Veggies
I have grouped many possible veggies into four categories, aimed at home gardeners in southern New England:
1. Veggies that are easy to grow
2. Other possibilities to consider if you want to get more adventurous
3. Not recommended if you want to keep your veggie garden low-maintenance
4. Perennial veggies
Veggies that are easy to grow …
Peas: shelling peas and edible-podded peas
➢ Shelling peas come first, and they are tasty enough to snack on in the garden. It’s easiest to get varieties that don’t need to be staked. You can plant them as soon as the ground is thawed, or any time before the ground really warms up in late May. I usually plant them from mid-March to mid-April.
Are you growing beans, peas, soybeans, clover, or alfalfa for the first time? If so, your soil may not have enough of the critical nitrogen-fixing bacteria that attach to the plant roots, form nodes, pull nitrogen out of the air, and make it available to the plants. In a new garden, therefore, I recommend bacterial inoculants from Fedco (different ones for different plants) that help ensure healthy node production and nitrogen fixation. They seem like good insurance to me. In an established garden that has been successfully growing nitrogen-fixing plants, however, they are unnecessary.
➢ Edible-podded peas come later. I recommend the Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap varieties, despite their height; their shorter cousins don’t have as much flavor. Snow peas are also easy to grow, and can be harvested even if you miss them on the first pass and the peas have begun to fill out. If you want to grow tall peas, I recommend a bean tower from Park Seeds or a sturdy fence that is at least 5 feet tall.
Salad greens: leaf lettuce, mesclun mixes, various exotic greens sold by Fedco and Johnny’s
➢ Will grow in partial shade, and in summer do better in partial shade.
➢ Malabar spinach is a vine that flourishes in the summer. It tastes remarkably like spinach.
➢ Consider also nasturtium leaves and flowers, if you like a bit of a bite in your salads.
Cooking greens: perpetual spinach, chard (rainbow chard is gorgeous), kale, collards, various exotic greens sold by Fedco and Johnny’s
➢ Will tolerate more shade than many crops.
➢ Kale and collards have better flavor after frost. Kale will usually make it through the winter. Perpetual spinach will usually come back in the spring and give you a few pickings before it goes to seed.
Radishes: As easy as it gets. But get your soil tested for lead before growing (well, eating) any root crop.
Hakurai turnips: A tasty, quick-growing salad turnip from Johnny’s.
Snap beans
➢ Bush beans are easier to grow than pole beans. They are less productive per square foot, and some claim they are not as tasty, but I find the difference between varieties more significant. Consider Romano beans and yellow beans.
➢ If you want to grow pole beans, I recommend a bean tower from Park Seeds. Use hemp twine (from Fedco) or another biodegradable twine that you can put in your compost pile.
➢ Pre-soaking before planting is good but not necessary.
➢ Inoculant may be helpful if you haven’t grown beans or peas in a specific location previously. (See comment above.)
Soybeans / Edamame
➢ Incredibly good when fresh, and very easy to grow. I’ve had good results planting the seeds in a 9” grid and ignoring them from germination to harvest. Pick the pods when they have filled out but are still full green, before they begin to yellow. You can either pick individual pods or cut off (not pull out) the whole plant. Boil the pods in salted water for 3 minutes or so, and pop the seeds into your mouth. Different varieties claim to have different maturities, but that isn’t my experience: they all seem to ripen in the last two weeks of August and the first week of September.
➢ Soybeans have different nitrogen-fixing bacteria than beans and peas, so inoculant may be helpful if you haven’t grown soybeans in a specific location before. (See comment above.)
Mexican Sour Gherkin: Grows on a light and lacy vine. Fruit looks like a 1” watermelon and tastes somewhat like a cucumber, getting more sour near the end of the season. Easy, unusual, and fun.
Tomatoes: More work than the other group one plants, but oh so tasty.
➢ You can start seedlings yourself, or purchase them. I recommend starting your own seeds if you have a greenhouse window or light table and purchasing seedlings if you don’t. It’s difficult to give seedlings as much as they need in a normal home set-up.
o Tomato seedlings need lots of light and repeated repotting to give them more foot room. Once they get going they can grow 2” a day. If you start them too early, or give them too little light, they will get gangly and not be good producers. People say it’s a problem to transplant them with buds on them, but I do so regularly. Sometimes I transplant them with flowers, or even set fruit. Late March seems like a good time to plant tomato seeds.
