Easy Vegetable Gardening For Beginners

It’s easy for new or aspiring vegetable gardeners to get discouraged. With so many bugs and diseases, many choose not to start a garden. But I’m here to tell you that easy vegetable gardening is still possible if you know a few things.

Start with a small patch in your backyard where you can keep up with the needs of a garden: weeding, watering, nourishing, etc. If you start with more than you can handle, you’ll give up before you even start.

You can enjoy an easy vegetable garden by choosing vegetables that provide large crops in a small space (bumper crops).

These crops are easy to grow and require little time and effort to care for, but they will also provide plenty of produce for you to enjoy.

Favorite Veggies For Easy Vegetable Gardening

Grow zucchini and squash

Zucchini and squash are great crops: one plant can produce as many as 30 fruits in optimal conditions. If you have a small family, one of each would be plenty, but plant more for larger families (or those like me who LOVE zucchini).  you can always gift some to your neighbors 😉

Usually, you sow from seed in April and plant in June in rich manured soil. They will also benefit from a mulch of garden compost midway through the summer. If the weather is dry, keep them watered.

Zucchini is very versatile in the kitchen. Here are a few ways to prepare it:

• delicious spiralized zucchini fries
• great for pasta dishes
• pan-fried and chilled for salads
• zucchini with caramelized onions and almonds
• chocolate chip zucchini cake
• zucchini can also be frozen; simply slice, blanch, cool, dry, and freeze on trays before bagging up
• you can make some delicious soups (we usually batch-cook soups and freeze them in 2-portion bags)

Beans & peas grow fast without much fuss

Beans are an easy-to-grow crop that needs very little attention but rewards you well. We use an old bean trench method to grow our beans and peas. This method starts in autumn when we dig a trench in the position where we want our bean frames. We line the trench with newspaper and fill it with kitchen waste before backfilling. Although beans take their nutrients from the atmosphere, the rotting waste adds a little more, and the trench settles in a shallow to help retain water.

Most beans freeze well: simply blanch for 30 seconds, plunge into cold water, drain until dry, and freeze on trays.

I prefer string-less bean varieties like:

• blue lake bush bean
• contender bush beans
• Kentucky wonder pole beans
• tongue of fire beans
• yard long white beans

As a treat, try freshly picked runner beans, sliced and gently boiled, with butter and topped with a poached egg, free range.

Easy to grow tomatoes

Although the greenhouse cordon tomato is not what I would classify as an easy vegetable garden plant, a bush or window box tomato variety is.

Bush tomatoes can get quite big, and as long as they are fed well with liquid tomato food, they will keep you in baby tomatoes all summer.

The smaller pot varieties are not as prolific but put them in window boxes, pots, or hanging baskets, and they will look attractive and give you plenty of salad veg.

Quick tomato guides:

• What Is the Best Soil Mix for Tomatoes?
• How Far Apart To Plant Tomatoes For Better Yield
• How to Store Tomatoes: Expert Tips for Keeping Your Harvest Fresh and Flavorful
• What To Do With Split Tomatoes – 10 Tasty Ways To Enjoy Them

50 Tiny Tim Tomato Seeds – Dwarf Heirloom Cherry TomatoBush Early Girl Hybrid Tomato 150 Seeds10 Seeds San Marzano Bush Tomato – Prolific Producer

Easy To Grow Broad Beans

Broad beans are a very forgiving plant and one of the hardiest vegetables. They provide a lot of beans per plant. The broad bean is one of the first to be planted. As long as the weather isn’t extremely cold, they will be up and running quickly.

They are not too fussy about soil, but dressing with manure or potash will help them. They are not precisely trouble-free, as they are susceptible to black fly, chocolate spot, and rust, but neither of these is difficult to deal with, and no matter what the issue, it is a very prolific bean.

Kale is a great winter vegetable

Kale is a brassica with open leaves, very close to wild cabbage, and has become one of the most talked about vegetables of the day. The best time to eat kale is when the leaves are small and crispy and can be treated like cabbage.

This doesn’t necessarily mean boiled, but rather pan-fried in stir-fries, with pasta, in risotto, curries, pies, and soups. As you may guess, it is a very versatile vegetable and well worth growing.

Prolific Cucumbers

Cucumber is an easy vegetable garden plant that can be grown in a greenhouse or outside. If you are growing outside, either sow seeds in a propagator in May or sow directly under a cloche in June.

Cucumbers love full sun and rich soil, so adding some manure would greatly help it. Compost or pelleted fertilizers are good alternatives. Simply pinch off the growing tip when your plant has seven leaves and allow side shoots to trail or climb.

Homegrown cucumbers are much better than those you buy in the supermarket: they are juicy, crunchy, and flavorful. Even if you only grow one cucumber plant, you may need to get imaginative in the kitchen, as just one plant will give you more than enough to have with salad.

You can also try chilled cucumber soup or gazpacho, cucumber water, or a tasty cucumber relish.

What to Do With Too Many Cucumbers – 11 Easy Ways to Preserve Your Excess

As you can see, easy vegetable gardening is possible, and it will give you lots of yumminess in the kitchen! Oh, and if you like plants that return year after year without your intervention, here’s a list of perennial vegetables.

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