What should YOU plant in your garden?
My first step in planning a successful kitchen garden— for myself or for a client — is to figure out WHY they want to have a garden. There are countless good reasons, but some will be more important to you than others. I’ll go into more about how to identify your garden goals in another blog.
But soon after you know why you’re planning to garden, you need to decide WHAT to grow. The plant selection that will work best is totally unique and different for every garden and in every year. I might want to plant enough green beans to fill my freezer, while you might be more interested in eating fresh salad from the garden every day. One year I might feel curious to experiment with 7 varieties of hot peppers, and another year I might just want to stick to the tried and true jalapeño.
A Good Enough Garden is one that serves your needs and preferences, not one that meets some outside standard of “beautiful” or “productive.” If you’re trying to sell produce to customers, that’s another story. But if you’re growing food and flowers for your own happiness and health, consider the following questions as you plan for the next growing season.
WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING PLANTS FOR YOUR GARDEN
What do you love to eat? Think about your go-to recipes and snacks. Don’t waste space and time growing and tending a plant if it’s not something you or your family like to eat.
What produce items are expensive at the store? Fresh herbs are incredibly easy to grow and super-pricey at the store. Carrots are the opposite. (I still like to grow them anyway.)
What tastes better when it's allowed to ripen on the vine? For me, it’s tomatoes and melons.
What goes bad in the fridge because you can't eat it fast enough? Bye-bye boxes of slimy greens at the back of the crisper. I pick my salad fresh the day I want to eat it.
What just seems fun and interesting to try to grow? It’s great to have a couple of experimental crops in the garden: things that have a unique growth habit or produce a type of food you’ve never tried.
Choose a few companion plants: Mixing in calendula, cosmos, marigolds, nasturtium, and zinnias will attract beneficial insects to the garden. Plus, they add some beauty and colorful contrast to all the green.
Even more flowers? If you want to cut flower bouquets, consider growing a variety of colors, shapes, and heights of plants that bloom in different parts of the year.
Do you have the needed time and space to give the plant to help it flourish? Some plants have very specific light or water needs, or might be susceptible to pests or disease and need close attention. If you can’t provide those things, maybe it’s better to get that food from the farmers market and grow something more suited to your garden conditions.
Now get specific: Once you identify the types of plants you want to grow, you can do more research (or browse seed catalogs) to find a specific variety or two that has the qualities and characteristics you want in terms of flavor, disease resistance, and time it takes to grow.
Or not: If you’d rather not start your plants from seed and instead buy seedlings at the garden center this spring, that’s fine too. You won’t have 17 types of zucchini to choose from, but the store should stock the most popular variety that grows well in your area.
HOW MUCH OF EACH PLANT?
Once you’ve come up with a dream list, it’s time to figure out what will really fit in your garden and how many actual plants of each variety you should grow. We’ll tackle placement and spacing later, but first consider how much you can harvest from each type of plant and start to calculate how many seeds or seedlings you’ll want to plant.
The following are estimates of you can expect during the harvest window, usually lasting about 2-3 weeks.
Some plants are "one and done"; you harvest the whole thing at once. This includes broccoli (one main head with a few extra spears later), cauliflower, cabbage, head lettuce, beets, carrots, leeks, onions, radish, turnip, parsnips. Also daffodils, tulips, alliums, single stem sunflowers, and stock. Plant several (or dozens) if you really like them.
These leafy veggies will give you a few leaves per plant every few days: arugula, chard, collards, kale, leaf lettuce, mustard greens, spinach. Brussels will provide a few sprouts per plant every few days. Gomphrena, zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons, bachelor's buttons, nigella, carnations, and dahlias are all "cut-and-come-again" flowers, meaning they continue to produce blooms on new stems.
Almost all the herbs can be continually cut, so 1 planting of each type is usually enough (basil would be the exception if you want a big harvest for pesto).
Peas and green beans will produce a 2-4 pods per day per plant or more, so plant 10-20 plants to serve beans for dinner a couple of times a week.
Melons and winter squash will produce 2-3 fruits per plant.
Cucumbers, summer squash, okra, and eggplants will produce about 1-2 fruits per week, per plant, or more.
A cherry tomato plant will produce about a pint of fruit per week, or more. A slicer tomato plant will produce 2-3 fruits per week.
Now that you’ve figured out what and how much of each plant you want to grow, it’s time to gather your seeds. You may have some saved or leftover from last year, you can trade with friends or through a local seed exchange or garden group, or you can always go shopping. If you wind up buying a few extra things that weren’t on your list, you are in the company of almost every gardener that every gardened. Happy planning!
If this all seems like way too much, schedule a garden planning session and I can talk you through it, and do the calculations for you. Easy peasy!