➢ The old rule of thumb was to transplant tomatoes in the Boston area on Memorial Day weekend. Thanks to global warming, that seems to have shifted to May 15th.
o Tomatoes really don’t like temperatures in the 40s, and they aren’t fond of the 50s either.
o One year I transplanted some tomatoes at the beginning of May and the rest around May 20, when the weather had stabilized. The early transplants gave me tomatoes almost two weeks earlier than the later ones. But the early transplants never grew as large, became diseased, provided much less total crop, and died earlier in the fall.
➢ When you transplant tomatoes, crumple an eggshell into the soil. Also remove leaves from the lower half of the stem and bury it; it will sprout new roots.
➢ All tomatoes need to be supported for healthy plants and good yields. Some indeterminate varieties can grow as high as nine feet if you let them.
o I use two tomato cages from Gardeners Supply Company, stacked on top of each other. If I were purchasing supports now, I would consider the tomato tower with nylon trellising from Park Seeds.
o Tomato ladders require removing suckers and tying the plant to the ladder. They are also far too short for the types of tomatoes I grow, though the Gardeners Supply Company also offers a ladder extension.
➢ Keep an eye out for tomato hornworm caterpillars. If it looks like something is eating the leaves of your tomato plants, look for a green caterpillar that might (if you’re lucky) be small, but might be up to 4” long. Remove and kill it. (A rotating composter comes in handy here.)
➢ Pruning is up to you. If you remove the suckers (which grow between the main stem and the leaf) you will get fewer but larger fruit. Your first tomatoes will be earlier, but the tomatoes will also be more vulnerable to sunburn. I don’t prune.
➢ Watering is up to you. If you water regularly, you will get more and larger fruit that is less vulnerable to splitting. I water only when the plants look stressed in the evening.
➢ Varieties are up to you. I love Sungold and Juliet. My mother loves Sweet 100s. I recommend exploring the wonderful world of tomatoes. I also recommend going to the Kimball Fruit Farm’s tomato stand at the Arlington Farmers’ Market to try tasty heirloom varieties.
Other possibilities to consider if you want to get more adventurous …
Carrots and beets: Need deep, well-worked, loose fertile soil. For these root crops you need to dig the bed thoroughly and try to remove all pebbles from the top 8” or so of soil. Get your soil tested for lead before growing any root crop.
Parsnips: Amazingly tasty spring crop. Plant them in the spring, leave them alone, and harvest them when the ground thaws next spring. Can also be harvested in the fall, but they won’t be as sweet then. They too need deep, well-worked, loose fertile soil, so they too require digging.
Kohlrabi: Tasty and easy to grow. Hard to find as transplants, so you may need to start them from seed, either indoors or outdoors. The purple ones are pretty!
Broccoli: Need fertile soil – abundant compost or a balanced organic fertilizer. Some varieties some years may resist heading. Will produce side-shoots after you harvest the main head.
➢ Will attract cabbage white butterflies. Either grow under row covers or inspect each bunch for little green caterpillars before eating.
Peppers: Like heat. If you want to start seeds yourself, you need a heating mat or something else that warms the soil. I like Klari Baby Cheese sweet pepper for its flavor and abundance. Fish peppers are beautiful, productive plants that yield small hot peppers (they are a traditional African-American variety). Sweet red peppers can take a very long time to ripen – at which point you can get them 3 for $1 a the Farmers’ Market. In general, pointed peppers are earlier and more abundant than bell peppers.
Eggplant: Definitely taste better fresh from a garden. I recommend Swallow, an Asian variety sold by Fedco. One year I started seeds in February and they set fruit in May!
Shell beans, dry beans, lima beans, fava beans: Longer growing season than snap beans, but all tasty in their own ways. Fava beans should be planted at the same time as peas, but the rest should wait until the soil reaches 70 degrees. Beans and soybeans are the best way to grow protein in New England. See comments above about inoculants.
Cucumbers: May die mid-summer if you don’t water them. Have next to no nutritional value. They take less room and produce prettier fruit if you grow them up some sort of trellis. I like growing the pickling types, because they’re short and a one-person snack, and the Asian types, which can get very long.
