I am in a somewhat good mood because of the good weather and the prospect of finally being able to get some of my garden in. I have decided I am doing a me garden this year. Usually I plant an absolute SHITLOAD of tomatoes and give away the bulk of them, but I think I am over that this year and honestly canned san marzano tomatoes from the store make better sauce anyway.
So I am just going to plant things for me, which means more stuff I will simply eat right in the back yard like sugar snap peas and stuff.
What all should I grow?
SiubhanDuinne
One of my favourite things as a kid was pulling up carrots, knocking most of the dirt off them, and eating them then and there.
ETA: I’m so glad your mood’s been better recently. Mine has too. I think it’s taken some of us this long to begin recovering after the horror years of TFG.
Another Scott
Kudzu?? Kudzu recipes.
Have fun!
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
String beans.
cain
marijuana
TheOtherHank
Lettuce fresh from the garden is super yummy. And I was surprised at how good home-grown potatoes taste.
eachother
Look into pole beans for beauty and prolific production.
Jharp
I like to grow hot peppers.
In order.
Cayennes, banana, jalapeños, habeneros.
And as matter of fact my first pepper garden was the very first garden picture posted on Balloon Juice.
I’m guessing 10 years ago.
Roger Moore
If the goal is to plant stuff you can eat right out of the garden, why are you asking us? You’re old enough to know what you like, and an experienced enough gardener to know what grows in your area. Plant that stuff!
If you really want some advice, plant things on the dirty dozen that will grow in your area. One of the big advantages to growing your own food is that you can avoid the nasty chemicals that are common in commercially grown stuff.
andy
Honestly, do dry beans. Get some Royal Coronas or something and grow them on poles or those half hoop trellis things. The nice thing about beans, too, is mulching them when they die back in the fall is great for your soil.
cope
I’m growing Serranos, habaneros and Fresno chiles for my own consumption in a variety of sauces, condiments and pickled variations. Ok, ok I do share with my grandson and his dad but it’s mostly just for me as mrs. cope doesn’t share my love of heat.
Alison Rose ???
Radishes!
TaMara
I have 12 various tomatoes, 6 of them San Marzanos. I’m hoping to freeze enough tomato puree to get me through most of the winter.
3 jalapenos and 5 green peppers. Cucumbers and I’m toying with a row of corn, since I have extra space. I’m using growing bags for my tomatoes, which leaves an entire raised bed open.
For you, I suggest sweet peas, green beans and a variety of lettuce/spinach/greens. Things you can go out pick and eat for dinner that night.
SpaceUnit
marshmallows
Scout211
Melons. They are so much sweeter when left on the vines to ripen. I never knew a honeydew could taste so sweet until I grew them. They pick them way too early for the grocery stores. I love Ambrosia melons but have planted many different types of melons over the years. All are yummy and far tastier than any melon you can buy in the stores.
Grumpy Old Railroader
1) Radishes, oh yeah. Lots of varieties and 4-6 weeks til ready to eat.
2) I hear ya on the tomatoes but I always have one cherry tomato variety just to have something yummy while I am in the garden. I absolutely cannot go past a cherry tomato plant without grabbing another handful.
3) Think of the birds also. So put in some sunflowers by the back fence and enjoy the visual feast.
CindyH
Greens! Fresh greens are so much better from your garden
Narya
Sunflowers
Raoul Paste
If you plant all of the suggestions you will be very busy.
Also high.
Gotta agree on the radishes
kalakal
Peas. You can’t beat eating peas from the pod. Do your soil good too
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose ???: they’re fun to eat in the yard. Peas are the greatest thing to have from the garden.
satby
I second the carrots, because I also loved them right after digging them out and washing them under the hand pump at my grandparent’s farm. And though they don’t produce the first year, set aside a bed for asparagus. They seldom even make it into the house because they’re so tender and sweet right after you snap the young stalks off the plant. Basil too, because fresh pesto is the bomb.
eachother
Peppers – Summer
Very unsettled since the Arctic front 3 weeks ago.
Climate change has offered peppers. Wasn’t so a while ago.
Spinach planted last fall. Doing well. Red lettuce all volunteer, all over. Peas sprouting indicating rows.
