Got my first garden seed catalog today----what are your favorites to plant?

[Ottakee]

We got the first garden seed catalog in the mail today---not quite 1 week into winter. We are in zone 5---West Michigan.

 

I look through the catalogs and have big dreams but reality is-----I only have a garden space about 5x15 (maybe a bit more), I am not super good about keeping up with the weeding, etc.

 

What are some easy to grow veggies that are worth the time and space?

 

I know tomatoes are a MUST (but this time I will not let dh plant THREE plants per cage). Squash did well for us last year but takes SOOOO much room and is so cheap and easy to get at farmer's markets, local stand, etc. Our cucumbers also did well.

 

Are lettuce or carrots worth it? Any hints with those?

[ThatHomeschoolDad]

I did letuce one year and it was easy and very good....right up until it bolted and became unedible. I've read about shading lettuce and/or doing plantings weeks apart to get a continual crop. I might try shade, but the schedule sounds like more work than I'd like to do.

 

Parsley was easy this year, and mint grew like a weed. I've tried pumpkin and zuke, but always get leaf mold, even after spraying. Kinda tired of tomato, which I've done forever (it's a law in NJ).

 

Forgot to mention...that black landscape fabric works well, but is fussy to put down. Grass clippings keep the weeds down almost as well.

[Ottakee]

Last year our cucumbers climbed the chicken wire we had around the garden to keep our chickens out. That was great as it saved a lot of space. We just had to check every day or so that no cucumbers were growing through the wire.

 

I will ask dh about carrots and potatoes.

 

Tomatoes are a must here as we love them and store tomatoes are very expensive and not great quality. There is nothing like picking a handful of cherry tomatoes and eating them right out in the garden.

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

I did letuce one year and it was easy and very good....right up until it bolted and became unedible. I've read about shading lettuce and/or doing plantings weeks apart to get a continual crop. I might try shade, but the schedule sounds like more work than I'd like to do.

 

Parsley was easy this year, and mint grew like a weed. I've tried pumpkin and zuke, but always get leaf mold, even after spraying. Kinda tired of tomato, which I've done forever (it's a law in NJ).

 

Forgot to mention...that black landscape fabric works well, but is fussy to put down. Grass clippings keep the weeds down almost as well.

 

:lol:

 

Lettuces/greens are SUPER easy! We keep some in a shady spot (gets maybe 3 full hours of sun per day), and we also grew heading lettuces (butter lettuce and red and green leaf), arugula, and radicchio in a more sunny spot (though the arugula should probably go into the shade too--it bolts VERY quickly). You don't have to wait until they get to a full head and then pull the head. You can just grow a half row of whatever you like and keep clipping off the leaves that grow around the outside of the plants. The plants will continue growing, and you keep clipping, and you have fresh greens every day. If you buy from Baker Creek, they have an amazing and incredibly popular lettuce blend called Rocky Top that is a mix of all kinds of greens. That's what we grow in the shady spot. You can just broadcast a handful of the seed mix, and they grow like wildflowers. Then you just do the same thing--keep picking around the outside and the plants just keep growing. The beauty of greens is that you can put them in space that would not be appropriate for anything else. We also use a high table for the lettuce mix (like this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-36-in-W-x-24-in-D-x-32-in-H-Rectangle-Wood-Raised-Garden-Bed-52370/202976817#.Ur7yY_191VI), so it's easy for me to harvest, and I feel like we got fewer weeds in there. I sow them pretty thickly, too, so once they're growing well, there are few weeds to deal with. 

 

Greens will tend to bolt in hot weather, but here in zone 6A, we grow greens from early March (planting--about 4-5 weeks until we can start eating) to early July (especially in the shady spot), and then you can plant again in late August and keep them going into probably November. In fact, we had snow here, and about a week later, after the snow melted, I could see that my greens are still alive! Not growing really, but still alive. Depending on your climate, you could probably also make yourself a cold frame to put down over them and keep them going longer. That's one of our projects for the coming garden year :D

 

Carrots are easy too, though they need lots of sun (we don't get enough to really make them thrive). We love our beets too--great for greens, and if they grow to full size, I juice the tops and stems when I pull the beets to eat. Potatoes are fun--Red Norlands do phenomenally well here. Tomatoes, of course. I grow a varietal called Gold Medal for my oldest--HUGE tomatoes, super sweet, low acid, beautiful stripy orange-yellow-red. 

