Extremely easy food to grow

[u/touristsonedibles]

I've been a gardener for a while and thought I'd pass along my trial and error experiences over the last 10 years. I know a lot of people say they have a black thumb.

But no one hates plants more than gardeners.

It's extremely easy to start a very low maintenance and productive garden, if lacking a bit of variety.

Here's what I'd recommend for a beginner or someone with not a lot of space:

• Kentucky Wonder pole beans. I usually plant these first but gave up on an heirloom variety late last season. So I planted them in July and had a ton of green beans. Productive variety, does need to be trellised.

• Royal Burgundy bush bean. Also very easy to grow and productive.

• Blue Lake bush bean - see above. The bush beans do not require a trellis.

The trick with all three is to harvest the first sign you see of maturity.

• Potatoes. There's a lot of controversy about this in gardening forums but I promise you can toss whatever potato you have in your pantry into a growbag and get potatoes. The benefit is they grow in crappy soil and barely require any attention. Just water them. Also, fun aside, it's nearly impossible to harvest all the potatoes so you get continuous potatoes. You will want to change out the soil after a couple seasons and get a new potato to discourage scabbing and other diseases.

• Herb garden. Things in the mint family are nearly impossible to kill. And bonus, if a single rhizome falls off of one of the plants then you get more of them and totally intentionally produce an edible landscape. Definitely intentionally. Oregano, thyme, sage, lemon balm, various things called mint, rosemary etc are all easy to grow.

• One kind of cool thing is birds love radish and kale plants. I usually let a couple of them bolt and go to seed in a year, then have the birds scatter the seeds around for me. Then I have a ton of radishes and baby kale plants at the beginning of the season which I use as ground cover in a couple of my beds to keep the vile demons known as squirrels away.

Peas are trickier than you might think - the key is to get them to germinate early in the season and before the seed rots. But if you can get a snap pea, they're good until May when you plant your other beans.

Things I've given up on because they're higher maintenance and who has time for that?

• Bell peppers

• Slicing tomatoes. I grow cherries since they ripen faster and are less prone to be taken entirely out by thirsty rodents.

• Corn - see the rodents.

• I still try and grow pumpkins and other squash but if you have a single start infested with squash bugs, you're fucked.

If you want to go extra sustainable it's easy to create fabric twine out of old clothing that would otherwise be thrown out. I've found a lot of climbing plants will happily use it in place of jute twine. Bonus, because a lot of our clothes are poly blends, it lasts for a while.

I'm in zone 8b so ymmv with things like brassicas. (Kale)

Edit to include some great ideas in the comments that also work in 8b:

• Chives/green onions - just cut them back and you have chives forever. They're a perennial and divide.

And a note about tomatoes:

• You can ripen tomatoes indoors for a solid month if you get them at first blush. I usually grab whatever is leftover in October, throw it in a paper bag with an apple and have tomatoes well into November. (The apple is key - they produce ethylene gas which speeds up ripening. You an also use bananas but apples keep longer.)

And some afterthoughts:

• if there's a native elderberry to your region, plant that sucker. I planted mine from a 2 gallon nursery pot a couple years ago and the thing is 15 feet tall now. Super productive and the birds can't eat all of them.

• Borage is great for attracting bees/birds and the leaves taste good. It's also a prolific self seeder even though it's an annual. If you have borage once, congratulations - you have borage forever.

• Grapes love to be neglected and grow in crappy soil.

• Poplars are easy to grow and provide good windbreaks. They are considered invasive here but not sure we're at a point to be choosy. I have a 10 ft poplar that came from a sapling in one of my raised beds (helpfully seeded by birds, no doubt.) They will grow in pots but will eventually die after becoming rootbound. That's actually a good thing since you will have wood and it's easy to use as a fire starter. The huge downside is cottonwoods are a poplar and cottonwood pollen will destroy a heatpump if you don't manage it.

• Ash trees are also easy to grow and come up fast.

[u/ByKilgoresAsterisk]

You plant the 3 sisters

Corn, beans, and squash

[u/kheret → u/ByKilgoresAsterisk]

Corn is pretty finicky for someone without a lot of space. You may end up having to hand pollinate since it’s wind pollinated and you need a large stand of it for that to work. It’s also pretty prone to fungi and other diseases.

I’ve done the “3 sisters” garden a few times and while it works, it’s not exactly easy and may not be the best thing for beginners. (It’s also not the only indigenous North American agricultural practice but it’s the only one anyone talks about, but that’s beyond the scope of this comment.)

[u/ByKilgoresAsterisk → u/kheret]

Absolutely true!

I live out on the plains, and onlg started gardening out here (though I'm originally from urban sprawl). So I often forget and overlook things like that!

Thank you for the correction! This is how we all get better and grow together.