Anne Laurie
Cherry tomatoes. They come in all *sorts* of colors & flavors these days, they’re easy, and it’s fun to grab a varied bunch right off the vines, sit in the sun, and do your own taste-testing.
Sun Gold, Chocolate Sprinkles, Gardener’s Delight, Snow White, Shimmer, Sunchocula, any of the ‘Bumblebee’ or ‘Currant’ varieties… plenty of choices. And if you end up with a surplus, even a non-cook like me can easily slow-roast a couple pans to refrigerate and/or freeze, for winter pasta or bagel topping, or just to eat out of the tupperware container.
Just be prepared for Thurston, and maybe Lily, to ‘help’ with the harvest. We used to grow a dedicated Matt’s Wild Cherry every year just for our dog Zevon, so he’d have a steady supply of bite-sized treats to ‘steal’. (The other two never did get the idea, so YMMV.)
NotMax
Fennel. Also too, celeriac.
Gvg
Thornless blackberries. Broccoli, pole beans. Blue berries.
Frosty Fred
@TaMara: May I suggest a block of corn (several short rows)? That’s likely to give better pollination, and then fuller ears.
ETA: probably the single best thing I ever grew was petit pois; I don’t know where to find the seed now but worth searching out.
p.a.
Serranos, nicely hot and, at least where I am, pretty bullet-proof. Japanese eggplant (the small, long, light purple ones. I’ve had good luck with them and they’re a good size for one person. Pasta alla Norma ?. French tarragon: steep 24 hours in white wine vinegar & use in pickling; the flavor allows you to cut down on sugar. Also great w fish, eggs, in RI style (clear broth) clam chowder. Well-behaved perennial.
Anne Laurie
He probably *could* grow some, but do we want to read Cole’s complaints about making his own cough syrup / halvah?
Raven
Collards and mustard greens.
Ken
It’s always nice to have a few patches of herbs like basil or rosemary. I guess they don’t quite fit your “eat it in the back yard”, though come to think of it, why not pluck a bit of basil to eat with a tomato?
SpaceUnit
@Anne Laurie:
good point.
Auntie Beak
You should at least plant a snacking tomato and the hands-down tastiest is Sungold. Honestly the best fresh tomato you can grow. And I’ve been growing tomatoes since 1983. For just you, you’re only going to need 1 plant. They’re an indeterminate hybrid cherry. If you held a gun to my head and told me I could only grow 1 tomato variety for the rest of my life, it’d be Sungold.
NotMax
For the eyes as well as the palate — nasturtiums.
joel hanes
seconding asparagus
right out of the garden really is better even than farmer’s market
Spanky
It’s a “you” garden. Why the hell are you asking us?
Anne Laurie
@Auntie Beak: Sun Gold and Chocolate Sprinkles are the only varieties for which the Spousal Unit ever remembers the names. He’ll happily eat practically any type I grow, but only those two are ‘delicious’ enough for him to specifically remind me to buy the plants when I’m ordering them in March.
This year, Laurel’s has enticed me into trying something called Wee Tang Shebang, which is supposed to be ‘even better than SunGold’. I have more failures than successes with new! improved! types, but I’m ever optimistic!
SiubhanDuinne
Seconding/thirding/whatevering the suggestion of radishes. Apart from carrots, there’s nothing tastier fresh out of the ground.
kindness
You’ll need some tomatoes for summer BLTs, right?
japa21
Strawberries and blueberries.
Scout211
What a nice palate cleanser thread after all that MadCaw stuff.
Thank you to all those who suggested radishes. I just remembered I have a whole packet of radish seeds that I need to plant.
Agree with CindyH, greens are amazing fresh from the garden. I currently have four boxes planted with various greens and 4 gallon-sized ziplock bags of greens in the fridge.
Chief Oshkosh
Willows. Definitely more willows.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@NotMax: second the nasturtiums. They are so pretty!
Also all herbs grow without any trouble, and many (including sage & thyme) winter over & come right back next year. They can also grow in a pot on your porch so that you can just clip a few for dinner.
Also you are into water bath canning, if I recall correctly. Grow anything you’d like to try with that.
Mike in NC
My brother gave me a “Pot for Pot” kit for Christmas, almost as a gag gift. I’ve never grown anything in my life so I’m not expecting good results.
dexwood
Dental floss!
dexwood
@NotMax: Good in salads.