 

Sugar snap peas will also grow up a trellis, and they grow early, so you could maximize some vertical space that way, and then when they're done, you could plant something else in their space. I like the snap kind because you don't have to shell them--you just eat them, pod and all. I planted them along the edge of a bed and trained them up a trellis alongside.

 

Also consider any herbs that you use often. We have a rosemary bush in a pot--that gets the most use, and smells SO good. It's also impossible to kill :lol: It overwinters beautifully. We also plant basil, parsley, thyme (put that in a small pot or it will take over), sage (also might be good on its own), cilantro, dill…whatever I know I'll actually use. Again, you can plant them in pots to avoid using valuable garden space. Mine are in half shade and still produced more than I could use.

 

Heh, can you tell I'm excited about the coming season? We got out Baker Creek catalog a week or so ago, and even though I tell myself every summer that I don't need anything new, I still end up spending $30 or so on new seeds *sigh*. 

 

ETA: I just re-read your OP, and you're dealing with a small space, so I deleted the parts of my post that don't apply! Sorry if I have you any info you already know :D

[KrissiK]

We got a seed catalog, too. But I threw it out. Lol. I am so done with planting from seeds. Last year I spent all kinds of $ buying several different kinds of Asian cucumbers.... failure. I have never had much luck with seeds. Better luck buying seedlings from the nursery. Oh wait, I take that back. I do have luck with lettuce and green onions from seeds. Regarding what to plant.... lettuce is a winter crop here in California. I plant it in early fall, harvest all winter and then in spring, it bolts and I rip it out. Generally I have good luck with cucumbers. I put them on trellises, which helps them grow straight, keeps them off the ground and saves space. I love growing green onions. I do that in a box. Very fun and yummy. Carrots, I've grown, but they aren't very pretty or straight and I have a thing about eating ugly food, so I don't grow those anymore.

[OrganicAnn]

Peas are easy.  Plant as soon as the ground can be worked.   They need trellis though.    We do sugar snap (eat shells and peas) and shelled peas (eat peas only).   I'd say worth it.

 

Carrots are easy.   I would get one of the variety packets.   It is really fun to have yellow, orange and red carrots.    You can plants these around the tomatoes. 

 

Potatoes are easy, but take some room. 

 

Onions are relatively easy.   We usually do red onions or specialty onions otherwise you wonder why not buy them at the store.     Shallots are also easy.   Garlic is also easy, but we always plant it in the fall.     Green onions are also easy if you get them to germinate.  

 

I like green beans, too.   Depending on how much you need for a "mess of beans" it may take up more room than you have.    

 

Herbs are also good.   Figure out what you really use and plant them in corners or pots.  

[Miss Tick]

Spinach and chard always get some space in my garden. We only need a couple plants of each and they aren't fussy.

[Χά�ων]

Am I the only one who keeps lettuce growing year round in my kitchen and doesn't bother with planting it once a year?

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

Am I the only one who keeps lettuce growing year round in my kitchen and doesn't bother with planting it once a year?

 

I fantasize about that, but we don't get enough sun inside the house to keep anything alive (tiny windows, poor location). I dream of a little glass greenhouse though...

[Χά�ων]

I fantasize about that, but we don't get enough sun inside the house to keep anything alive (tiny windows, poor location). I dream of a little glass greenhouse though...

 

We do not get much sun but I designed my house to have a space just for lettuce in my kitchen. Actually, it is a half wall that divides my kitchen from the living room and is in the sunniest part of the house I use it as a plant shelf for my lettuce. I fully own that I am a wee bit on the weird side.

[Χά�ων]

I grow winter squash (3 varieties 2-3 plants each), summer squash, cucumbers, carrots (go for the rainbow of colors, yum!), broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage (3 varieties), okra (I leave the plants in the ground year to year and let my beans grow up them the following year), sunflowers (though not in the main garden) and new this year DS is growing several different types of grains for his chickens. Every year I buy 1-2 packets of a new variety of vegetable to try my hand at. With, interesting results. It's all fun!

[momto10blessings]

Cucs and other vines can be grown up trellises

 

Beans and peas grow easily

 

Lettuce is easy. So are carrots.

 

Peppers are easy like tomatoes

 

Herbs, toms and peps can be grown in pots to save garden space

[alef]

We really enjoyed our kale last year. 

[Kalmia]

Matt's Wild Cherry tomato (Johnny's Selected Seeds carries the seed). They are tiny, delicious cherry tomatoes that take almost no care, produce a great deal per plant, and sometimes self-seed for the next year! 

