gardeners focus on traditional vegetables popular for summer gardens, crops like tomatoes, squashes, cucumbers, green beans, and peppers. Others will get into roots like potatoes, carrots, radishes, and beets. Throw in a few greens—kale, lettuce, chard, etc.— and that’s a full garden, and that’s great.

However, there are more things to add to the mix. There are edible plants that will not only provide food but spread themselves around like weeds. There are lots of good eats that will grow and grow and grow. These are plants that don’t necessarily belong in a garden with others but in a semi-wild edible landscape where they can run wild.

In other words, these are great foods to grow, and they are exciting in that they can potentially provide more food than a gardener knows what to do with. Then again, they are also going to be there to stay, and the task will be keeping them contained rather than worrying about nurturing them to production.

Maypop/Passionfruit

Source: North Tropics/YouTube

There is a species of passionfruit native to the temperate climate that grows wild in the US. It is often called maypop or passionflower. It’s a beautiful, vigorous vine that will happily climb a trellis or tree or, just as happily, sprawl out over the ground. The leaves and flowers make a great sedative tea, and the fruits are passionfruit, the same as in the tropics. Maypop spreads by runners underneath the ground, and one plant will quickly turn into ten next year and a hundred the year after.

Blackberries & Raspberries

Source: GrowOrganic Peaceful Valley/YouTube

Other common wild edible plants in the United States, blackberries and raspberries, are prolific spreaders capable of taking over an unmaintained field or roadside embankment. Like maypop, they’ll send out underground runners that hugely multiply the plant. Regular maintenance (cutting away old canes) and training (trellising the canes) can help to keep a berry plot manageable and productive.

Hops

Source: Homesteading Family/YouTube

Hops are usually thought of as something used to make beer, particularly those popular IPAs we love these days. But, this plant has other things to offer. The stalks, leaves, flowers, and especially shoots can be used as vegetables. The shoots are compared to asparagus and fiddleheads, and they are prepared similarly: a quick sauté. The flowers can be used to make a sedative tea as well, and that tea is also used to treat urinary tract infections. Hops are long vines that grow and spread from rhizomes (underground stems) like ginger and turmeric.

Jerusalem Artichokes/Sunchokes

Source: Self Sufficient Me/YouTube

Sunchokes are perennial members of the Helianthus, or sunflower, genus. They have delicious tubers that can be prepared much the same as potatoes—mashed, boiled, fried—or they can be eaten raw to provide a crunch comparable to water chestnuts. Jerusalem artichokes can grow six feet tall and produce pretty yellow flowers. Once established, they tend to stay and multiply where planted because any remnant of tuber left in the soil will sprout a new plant in the spring.

Strawberries

Source: GrowVeg/YouTube

Unlike blackberries and raspberries, strawberries don’t grow on canes. They stay close to the ground and spread via runners, mostly above ground. They are aggressive and capable of spreading all over a mound or well-mulched bed (and the paths around it). It’s possible to find strawberries in the wild, but cultivated plants generally produce much larger berries. These are great groundcover plants below fruit trees or shrubs.

Bamboo

Source: Hollywood & Vines/YouTube

Bamboo is one of the plants that has been painted with invasive brush and has become feared by some gardeners. While they can spread like crazy, they can also be controlled quite easily. Harvesting bamboo shoots would be quite helpful in this way. In terms of edibility, not all bamboo is not created equally, so it’s worth finding a choice edible for those interested in growing it. It spreads by underground runners and can easily sprout 10-20 feet away from existing plants. That said, new sprouts that aren’t eaten can be mowed like grass to keep the bamboo from spreading.

Mint, Lemon Balm, Oregano, & Thyme

Source: HortTube with Jim Putnam/YouTube

The mint family is huge, and many of the plants in it are prolific spreaders, either via runners that stretch far and wide or via clumps that simply expand outward. Mint of all flavors, lemon balm, oregano, and thyme all belong to this family and are excellent spreaders and producers. Mint moves via runners and will spread a la running bamboo and can take over everything if left unchecked, but lemon balm, oregano, and thyme expand via clumps and are much easier to control.

A space with these plants in it is sure to produce an abundance of food, and as long as the gardener is on top of harvesting it and keeping the plants under control, it can be a great way to grow food.

Related Content:

• 7 Unique Fruits To Try Out This Summer and Their Health Benefits!
• Profile of the Maypop: Passionfruit for the Temperate Climate
• 9 Ways to Make Gardening Easier for the Elderly
• 5 Ways to Grow Your Own Garden With or Without A Yard
• 5 Reasons Wildlife is Good for Your Garden

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