Bill Arnold
@Anne Laurie:
They also do well in pots. (I’ve found a little extra magnesium (Epsom salts) and calcium (tums) can help, in addition to whatever if any regular fertilizer one uses.) I always have 3 or 4 potfuls of cherry (or sweet 100 or similar) tomatoes near the house/on the deck.
One meaning of summer is fresh tomato salad; if one likes it, always grow plenty of tomatoes and basil. I have to buy onions, vinegar, olive oil, a teaspoon or three of table sugar.
MomSense
I would like a little of your good mood, especially the looking forward to the gardening part.
I have no idea what to plant anymore because our growing season is so bizarre now. Something is tunneling under and digging up my garden.
Gin & Tonic
@dexwood: He lives in West Virginia, not Montana.
CarolPW
@Frosty Fred: I’ve bought them from Kitchen Garden Seeds.
Mai Naem mobile
Cabbage, colored cauliflower, the skinny long eggplants, okra(you come across as an okra kind of guy, sweet potatoes, persian cukes and Italian squash, basil, cilantro, Anaheim peppers, serranos,,arboles peppers, water cress, raspberries. Green onions, garlic, ginger(have no idea about ginger), Moringa
RandomMonster
Your Me Garden should probably grow a variety of John Coles. You could start out with a basic Prickly Cole, and then add in some, um, Nasty Prickly Coles, and then add one or two, er, Carniverous Cole Plants.
Dan B
@TaMara: The small watermelons and miscellaneous small melons are great and many are compact plants as well. Best melons I’ve ever had and we get great melons from Eastern Washington, but the homegrown were better! Much better!!
Scout211
@MomSense:
Moles, voles or gophers likely. Moles, voles or gophers?
I had to use snap traps (the kind for rats) one year to eradicate all the voles burrowing in my raised beds and eating my crops. I was setting about a dozen traps every night using nuts as bait. Now I use castor oil spray around the fence and around all the raised beds and that seems to help. All of my raised beds have gopher wire or hardware cloth wire under them but they still found a way in that year
dexwood
@Gin & Tonic: Pygmy ponies could live in his yard, provide good fertilizer.
VeniceRiley
Plant whatever your neighborhood birds and bees need for health food.
What leafy green do you like best? None of us get enough of those.
Updoot all the berries votes! Pies, little hand pies, jams, smoothies, sauces for more decadent things…. You can do so much!
Ginger? I bet it would be better than store bought.
HRA
As someone mentioned above potatoes are the best. I now use container rectangles and barrels to plant vegetables and herbs. Besides tomatoes we plant peppers, broccoli, zucchini and whatever I find at the nursery that gets my attention. My 2 herbs contianers are on the deck near the kitchen door. I leave the roots in them and new herbs come up to use the next year. I have been thinking of planting cabbage this year.
japa21
I just want to say how nice it is to see the blog father in the good mood he’s been in the last few days.
Ken
And a bacon plant.
Betsy
@Gvg: Definitely thornless blackberries.
And because he’s in West Virginia, where they grow well, black raspberries — the most delectable fruit in nature.
SpaceUnit
Plant an old shoe. Maybe you’ll get a shoe tree.
Betsy
Arugula, or (by its English name) rocket.
Gives you tender baby green salads, then when it gets bigger and too rank for raw salads, you can just chop the whole plant up and sauté it in olive oil and add some red pepper flakes and a little bit of garlic and salt and then spoon that mess over a nice hot plate of grits. With a little bit of bacon grease in which you have heated some fire-roasted diced tomatoes. YAS’M
kalakal
If you have heavy soil always start with potatoes. They’ll do the digging and break up the soil for you and as an extra bonus fix a load of nitrogen in the soil. The following year have fun.
marcopolo
So, if you can keep the critters off them, Sungold cherry tomatoes–the best period. Eating a sungold fresh off the vine, heated by the sun, is to die for. I am also partial to chocolate cherry tomatoes. You maybe can find them at your local farmer’s market but you will never get a decent cherry tomato at the grocery store.
