Growing your own vegetable garden is an incredibly rewarding hobby. Homegrown veggies always taste better, especially when they’re freshly picked!
Growing your own veggies also means that you decide how they’re grown. You won’t have to worry about toxic pesticides or weed killers. Taking a natural organic approach to gardening is safer for you and the environment.
Starting your first garden can be intimidating though. That can be doubly true if you’ve struggled and failed with starting one in the past.
Thankfully, some plants are much more forgiving than others (just ask my cactus!). This includes veggies, and these not so picky produce can be the perfect place to start on your dream garden.
Here are a few perfect plants to grow in your first vegetable garden:
Green beans are an excellent plant for a beginner vegetable garden. You can choose to grow either pole beans or bush beans. Pole beans need a trellis to climb and can a lot of aesthetic value to your garden.
If you want to keep things simple though then sticking with bush beans is the way to go. You only need to plant them a half an inch under the soil, 3 to 6 inches apart with about 1 to 2 feet between rows.
Keep them well-watered, and after about 50 days, your first harvest will be ready. Green beans will provide a continuous harvest all summer long, so be sure to pick them to make room for new pods to grow!
Zucchini is another vegetable that’s very easy to grow. It’s also very prolific, a single plant produces 6 to 10 pounds of zucchini.
You should plant these crops at least 2 feet apart from each other. After about 50-60 days, your first crop should be ready to harvest. From that point on check on your plants for new produce often. Once your zucchini plants start producing, you’ll be picking more every day!
Tomatoes are yet another vegetable that isn’t very difficult to grow. There’s plenty of varieties of tomatoes to choose from. Like green beans, there are two main growing types: bush and cordon.
Bush tomatoes are the friendlier choice for a beginner gardener. Cordon tomatoes need to be supported by a stake and their side shoots need to be pinched out. Bush tomatoes don’t require all that extra fuss.
Your tomatoes are ready for picking when they are very red and firm. After you harvest them, you’ll see that no store-bought tomato can compare with the taste of a homegrown one!
Radishes are one of the easiest vegetables to grow and make an ideal choice for your first vegetable garden. Not only are they very easy to grow, but you can harvest them as early as three weeks after planting!
Plant radishes half an inch under the soil and an inch apart.
You can plant them in both the spring and fall, but they don’t perform as well in the high temperatures of summer.
For a continuous harvest in the late spring and early summer try planting a round of seeds every ten days.
Check to see if they are ready to harvest three weeks after planting. Ideally, they should have roots about one inch in diameter at the surface of the soil. If so, pull one up to check before harvesting the rest.
Leafy greens like lettuce, spinach, and kale are also easy to grow and form the base to your own homegrown salad.
To start growing your own salad in your backyard, start to plant them early in the spring. Space out your plantings two weeks at a time to keep up at steady harvest. Lettuce and spinach grow best during the spring and fall while kale can take the summer heat. Spinach is exceptionally well suited to the cold and can even continue growing into winter.
Pick your greens by carefully removing their leaves from the plant’s growing center. Keep the plants watered and lightly fertilize them, and they will regrow for another harvest.
These plants are the perfect place to start your first veggie garden. They also make for one tasty homegrown salad! Just give it a try and before you know it, you’ll develop your green thumb.
About the author: Tom is a web designer, writer, and DIY fanatic. He enjoys traveling and hikes in the mountains. You can find more from him at his website leadingdiy.com.
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