Eager to develop your green thumb? You’re not the only one. A combination of increased time at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with an ever-growing interest in healthy eating and organic produce has produced a surge in home gardening. Maintaining your own vegetable patch at home is a perfect way to combine a relaxing hobby with a healthy addition to your kitchen.
Unfortunately, not everyone is naturally blessed with a green thumb, nor does everyone have the time to devote hours each week to cultivating their fruit and veg. If that’s the case for you, it doesn’t have to mean that you have to give up on your dream of keeping a home garden. There are plenty of plants that are surprisingly easy to maintain, even for the least reliable of gardeners.
Whether you want to pick up a new hobby for yourself or are looking for a fun way to engage the whole family, these are the best choices of vegetables for beginners to try growing at home.
1. Lettuce
Lettuce thrives in just about any garden environment, making it a perfect first-time plant for newcomers to growing vegetables. Lettuce can be planted directly into your garden, or cultivated inside and then transplanted into a garden bed. Lettuce is a particularly good choice for home-growing, owing to the fact that it prospers pretty much all year round. On particularly hot years, lettuce should be planted near shade to ensure that they don’t dry out, but they still produce a decent yield. Lettuce is a very diverse plant, meaning that as you grow it you can experiment with all sorts of shapes and colours of leaves.
2. Radishes
Fresh, crunchy radishes make the perfect refreshing addition to any salad, and you can pick them right from your own garden. Even better, they grow incredibly quickly - you can harvest them under a month after planting them! Radishes can be planted as soon as the soil softens in the spring, and can be grown throughout the year until the winter cold hits again. Radishes naturally grow well alongside carrots, so many people mix the seeds when they plant them. The smaller radishes grow first, breaking up the soil and allowing for carrots to sprout in the holes they leave.
3. Carrots
Carrots are a robust option for home gardening, as they can also thrive in the cooler periods of the year like spring and autumn and can tolerate the frost. Carrots need loose soil that is on the sandier side in order to truly grow. When you grow your own carrots at home you may be surprised to see they often look quite different from what you’re used to seeing in the supermarket. Carrots grow in a wide variety of colours beyond just orange, from purple to white. An important tip to remember is to leave quite a bit of space between each seedling, as carrots need plenty of room to grow properly.
4. Cucumbers
Cucumbers are a great addition to any home garden, but do need a bit of extra work to ensure a good yield. Cucumbers crave heat, so they should always be planted in a spot that gets as much sunlight as possible. Extra nitrogen and potassium is important for ensuring well-developed cucumbers, so adding a bit of fertilisers rich in these nutrients should leave you with a good batch of cucumbers just waiting to be chopped into a delicious salad.
5. Kale
A superfood that’s super on-trend right now, kale is also one of the easiest vegetables you can grow at home. Kale grows well in a variety of temperatures, but does best in the spring and summer, when it’s not too hot. Once it buds, kale can be harvested and used in a broad variety of ways. It’s incredibly nutritious, being rich in potassium and iron. You can use it in salads, pastries, stir fry, or even smoothies for a nutritious boost to any meal.
6. Beets
One of the easiest root crops to grow, beets are also wonderfully healthy - being rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. Beets grow surprisingly quickly, especially if they have a decent amount of sunlight. Like carrots and other root vegetables, beets need particularly loose soil in order to thrive. Make sure you break up your soil adequately before planting beets, otherwise you’ll find they’ll suffer from a lack of drainage.
7. Courgettes
Courgettes are a fantastic option for home growers, as they are not only incredibly easy to grow, but each planting yields an impressive amount. Courgettes need good sun exposure, and soil that easily drains in order to truly thrive. Courgettes are, technically speaking, a fruit - and a single plant can yield several kilos of the edible fruits in just a single growing season.
If you want your garden to be even more alive, consider adding plants and flowers that attract honey bees - this will help to fertilise the garden. So don’t wait, as the warmer months approach, explore your greenfingered side and take on the project of cultivating your own vegetable produce with ease!