Next, spinach and kale. Why? Because when you grow your own you can harvest it small and baby spinach and kale are fucking amazing. So sweet & tender. I’d add, there are a lot of things that are so much better when harvested small (like cucumbers–you can grow them up on a trellis to conserve space) that you might consider. I do not like radishes, but Hakurei Turnips (japanese white turnips) are awesome. When I worked on an organic farm once upon a time they were another thing you could pull out of the ground, wipe the dirt off on your pants and just eat them raw (like carrots).
I don’t think you have all that much room but melons (whatever you like best) and maybe pie pumpkins are nice if there is space somewhere. Though they do take a while to mature to harvesting.
You are probably a little late for potatoes, but if you have a way to till your soil well, and you are careful about mounding your potato plants, homegrown potatoes are lovely (or sweet potatoes). Someone way up top mentioned carrots, they are good, as are green beans (harvest them small lol).
Last, but not least, try your hand at garlic. You plant it in the fall, throw some organic fertilizer on it, cover it with straw, and then keep it weeded in the Spring then harvest mid-late summer. Homegrown garlic is so amazing. Especially if you find one or two or three varieties you really like. And if you do a decent job of growing it you only need to buy it once. Then you save a few heads every year for the next planting.
Oh yeah, stay the hell away from onions. Pain in the ass to keep weeded through harvesting. They couldn’t outcompete anything in your yard
Edited to add: If you don’t have any fruit producers, set aside some space for trees (apple or peach) or a berry patch. I love freshly harvested strawberries but they do take a little more effort than say black, rasp, or blueberries.
marcopolo
@Frosty Fred: The only problem with corn is all the critters who love to eat it. Raccoons, squirrels, deer, we never grew it on my organic farm cause we always lost so much to the wildlife. It also tends to be insanely hungry for fertilizer.
SiubhanDuinne
@SpaceUnit:
CaseyL
I agree with @japa21: strawberries, for sure (provided you like them!). Strawberries fresh off the plant are pure joy. Also, they propagate like crazy. I started out with four plants 3 years ago, and now have twelve. (The parent sends out “runners,” which take root if they’re anywhere near good dirt.)
Blueberries are also pretty easy, though you need to make sure the soil is right for them, and also need to check if your variety is self-pollinating or not.
How about fruit trees? You can get dwarf varieties of many fruit trees, if you don’t want your yard overrun.
debbie
Black raspberries.
brendancalling
“Madge, what should I grow?”
”Everything… and use Palmolive dishwashing liquid. You’re soaking in it.”
”Madge!”
”relax John, it’s Palmolive. It softens hands while you do dishes.”
NotMax
Would suggest mustard greens but — well, you know.
:)
Suzanne
Do citrus trees do well there? Fuck, I miss my Arizona citrus. So great off the tree, and so productive.
Kattails
I’m single and live in the northeast, so short season. I grow for fresh picking, either stuff that can’t be found or is expensive to buy. Things I can go out and grab a handful of for dinner. SO: Peas, but they must get in early. You simply can’t find them for love or money. Shelling and snow or edible pod. Fresh greens like arugula, and a variety of lettuces for early. I put in shallot bulbs, leeks and scallions now as well. The shallots and leeks need no fussing. I’ve picked leeks from frozen ground I had to pour hot water over, in December. They’re great in quiche and soups. You must do baby plants. Nothing bothers them. Scallions for stir fry and salads. Intercrop with lettuce. You can do scallions by sets or seed.
Summer–beans beans. Dragon tongue bush bean is a meaty Italian type, yellow with red stripes, and if you let them go you can get fresh shelling beans for soup or for drying. Rattlesnake pole bean produced really well for me last year, steady, long season, meaty, no strings, good flavor, and you can grow stuff underneath them. I would also do a couple of earlier bush types. Pole beans are later but longer. Seed from High Mowing, same with the dragon tongue.
A couple of summer squash, I like Ronde de Nice which is nice at tennis ball size, pale green stripes. Maybe Gold Rush. Japanese style eggplants, 3 plants, and basil. My local farm stand manages the red peppers better than I can. I also grow Swiss chard for soups and pie, similar to a quiche. Easy from seed, keeps going. Valencia tomato, mid size yellow orange, good flavor, low seeds.
