Plan on growing pepper plants there. Figuring if it stays fairly warm in the Fall, I can leave the peppers to ripen and they should look fine up until Frost.

Anything that will not deteriorate in appearance in the Fall? Or any vegetable plants you'd recommend for growing in the front garden, where you want everything to always look fresh?

Rodney

Sweet potatoes planted in a tall wide planter will spill down and spread outwards. Heart-shaped green leaves, and the vines reached about 6' for me this year. Once the soil temperature gets to 50 degrees, the potatoes will stop growing, and they need to be harvested before a hard frost which may damage shallow tubers.

Scarlet runner beans will bloom from midsummer to frost. They are tall vines which need strings or some other support and have bright red flowers that hummingbirds love. The very young beans can be eaten and steamed as green beans, and the older pods can be left until they are dry when the maroon and pink seeds can be harvested for use as dry beans (and to save a few for planting next year.)

If you want to consider perennial edibles, I also like the large leaves and bright red stems of my rhubarb. I usually let the plant bloom (a tall frothy creamy white fountain of tiny flowers) and when they start fading, cut them off. If you have acid soil, both cranberries (tiny-leafed evergreen vines with minute pink flowers and large red berries that last all winter) or blueberries (white spring flowers, summer berries, and bright red fall foliage and some types with colored winter twigs) are quite ornamental.

I grow all those I listed above. Others I like but I haven't grown include artichokes which have similar large leaves to cardoon (you eat the leaf stalk on cardoon and the bloom buds on artichokes, but I'm told the flavor is similar), bright lights Swiss chard (green leaves with brightly colored stalks in pinky-red, gold, and orange), and alpine strawberries, which don't have the offsets that regular strawberries have, and come with gold leaves or white berries as well with regular green leaves and red berries.

Ornamental cabbages are edible, but the leaves are sometimes small.

Nice photo of your Redbor Kale, Babs. It is pretty! We’ve been eating Kale all summer too. We grew Dinosaur Kale, but I started it late and it was growing through the heat and was on the bitter side. I’m waiting for cold weather thinking it might sweeten it up. Nice looking plant if I could get the timing right.

We do like sweet potatoes. I want to try those next year. A large planter would be a great idea.

And I saw someone’s photo of hummers on their Scarlet Runner Beans and I definitely am going to try that next season.

I used to have Rhubarb, but no one ever ate it so I gave it away. Maybe I should try it again. My soil is about 6ph in most spots. I did add blueberries this season and used sulfur to amend the soil. I’m also mulching with pine needles and sawdust. We’ll see how that works out next year. Right now the foliage is SO red. Really nice.

Rodney

Glib, I like celery that sounds like it could work out. Thanks.

I have grown Herbs in the vegetable garden, that we use but I like to keep it to annuals in my raised beds. In the front where I am creating a new bed, I could use perennial herbs. I do already use Marjoram, which is a great plant for bees and nice filler for vases with flowers. Do you have any suggestions?