Gardeners new to organic vegetable gardening sometimes convince themselves they can’t grow anything after attempting to grow difficult crops, such as celery or cauliflower. However, with this lucky seven vegetable list, gardeners can look forward to fresh organic salads and stir-fry recipes as soon as 30 days after sowing. The ease of growing these crops also makes them ideal for a children’s garden.
Beans
Beans have large, easy-to-handle seeds, germinate quickly, and produce over a long period in hot weather. Pole beans like ‘Painted Lady’ have showy flowers appropriate for the ornamental garden. Bush beans are ideal for gardeners with limited space, and can even flourish in containers. Blasting the aphids that affect bean plants with a jet of water can also dislodge delicate flowers, so encourage ladybugs or use insect soap.
Bell Peppers
Gardeners with plenty of hot weather and sunshine can succeed with a rainbow of bell peppers sold for a premium in the market. ‘Red Beauty’ and orange ‘Valencia’ are sweeter than conventional green bell peppers. Don’t follow tomatoes with a bell pepper planting to avoid diseases like mosaic and blight.
Leaf Lettuce
Although lettuce seed is tiny, gardeners can make it easier to sow by combining it with sand and sprinkling it from a cheese shaker. Lettuce bolts quickly in hot conditions, but it’s one of the few vegetables that tolerate partially shady conditions. Lettuce appreciates moist conditions, but don’t over-fertilize the soil, which encourages rot. Discourage slugs with shallow dishes of beer or diatomaceous earth.
Radishes
Not all gardeners like the spicy zip of a fresh radish in the salad, but gardeners with a track record of failure must grow these little root vegetables that mature in as little as 20 days from seed. This makes radishes a good choice to grow while waiting for the soil to get warm enough for tomatoes and beans.
Sunflowers
Nothing cures a gardening inferiority complex like a stand of 14-foot giant sunflowers in the garden. Gardeners who don’t care to harvest the seeds will nevertheless appreciate the antics of goldfinches who hop from one dinner plate sized flower to another, foraging for a meal. Keep cutworms off seedlings by inserting a thin wire into the soil beside each plant.
Tomatoes
The popularity of tomatoes causes some gardeners to cultivate them year after year in the same plot. This causes diseases to build up in the soil, so grow tomatoes in a three-year crop rotation cycle if possible. Gardeners frustrated with gangly plants that topple over should grow determinate varieties, or even diminutive varieties like ‘Tom Thumb.’ Make a watery grave for conspicuous tomato hornworms by carrying a bucket of soapy water to the garden on daily rounds, and depositing these voracious pests.
Zucchini
There’s a real holiday called “Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day.” The existence of this celebration turns brown thumbs everywhere into green thumbs, as desperate gardeners try to unload some of their unexpected harvest. Pick cigar-sized zucchini before it becomes fibrous and savor its tender texture. Foil squash bugs with floating row covers.
Jamie McIntosh - Jamie has written hundreds of garden articles for the web, and is your guide to Flowers on About.com.