Potatoes: early and long season, the Russian banana type grow really well for me and keep a long time. I found a red skinned variety last year and although I got them in stupid late (they didn’t get very big) they kept in a box under the counter until late March. I’m going to try containers for them this year, since there’s a lot of info out there on Youtube about it, seems to be a good way to go.
SpaceUnit
@SiubhanDuinne:
I like it.
And as it happens I’m enjoying a dash of brandy as we speak.
jayne
John! Currently in an argument with another online rando — W-bG-V, “American South” or not?
Another Scott
Don’t grow this stuff:
(via gavmacn)
Cheers,
Scott.
JaneE
Radishes, onions for green onions, and fresh black-eyed peas can’t be beat. Turnips/parsnips if you like them. Berries, if you have enough room. One small hill of Zucchini or Mexican grey squash, because they are prolific and versatile or eggplant or both. Peppers are good, bell, banana for eating from the vine and a hot one or two varieties because. Melons are always good, but take some room. I second the asparagus recommendation, but it will take a few seasons to become productive. Garlic is a good option too. Also cherry tomatoes because they are perfect for snacking.
opiejeanne
Is anyone interested in a meet-up in Chicago next week? We will be in town on May 6, 7, & 8, leaving on the 9th. We have tickets to a 1 pm Cubs game on the 6th but should be free by 6 pm. Other than that we are flexible. We have a list of things we want to do, like the architecture boat tour on the Chicago River, visit the Field Museum and the Art Institute.
opiejeanne
@SpaceUnit: You laugh, but I really am growing marshmallows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althaea_officinalis
NotMax
@JaneE
And no need to sacrifice yard space for cherry ‘maters. With that huge back deck, can plant them in roomy pots/buckets.
SpaceUnit
@opiejeanne:
Yeah, Anne Laurie pointed that out to me earlier. Funny. I had no idea.
It’s awesome what you can learn on this blog.
japa21
@opiejeanne: Not free, unfortunately. Strongly recommend the boat tour. Seeing Chicago from the river is amazing. There are so many things to do here, that you can’t go wrong anywhere. On the boat tour be sure to ooh and aah at the Trump Tower.
opiejeanne
@SpaceUnit: I just saw that. I bought the seeds on a whim, and I have at least 7 that have germinated. I’ll put them in the flower garden when we’re back from Chicago.
opiejeanne
John, I recommend tomatillos, but you do need more than one plant for some reason. They don’t seem to be gendered, they just like company. They freeze well and you can make killer salsa.
karen marie
@Ken: When I had a multi-plot in the Fenway Victory Garden (Boston), I grew basil. At the end of the summer, I’d harvest it – it filled my clawfoot tub – to process with olive oil and freeze.
I loved growing perennial herbs too.
I miss that garden so much
@Chief Oshkosh: As long as he plants it close to the house.
NotMax
@japa21
Is that what the kids are calling mooning now?
:)
BigJimSlade
@Mike in NC: You can’t eat it right in the backyard like he mentioned, but you could make brownies and eat them there, so it might work. Of course, someone else was recommending hot peppers and I don’t think those make for great backyard-munching either, lol.
…spicy brownies…? hmmm…
xephyr
Potatoes aren’t hard, and the ones you grow always have more flavor.
Kent
Now here is an athlete who has not aged well.
Boris Becker sentenced to 2.5 years in prison: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/29/becker-gets-2point5-years-in-prison-for-bankruptcy-offenses-.html
What he looked like in his prime: https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/german-professional-tennis-player-boris-becker-during-a-match-at-the-picture-id455259537?s=2048×2048
Kattails
I was going to note that many potatoes do NOT need hilling. The spring salad types and the fingerling/banana types grow on one level. I saw one guy online take about a 7 gal. container, 1/3 soil, 2 salad potatoes opposite sides; another third soil, 2 more potatoes catty corner to the others, top it up. Two months later he dumped out the soil and had about 6# of nice small red ones and had several containers going. And they are so incredibly better than anything in the store.
NotMax
@xephyr
We just know who would revel in digging them up. Simply because he’s Thurston.
;)
Yarrow
John, you should grow carrots and jalapenos and then make the taqueria-style pickled carrots and jalapenos. It’s so, so good. The recipe I use is a fridge pickle recipe, which keeps awhile. I give smaller jars away as gifts. Really good with fresh carrots out of the garden.
