Cicada Seeds is seeking farmers to trial perennial vegetables on their market gardens!
There are many advantages to growing perennial vegetables such as improved carbon sequestration, soil health, farm ecology, and nutrition, and they are potentially less work to maintain than annuals. They’re becoming more widely adopted by gardeners, but can they be grown profitably by market gardeners and farmers to feed the masses? Let’s figure it out together!
I’m Michalina of Cicada Seeds and I’m interested in working with farmers to grow the body of knowledge around growing perennial vegetables on farms for profit. I’d like to see their wider adoption because of their many environmental benefits, potential for reduced labour, and ability of some species to grow in “marginal” areas, like flooded or dry land. Despite these advantages, there isn’t a lot of data on growing them in an efficient and profitable way (in Turtle Island/North America at least). Is it possible to grow them at scale? What’s the best way to plant, manage, harvest, package, market, and sell them to different types of customers? Which varieties thrive where? What pests and diseases pop up in different climates and how can we manage them?
Fill out this form to apply for this participatory research project.
Deadline to apply: February 28, 2026
Eligibility
Location
I’m looking for vegetable farmers based anywhere in the world, that can acquire seeds or plants of any perennial vegetables listed below. Preference for farms in temperate areas (i.e. not tropical since there are already so many options for tropical perennials).
Farm Scale
If you grow and sell vegetables on a larger scale than the average gardener, please apply! Approximately 1/8 acre minimum in cultivation. I’m especially interested in larger scale farms, but data from all farm sizes and styles will be considered.
Experience
Ideally you’d have a few years of farming experience and established sales markets/customers already. You do not need to have experience with growing perennial vegetables, but some species are tricky to germinate so experience, patience, and dedication for seed starting may be helpful.
Sales Channels
Any. For example: Farmers’ Markets, CSA, restaurants, retail, farm stands, etc.
Growing practices
Any
Time commitment
You’ll need to research the varieties on how best to grow them, then plant, grow, care for, harvest, market, and sell the varieties you choose throughout the season. Ideally you would take some notes and photos throughout the growing season as you see fit. The level of detail is up to you, but the more the better. I will send out a survey at the end of the season, or we can have a conversation over phone or zoom instead.
Space commitment
Whatever you see fit. Ideally you can grow enough plants to evaluate and compare to your annual veggies. Please keep in mind that some varieties are more experimental and might not return a profit, and sometimes take a few years to start producing much food.
Hopefully we will be able to continue this project in 2027 (and beyond), so a row that you can use for 2+ years for this experiment would be ideal.
Variety Selection
I’d recommend only choosing one to three new varieties to document in the trial. My top recommendations for market gardens are:
Leeks
- Delft Perpetual Leek (Allium ampeloprasum)
- Babington’s Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. Babingtonii)
Kale & Broccolini
- Homesteader’s Kaleidoscopic Perennial Kale Grex (or any perennial kale variety, Brassica olearacea)
- Sea Kale (Crambe maritima)
- 9-Star Broccoli (Brassica oleracea)
Root veggies
- Skirret (Sium sisarum, pink or white)
- Groundnut (Apios americana, any variety) (requires trellising)
- Camas (Camassia spp., any species/variety)
Leafy greens (Substitutes for lettuce, spinach, or additions to salad mix)
- Spinach Vine (Hablitzia tamnoides) (requires trellising)
- Sweet Lettuce (Reichardia picroides)
- Sylvetta Arugula (Diplotaxis tenuifolia)
- Good King Henry (Blitum bonus-henricus, should be cooked)
- Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica, should be cooked)
- Sochan (Rudbeckia laciniata, any variety)
- Patience Dock (Rumex patientia)
Onions
- Potato Onions (Allium cepa var. aggregatum, any variety, storage onions)
- Egyptian walking onions (Allium x proliferum, green & spring onions)
- Welsh Onions (Allium fistulosum, green & spring onions)
Other
- Seombadi Korean Celery (Dystaenia takesimana, celery leaf)
- Hosta (Hosta spp. any species, any variety, shoots/young leaves)
You may source varieties from Cicada Seeds or from any other vendor.
If you are already growing or interested in trialling other varieties, I encourage it!
Disease Pressure/Growing Conditions
If you know you have trouble with growing certain plant families due to your farm’s growing conditions or pests/disease, you may want to avoid that family. Alternately, you may want to play around with testing perennial varieties for their resistance, but please recognize that they aren’t invincible.
Compensation
Participants who complete a survey or interview at the end of the season will receive a $50 CAD gift card to Cicada Seeds. I will be seeking additional funding for the project so compensation may increase.
Timeline
- Applications are open until Feb 28, 2026. Applications will be processed on a rolling basis. Keep an eye out for an email from grow@cicadaseeds.ca
- You may purchase or otherwise acquire seeds/plants before or after being accepted into the program, but keep in mind that some varieties require cold stratification or may need to be started early in the season depending on your climate.
- Grow out the vegetables during the 2026 growing season.
- Complete the end-of-season survey or interview Oct 2026-Jan 2027. Receive your gift card shortly after.
- There will hopefully be an option to repeat the experiment in 2027 as the plants mature.
Resources
- Cicada Seeds Website - check out the variety descriptions and Growing Instructions tab of each variety listing
We will be building on some incredible research that’s already been done on commercial opportunities for perennial vegetables. Please check out the links below for ideas, inspiration, and technical growing tips:
- Commercial Opportunities for New Perennial Crops and Climate Smart Agriculture: Featuring Sea Kale, Spinach Vine, & Hosta. Vermont, USA, 2021
- Permakulturhaven Myrrhis: Four-year Research Project: Perennial vegetables as part of the climate solution. Rønde, Denmark, 2023
- Project Overview here
- Report on perennial vegetables as commercial crops (Danish)
-
Report on perennial vegetables as commercial crops (Machine Translated by Google- English)
- Fact Sheets About Perennial Vegetables (see bottom left of page, Danish)
- Nutrient Composition of Perennial Vegetables in Denmark, Sweden, and the United States by Toensmeier et al.
Deadline to apply: February 28, 2026
Fill out this form to apply for this participatory research project
Questions? Email Michalina at grow@cicadaseeds.ca
