Which are the best vegetables to grow?

[RoughCollie]

I'm thinking about giving square foot gardening a try this year.

 

What have you found are the best veggies to grow, in terms of being able to eat them when harvested *and* freeze them for later use? I don't want to end up with a bumper crop of something we can't do that with.

 

I also want to grow some herbs, but I don't know how to preserve those I don't use right away. Does anyone here know how to do that?

 

My aim is to not have to pay high grocery store prices for organic vegetables, to grow enough for now and later, and to have as wide a variety as is practical.

 

I'm looking into growing strawberries, blueberries and asparagus, too.

 

Also, how do you keep wild animals from eating your crops?

 

Thanks for your help!

RC

Wannabe Gardener

[Mrs. Readsalot]

We grow

tomatoes extras are made into sauce and sun dry tomatoes (in a dehydrator)

Sugar snap peas never any let over, often don't make it out of the garden

peppers both hot and sweet lots of extra hots peppers get dehydrated) sweet peppers are made into various things and frozen

lettuce grown in staggered small batches so we always have a fresh supply

basil fresh pesto also dry some

cucumbers only eaten fresh, but I would like to try making pickles

this year we are trying apple gourds for fun

and a heirloom melon my son wanted to try.

[percytruffle]

I see you are in New England so I will give it a shot.

 

If you want something that will produce in abundance so you can eat it fresh and freeze some, I would recommend green beans, either pole beans or bush beans. I have had very good output with a variety of bush bean called Provider form Johnny's Selected Seeds. The other big recommendation is of course tomatoes. You can can the tomatoes whole after scalding them to remove the skins or you can make sauce and salsa and can or freeze that. You can even use the green tomatoes you are left with at the end of the season, the ones that won't have time to ripen due to frost, to make green tomato relish.

 

I like to grow spaghetti squash just because we really like it and it has gotten rather expensive to buy in the stores. It is a space hog though as are all squashes because of their sprawling growth pattern.

 

Carrots are another good option for freezing as long as your soil is soft and loose and you don't have an abundance of rocks.

 

Potatoes store well in a cool celllar and are fairly easy to grow. Harvesting the young fingerling potatoes is great. They are so tender.

 

Brussels sprouts are a great veggie to grow because you can keep them on the plant past the first frost, using them as needed. Then, you can blanch and freeze them.

 

Good luck!

[percytruffle]

I forgot the herbs. Most herbs I just snip a bunch when they are ready, tie with kitchen twine and hang in the kitchen (out of sunlight) to dry. I just reach up and pick some off to use it or go out and cut some fresh to use. After it is dry it can be frozen in baggies. I grow/have grown: basil, oregano, thyme, dill, and rosemary.

[jmgconner]

I'm looking into growing strawberries, blueberries and asparagus, too.

 

 

If you want asparagus, you'll need to wait 3 years. It takes that long to mature.

 

I'm glad to see this thread - we're doing our square foot garden this year, too. We're growing lettuces, peppers, radishes (I love radishes), tomatoes, green beans, onions, plus a few other things spread out throughout the growing season.

[Melissa in Australia]

lettuce is really easy to grow, and if you do successive plantings, it is easy to supply enough lettuce for salad every day . if you have room, corn is good. but the best veggies for a small garden are beans, tomatoes, radishes, zucchini, cauliflower and lettuce.Onions take 9 months, so use up a lot of room and are only suitable for a large garden.

we have a large veggie patch, a little bigger than a tennis court. we grow all the vegetables we need for the whole year to feed a fammily of 7, with 4 growing hungry boys. Because of where I live, we can grow veggies all year round, though we have frosts in the winter.

[Mom2legomaniacs]

Forgive me for this but I cannot help myself tonight.

 

But,

 

the kind you eat!:lol:

[Michelle in MO]

zucchini, though? You can hardly kill them! They're easy to give away, and you can dice them or shred them up and put them in the freezer to make zucchini bread or chocolate zucchini bread later on.

 

I'm not a gardener, but this is one veggie even I can grow!

[JFSinIL]

then you can make and freeze lots of pesto, which my kids consider a (yummy) food group all its own.

[NCMom]

I'm thinking about giving square foot gardening a try this year.

 

What have you found are the best veggies to grow, in terms of being able to eat them when harvested *and* freeze them for later use? I don't want to end up with a bumper crop of something we can't do that with.