Frosty Fred
@marcopolo: All this is true; TaMara said she was considering corn, so I just offered a suggestion that might give better yields.
Mj_Oregon
Ambrosia melons. Absolutely the most incredible tasting muskmelon around. I’ve grown so many of them some years that I’ve dried some in the food dryer. Incredible snacking later in the year – the fragrance of summer intensified by the drying process. Unfortunately the last time we grew them we didn’t put cardboard down around the plants in the bed before we put the green plastic down (recommended for increased melon yield) and the meadow mice/voles ate half of them from below.
Anne Laurie
That’s another reason to grow potatoes in bags, pouches, or cardboard boxes!
WaterGirl
@Anne Laurie: I cannot find Chocolate Sprinkles on Laurel’s website. I have looked 3 times – am I blind? Or do you buy those someplace else?
(I won’t tell Laurel.)
WaterGirl
@Kattails:
I really like those, too. All the other squash i started from seed are good, but i am having to try again with the Ronde de Nice. They did not like the transplant to the bigger pot. :-(
bluefoot
Definitely peas. I used to eat them right off the vine when I was a kid. Your favorite greens – nothing better than fresh picked greens for salad. Strawberries actually ripened on the plant are a joy. Try different tomato varieties that you’d eat fresh. I am partial to green zebras and some of the cherry tomato varieties.
what I miss most is fruit right off the tree – apples, plums, pears. That’s a multi year project.
anything you like that can be hard to find (or expensive) in the store – mustard greens, unusual varieties of vegetables, herbs. I used to grow mint and make mint chutney.
you could try grapes, though again, multi year project. But fresh grapes off the vine are way better than anything you could ever buy.
AM in NC
I tend to grow the things I like and that are expensive to buy at the store. So for me, lots of tomatoes and peppers. Plus cucumbers because I love the Eastern European salad of cucumber, tomato, onion, parmesan all summer long. Also, copious amounts of basil, so I can eat it fresh with tomatoes and make a ton of pesto to eat fresh and to freeze.
I am trying potatoes for the first time this year because they seem like fun and I can get some varieties I can’t buy in the grocery. I hope they produce because I think harvesting will be like a treasure hunt!
I am just excited because for the past 20 years I’ve owned a small chain of organic gardening stores, and we just sold the business, so I may now have time to spend on my own garden during the spring/early summer. I usually feel like the cobbler whose children have no shoes!
RA
Kohlrabi is fantastic eating right out of the garden. You wash the dirt off the root, break the leaves off, peel it with your teeth from the soft top down and the root makes a dandy handle to hold it while you are eating it.
Nancy
I agree with the suggestions of Kale and Argula. I like Romaine. If you harvest them all when the leaves are small, these greens are delightful.
I also suggest snow peas. They are lovely if you like them. I usually don’t get any inside with me and I’m well fed in the garden while the season lasts.
Smiling to think of John Cole thinking of himself, “a me garden.”
BethanyAnne
I can’t believe everyone missed the obvious suggestion: zucchini. Only a few, maybe six or seven. Don’t want to risk having too many.
Central Texas
John,
I don’t know what you already grow and our climates are very different [see nym], but if grazing the garden is a goal, then I would second the peas, add snap peas, asparagus, rhubarb, green onions, and switch to some varieties of cherry tomatoes. The latter never need to make it from garden to house, just like the rest of the list. They also keep well. After that, quick, multi-sow, crops like green beans, lettuce, radishes, spinach are good choices, though they will mostly have to have some minimal prep.
Just out of curiosity, do you grow horse radish? As I recall, all of my extended WVa family did.
Enjoy
Denali
My niece says she grows loofah plants. I don’t know whether she was kidding or not.
BethanyAnne
@Denali: Probably not kidding. Loofas are a type of dried plant.
thalarctosMaritimus
@jayne: Appalachia, not the South.
At least according to my husband’s family.
Anne Laurie
@WaterGirl: Chocolate Sprinkles are hybrids, Laurel wouldn’t touch them!
I buy ours at White Flower Farms — the Spousal Unit is ready to pay a premium for his pleasures — but I believe they’re available elsewhere, possibly even Burpees.