➢ All cucurbit seedlings (cucumbers, squashes, melons) quickly produce a taproot that gets very unhappy if it is damaged by transplanting. One option is to plant seeds directly in the garden. They need soil that is at least 70 degrees, so either be patient or pre-warm the bed with black plastic (e.g., a garbage bag) or a cloche. To get an earlier start, plant seeds indoors in a peat pot in early May. Transplant them outdoors when they have one or two true leaves (7-10 days later – pay attention to weather patterns before planting!). Gently tear the bottom off the peat pot (to free the root) and remove the top inch of the peat pot (to prevent wicking). You might also want to protect the seedling (transplanted or not) with a cloche.
Summer squash: Even the “bush” varieties take a fair amount of space, and the ramblers can really ramble. If you have space for them, I recommend Benning’s green tint patty pan squash or kousa (a.k.a. cousa) squash. Zucchini are notorious for being prolific. If the plants begin to wilt and look unhappy, look for a part of the stem that looks woody. Take a sharp kitchen knife, slit the stem lengthwise, and pull out and kill the caterpillar you will find.
Winter squash: Same comments about space. I recommend delicata, especially bush delicata. I also enjoy growing ornamental pumpkins/squashes.
Melons: Need a lot of sun and water. Labor intensive in our climate, and the flavor may be disappointing. But worth trying if you want something to baby. Start warming the soil as soon as you have access to it. Make a very fertile 3-4’ mound, and cover it with black plastic.
Potatoes: Easy to grow, but can be labor intensive to dig up, and if you miss some of them they can turn into a perennial crop. Until 2009 they were the best way to grow calories in New England, but if you are thinking about growing potatoes read my comments
Garlic: Easy, but need to be planted the previous fall. Purchase seed garlic, or get a few extra heads from the Farmers’ Market and keep them until planting time. Cut off the flowering stems before the flowers start to bloom and enjoy your garlic scapes in salads, scrambled eggs, etc. – they taste mildly of garlic.
Shallots: Easy, but also need to be planted the previous fall. May not be cost-effective.
Rat-tail radishes: Easy and unusual, produce radish-flavored seed pods all summer long.
Sunflowers: The birds might get there first, but who cares? If you want seeds, don’t choose a pollenless variety.
Not recommended if you want to keep your veggie garden low-maintenance …
Head lettuce: Grow leaf lettuce instead.
Celery: Needs water, blanching. Consider growing lovage (a perennial herb with a similar flavor) instead. Or grow a cutting celery (from Fedco), if you are willing to provide the water it needs.
Cauliflower: Needs blanching.
Brussels sprouts: Aphids can be an enormous nuisance.
Onions: I haven’t had great luck growing them from seed, sets can cost as much as full-grown onions, and they taste no better from a home garden than anywhere else.
Leeks: Need blanching.
Corn: Very tasty, not just to humans. If you want to try to eat corn, as well as grow it, pay close attention and fasten paper bags over the baby ears right after they are fertilized. Otherwise you will only grow corn. I recommend a weekly pilgrimage to the Farmers’ Market during corn season.
Artichokes: Yes, we can grow them in Arlington, but they require both an indoor light table and an outdoor cold frame.
Perennial veggies
Asparagus: A lot of work to get established – deep digging is necessary. But a well-fed bed can last eighty years, the summer fronds are beautiful, and there are few things better than truly fresh asparagus.
Sunchokes (a.k.a. Jerusalem artichokes): Tasty, easy, and almost impossible to eradicate. Some sort of containment is generally recommended. My mother grows them in the deep shade behind her garage, where they do not get too rampant to keep under control just by harvesting them.
Rhubarb: Trivially easy to grow, and a good value if you like rhubarb.
Horseradish, sorrel: On the short list of perennial veggies that will grow in New England, but I haven’t grown them myself. Warning: horseradish can get out of control.
A few general comments …
If you are eating food from a location, you are taking resources out of that location, so resources have to go into that location. Sunlight is essential for almost all food crops. Soil fertility tends to decline over time, so needs to be replenished. Natural water may or may not be sufficient, depending on the crop and your expectations.
The more resources go into the part of the plant you are eating, the more true this is. Leaves and stems arrive first and are least resource-intensive. We humans also eat roots (e.g., carrots), buds (e.g., broccoli), unripe seeds/fruit (e.g., cucumbers, green peppers, peas, snap beans, summer squash), and ripe seeds/fruit (e.g., tomatoes, red peppers, winter squash). The further along in this sequence, the more sun, water, and nutrients are needed for tasty produce.
Many veggies object to compacted soil, so make sure not to walk on the soil in a veggie garden. Create defined paths and stick to them. Fluff up the soil each spring with a pitchfork.