 

For freezing, corn and green beans are our best bets. Too bad we can't get corn to do well. Really, w/6 people we have to grow a LOT to have appreciable freezing quantities. I buy some at the farmer's markets instead. If our dirt had not been soo worn out and over-tilled it would not have taken us so long to get going, though.

 

I also want to grow some herbs, but I don't know how to preserve those I don't use right away. Does anyone here know how to do that?

 

You can get this info at your coperative extention office or from any number of gardening books. Here's the info from ours

Preserving Herbs

 

My aim is to not have to pay high grocery store prices for organic vegetables, to grow enough for now and later, and to have as wide a variety as is practical. I'm looking into growing strawberries, blueberries and asparagus, too. Also, how do you keep wild animals from eating your crops?

 

 

It all depends on the room you have and the soil/climate you have. I would start researching organic methods asap 'cause they are many and varied. We do a totally organic, somewhat intensive planting, companion planting, low till/no till, Ruth Stout, Lasagna type method. :blink: The SFG method worked ok for us in NH (though I never double dig like he used to recommend and I like real dirt, not store bought lol) but here it doesn't work for us as written because the spacing is too close and we have problems with airflow and humidity.

 

It took us several years and MUCH experimentation to get here and we still experiment each year. This year we are going with mostly non-hybrid seeds and we saved many seeds from last year. It takes a lot of dedication (and compost!) to really impact our family's grocery bill but it's worth it and fun. We have 7000 sq feet and in a few more years we should really see some serious results.

 

Oh and for animals we have a 5ft fence, three cats and three dogs. That pretty much does the trick here.

 

hth,

Georgia -my favorite green bean in the world is Masai and you can get it from Pinetree or Fedco, it's a hybrid I think, but I don't care...:)

[Ravin]

I like growing zuchinni. It's easy and freezes well shredded for making bread and muffins and throwing in pasta sauce later. Also you have to go out of your way not to grow it successfully.

 

Keep in mind anything that normally sprawls on a vine can be grown vertically in a square foot garden, including various squashes and pumpkins even. It can save a lot of space.

[Rosie_0801]

I recommend the Mexican "3 sisters" from a space saving point of view. Three different crops from the same bit of ground. I'd also set aside a large pot for flat parsley. If you plant some this year and next, it'll self seed and you'll have parsley for life with almost no effort. Chives aren't too much trouble either. Start small, and add something new each season until you've reached the limit of interest, time or water (we live in a high water restriction area.) Heirloom veggies are the most rewarding to grow, I think. Sometimes they're not so good as your supermarket varieties, but usually they're better. Even if they aren't good, they're still *different* which makes them a worth experiment. If your kids are interested, see if you can locate a copy of "Cabbages and Kings" by Jonathan Roberts. He's gone through all sorts of obscure primary sources to find the history of fruits and vegetables. Did you know avocado is first recorded as being grown in Spain in 1601? That may not interest you, but as an SCAer it interests me!! I just wish I knew what they were doing with them...

:)

Rosie

[In The Great White North]

are really why I garden. I grow cherry, Roma and Brandywine. We eat them fresh and make sauce. One year I froze them whole. It works very well for sauce. When you take it out of the freezer, run it under warm water and the skin just peels right off. Then I throw it in the pot. If we have enough cherry tomatoes, I run them in the food processor before canning and no one ever notices the skins. I did try a variety known for ripening in paper in the basement through the winter one year and we were still eating them in January.

 

I also freeze green beans, chives, scallions, dill and chopped green pepper. Peas taste watery when frozen, but are usually eaten in the garden anyway.

 

Others I have planted but don't feel I really got the most out of it are: potatoes, kale, broccoli (huge plant, hardly any "flowers"), brussel sprouts, canteloupe (Growing season's too short), lettuce and spinach (didn't stagger enough), carrots, onions, radishes, zucchini (no one really likes), corn (critters).

 

Marigolds planted in and around everything cut down on the bugs, but four cats and a dog didn't deter the deer. I'll have to increase the fortifications this year.

[Doran]

...We have 7000 sq feet and in a few more years we should really see some serious results.

 

 

 

 

Holy big garden, Batman!! That's a serious amount of space you've got going there, Georgia! Do you can/freeze constantly all summer long?

 

 

RC --

 

My quick answer to your question is to grow the things your family loves most. Now, after that, the answer gets more complicated. Because it depends on lots of factors.