 

 

 

 

[gaillardia]

:crying: Any effort I make is never successful. Heat, not enough shade, start too late, too early. In 5 years we may harvested 5 tomatoes. My herbs wither in the heat. I observe others' gardening habits but it is in vain. I wish you all much bounty in your pots and fields :leaving:

[Ottakee]

:crying: Any effort I make is never successful. Heat, not enough shade, start too late, too early. In 5 years we may harvested 5 tomatoes. My herbs wither in the heat. I observe others' gardening habits but it is in vain. I wish you all much bounty in your pots and fields :leaving:

That about sums up my gardening efforts until this past year.

 

We have horses so I had the farmer who does tractor work for us dump a bunch of semi composted manure on the garden area (it had been in a pile and sat over the winter but not totally composted yet). The plan was to rototill it in, etc. Well, dh and the kids got excited and one day they just planted tons of stuff in the tiny space before we even hardly had the compost spread out. Stuff grew like CRAZY. Our tomato plants were over 7 ft. tall in the cages before they started bending over. It was so much that dh did agree with me that 3-4 tomato plants PER cage was a bit much :-)

 

Our plan for this year is very similar---we dumped the compost on the garden area this fall and semi spread it around. We will just plant directly in that. It is not weed free but stuff grows like crazy and I am all for easy and simple.

[gaillardia]

I am new to gardening in hot and sunny Texas(from late May to mid September it is mostly too hot, plants stop growing and won't set fruit, plus I haven't used shade covers and don't have trees in good places). It is SO weird to try to garden here. In late February we can still get frost. March it is still too cool. Oh, the other big deterrent is the wind blowing most of the time. April usually has a number of hail storms and severe t-storms. I like the idea of horse hockey and I keep forgetting to ask for some from various folks.

We have grown a couple Black Krim tomatoes and they were very good.

Do you (any of you) lean toward heirloom varieties?

[ThatHomeschoolDad]

If you really want to feel inadequate, check out the White Flower Farm catalog.  We visited them (western Mass), and yes, the place looks just like the pictures. 

[myfunnybunch]

Favorites from seed:

 

Swiss chard

Kale

Spinach

Beets

Carrots

Sugar snap peas

Sweet peas (the flower)

Sunflowers

Cucumbers

Beans (bush and climbing)

Sugar pumpkins

 

[hillfarm]

My favorite things to plant are my favorite things to eat that also happen to grow well in my area. I like lettuce, kale, onions, green beans, snow peas, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, potatoes, butternut squash and pumpkins! Don't bother growing things you don't like - too much work unless you can barter it with someone who has stuff you do like.

[ScoutTN]

I'm in zone 6 with a SW exposure and very little shade, so my faves may not work for you...?

We keep a tunnel or hoop house type cover over our garden from late fall through early spring and have only about 8 weeks with nothing harvestable.

 

Cool season:

snap peas

greens - we love lettuce, swiss chard, spinach and kale

garlic - plant in the fall, harvest ealt summer/ late spring.

radishes are fun for kids b/c they grow fast, but hard to use lots of...

 

 

Summer:

Tomatoes 

Bell peppers

green beans

squash

cukes (we do little ones for pickles)

 

All the time:

HERBS!!!! 

We have rosemary, oregano, cilantro, parsley, mint, thyme (my favorite herb), chives, sage and basil. Only basil is truly an annual here. The rest are either perennial or reseed. 

Plus a few extras like bee balm and savory that are mostly just pretty and attract pollinators.

 

We don't usually do things that take up lots of room unless they can be trellised. We don't often do things which take the whole growing season such as sweet potatoes or winter squash. But we have done leeks and they were excellent!

 

 

 

[gaillardia]

There are several tomato plants in the bathtub, waiting for me to let them die, I started them all from seed in late September.

I know it is weird, I always say never again. What a heartbreak, what a waste of time, water, soil, or in some cases when I plant in pots, space. Ugh. Maybe this time I will haunt my cousin next county over who posts on FB his wonderful small space garden in the city; plus a nice couple I know who always seem to have a lot of stuff growing very well.

Does anyone use llama or alpaca poo?

My faves to plant are always tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, strawberries, all manner of herbs. I planted heirloom corn this past year and it did well, some was edible! My cousin had gems of corn.

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

For those of you who have trouble (and are not somewhere like Texas--sorry, I can't help with the heat/sun issue!), are you planting in the ground or in raised beds/pots? Have you tried planting in something like Mel's Mix (Mel is the square-foot-gardening guru). It's 1/3 each of coarse vermiculite, peat moss, and compost (ideally, derived from five different sources, like mushroom, sea creature-based, composted manure, etc., but I know lots of people can't find five so they use what they can). Our soil is horrible, rocky red clay, so last year was our first year using Mel's Mix, and we had really good results, especially considering how little sun we get. It might be worth mixing up a batch of that to try in a pot or raised bed to see if that helps your outcomes, maybe? This year we didn't do as well, but we had a wet, yucky spring, so we dealt with a lot of fungal issues, and our trees needed trimming back, which didn't happen until August :( All our local gardeners had a cruddy 2013, unfortunately. I have higher hopes for this year though!

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

Do you (any of you) lean toward heirloom varieties?

 

We do. I try to only grow heirloom produce. Though I will admit that last year I started my seeds late and had to buy seedlings from our local garden center. I was in such a hurry that I didn't pay super close attention, and I bought a yellow grape tomato plant called SunSugar. That thing was prolific, mostly immune to the fungal issues the other tomatoes (Rutgers, Gold Medal, and a red grape variety I can't recall) had, and people RAVED about the flavor. The kids and DH ate them in mass quantities. So I went to look for seeds to buy for next year's garden, and of course it is a Monsanto hybrid :( You can't even save the seeds to replant it. I'm going to try SunGold and hope everyone likes it as much!

[Χά�ων]

For those of you who have trouble (and are not somewhere like Texas--sorry, I can't help with the heat/sun issue!), are you planting in the ground or in raised beds/pots? Have you tried planting in something like Mel's Mix (Mel is the square-foot-gardening guru). It's 1/3 each of coarse vermiculite, peat moss, and compost (ideally, derived from five different sources, like mushroom, sea creature-based, composted manure, etc., but I know lots of people can't find five so they use what they can). Our soil is horrible, rocky red clay, so last year was our first year using Mel's Mix, and we had really good results, especially considering how little sun we get. It might be worth mixing up a batch of that to try in a pot or raised bed to see if that helps your outcomes, maybe? This year we didn't do as well, but we had a wet, yucky spring, so we dealt with a lot of fungal issues, and our trees needed trimming back, which didn't happen until August :( All our local gardeners had a cruddy 2013, unfortunately. I have higher hopes for this year though!

I did the square foot gardening method. It was costly to get started and wasn't worth it except for lettuce (prior to moving and having a kitchen garden), carrots and radishes. Everything else was still too crowded. 

 

A couple of years ago several people told me about Ruth Stout's year round mulching and the film http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/. I had an acre plowed and then I heavily mulched it. We were in a drought and I ever watered. The garden went insane. When i would pull back the mulch and the soil would be perfect. Not once did it dry out. 

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

I did the square foot gardening method. It was costly to get started and wasn't worth it except for lettuce (prior to moving and having a kitchen garden), carrots and radishes. Everything else was still too crowded. 

 

A couple of years ago several people told me about Ruth Stout's year round mulching and the film http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/. I had an acre plowed and then I heavily mulched it. We were in a drought and I ever watered. The garden went insane. When i would pull back the mulch and the soil would be perfect. Not once did it dry out. 

 

It was definitely costly to get started, but we really had no choice. Our soil is so bad that you can hardly even get a shovel into it to turn it over. (Although ironically, our potatoes did better in the cruddy clay than they did in the rich soil of the raised beds--still haven't figured that part out!) I didn't find anything too crowded though; everything grew really well. In fact, I was skeptical of his recommendations and didn't follow them in a few places, only to find that I could or should have. I would have saved us some money if I'd just believed him! I did overcrowd the leeks, but that was because I thought I'd read that I could do 16 per square when it was really only 9. 

 

Thanks for sharing the Ruth Stout info. It's kind of funny, but that's exactly what I planned to do this coming summer, grass clippings and all, though I didn't know it already had a reputation. It was recommended to me for our tomatoes by an experienced gardening friend after all the trouble we had with fungus this past year, and I was thinking it was a good idea for all the beds, really, if only to cut down on weeds. I'm hoping for good results.

 

Now if I could just figure out what to do about the flea beetles and insidious squash vine borers...

[G5052]

We do tomatoes, greens, lettuce, green beans, potatoes, and herbs every year.  Usually we do a few watermelons too.

 

All of those are low-effort, although I have to water a lot in the heat of summer if I want good production.  The lettuce only works in spring and early fall.  Last year we went on vacation for 2 1/2 weeks and left completely, and we still got a good number of tomatoes and beans.  Not enough to can (which I usually do a lot of), but it did better than expected.