 

How much space you have is a big part of deciding what you grow. Many squashes and melons, for example, take up a lot of room. So does corn, for the yields, as well as potatoes. Not to mention that, in the long run, squash and potatoes are relatively cheap to buy, so if I had a small garden, I wouldn't bother using space for those items. Unless of course you guys could eat those things with every meal. Then, it might be valuable to you.

 

The condition of your soil also matters. Certain crops do better in sandy soils than in heavier soils. Some crops are more tolerant of heavy soils. Perennial herbs tend to thrive under neglectful conditions. Spinach is a heavy feeder as are cucumbers. So, some of your choices may be affected by soil quality.

 

Some plants are relatively easy to grow. Some will require more love and patience, and probably a greater learning curve. The success of some will depend on your weather conditions.

 

In terms of which things are good for storage:

 

Tomatoes are easy to cook and can or to freeze whole or as sauce

Shelling beans like borlotto, lima, and cranberry freeze beautifully (better, imo, than green beans)

Corn (but I would buy it -- it's a tricky one)

Edamame (fresh soy beans)

Tomatillos

Onions - certain varieties

Garlic - but you'll have to wait for next year to harvest, plant this fall

 

Herbs

Annuals/Biennials:

Basil -- if you like I can tell you how I store it...not as pesto

Cilantro

Parsley

Dill

 

Perennials:

Rosemary -- easy peasy

Sage - ditto

Thyme - harder to harvest but easy to grow

 

 

 

 

 

So, in my VERY small garden which we intend to put in this weekend, I expect to grow the following, spring to fall:

 

Lettuce and salad greens like arugula and mizuna - succession planted

Tomatoes

Cucumbers

Sweet peppers

Green beans, hopefully

Tomatillos

Sugar snap peas -- though I think I'm too late already

onions or scallions

 

Herbs --

Basil

Parsley

Cilantro

Rosemary

Sage

Thyme

 

 

 

Are you sorry you asked?! :D

 

 

Doran

[NCMom]

Holy big garden, Batman!! That's a serious amount of space you've got going there, Georgia! Do you can/freeze constantly all summer long?

 

Naah, that fenced area has the blueberries and strawberries also plus room set aside for asparagus, blackberries and raspberries. And we repeatedly attempt corn which takes up a lot of space but so far yields mostly sadness, haha. Potatoes are space hogs too. We grow buckwheat for the bees which we hope to have someday and for the wild bees (or the ones that belong to someone else anyway) enjoy it immensely right now, lol. Stuff like that just takes up lots of space. Plus this sad dirt has every bug, virus and fungus known to man, so we have to over-plant just to get by! It gets better every year though.

 

And I so agree about the rosemary. We planted one 3 years ago and it is massive - can't kill that sucker! Herbs like that are nice once they get established.

 

georgia

(I'd risk it and plant the sugar snaps anyway unless you are lower than zone 7b or so, you'll probably still get some yield before the heat and nothing is better 'n fresh peas!)

[Rachel]

My husband just built me some new beds for my square foot garden....and I posted the photos on my website if you want to look.

 

I just planted a whole square of strawberries

I do typical salad fare.......lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions

Peas in spring, beans in summer

I'm going to try some pumpkin and watermelon this year for the first time.

 

I'm sold on square foot gardening and have been doing it for 5 years now and wouldn't do it any other way.

 

You can tuck herbs inbetween other crops or do a square of herbs by themselves or what I like to do is, is do them in pots on my deck........looks nice, I can control the crazy growers (like rosemary) and it looks nice on my deck.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Home grown tomatoes have the best taste - they are nothing like the grocery store tomatoes! I definitely would include tomatoes.

[Liz CA]

then you can make and freeze lots of pesto, which my kids consider a (yummy) food group all its own.

 

I preserve basil (of which I usually have an abundance) by chopping it up and putting it in ice cube trays with a little water. I freeze it and whenever I need some basil, I take a cube out.

[RoughCollie]

Thank you all so much for your advice.

 

I'm going to plan the garden this weekend and get whatever I need. It's too early to plant anything outside, but I'll probably start some plants inside this week.

 

This ought to be interesting.

 

The last time I planted anything, the boys were about 4 years old. They still remember our bumper crop of zucchini -- exactly 5 zucchinis grew. This after I told them that we would have too many for them to count.

 

I beefed up the soil with cow manure back then, which the boys were very interested in. I found out why when the plants came up. The boys thought we were growing cows. They were so disappointed when they saw the seedlings.

 

So I have a reputation around here for having a black thumb. I'm about to surprise them all.

 

Thank you again for your help.

 

RC