Growing a vegetable garden has many advantages, as growing your own food is much better than what you can buy in the store. You know exactly what is in the product and what you are eating, and your veggie garden can save money.
A garden may seem intimidating, but growing the right crops can make it simple, and the easiest vegetables you can grow, you can do with minimal effort.
Rather than one specific vegetable, there is a host that makes up the easiest food to grow, and here in our guide, you can see the easiest garden plants you can grow in your garden, in your raised beds, or containers.
By the end of our guide, you’ll see the easy things to grow in a small garden and the easiest things to grow in a garden.
By the end, there’ll be no stopping you, and you’ll be off to try your new skills with the easiest crops to grow at home in your new raised bed. (Read about Starting Vegetable Gardens)
What is The Easiest Vegetable to Grow?
Some vegetables are easy to grow, while others have properties that make them ideal for companion planting. Beans may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of easy garden veggies.
On the other hand, Beans are one of those crops that can help in a variety of ways and make for happy gardening.
Beans can thrive in even poor garden soil as they fix nitrogen as they grow. Bush beans don’t need to be trellised, but pole beans produce a longer harvest. Snap beans are the simplest to grow in cool climates.
Lima beans and asparagus beans are also easy to grow in hot climates, where they thrive in warm, moist soil and grow quickly.
You must straight sow this vegetable, despite it being one of the easiest to grow.
Instead of growing on a vine, bush beans grow in bushes. Proceed down your row of green beans and pull them straight from the bush.
Before instantly spreading your bean seeds, wait till the soil is warm. Otherwise, the seeds will rot. When you plant seeds 3 inches apart and roughly 1 inch deep in warm soil, they germinate faster. Seeds should grow in 8-16 days, and following germination, you can thin the plants to make them more spaced apart. (Find the Best Mulch For Vegetable Garden)
Green beans should be planted in well-drained soil that receives plenty of sunlight. Cover the row with a heavy layer of compost.
Green beans need a lot of water to stay healthy, and if they don’t get enough, they shrivel. Your green bean plants will turn yellow if your soil is deficient in nitrogen. You’ll have tiny green bean plants emerging in your garden in a few weeks.
Blood meal or bone meal can be purchased and placed around your plants. Bugs enjoy munching on the leaves of green beans as well, so you may need to check for this. Pole beans take up less ground space, allowing you to plant more plants in a smaller space, though they require a trellis.
Green beans require at least 8 hours of direct sunlight and a moderate amount of water to thrive.
What vegetables grow in 30 days?
When you look for what are the easiest vegetables to grow and the easy garden vegetables to grow, you probably want fast growers.
The fastest things to grow are micro-greens, yet these are not a group of the easiest plants to grow in garden environments. Radish, broccoli, lettuce seeds, beet seeds, wheat, and turnip can all be grown as microgreens.
Although they are healthy and easy plants to grow, vegetables here offer more substance.
Lettuce
Lettuce can be planted directly in your garden bed or started inside and transplanted later. It’s one of the few crops cultivated year-round in some areas, although it should have partial shade and be harvested at smaller sizes in hot weather.
Grow lettuce 8 to 10 inches apart, and lettuce growth slows in the shade, and it also means longer to bolt or go to seed so that it can be harvested for longer. (Read How to Harvest Lettuce)
You’ll never tire of producing new lettuce varieties because of the unlimited variety of leaf shapes and shades of green and red. Leaf lettuces may be clipped as they grow, allowing you to get multiple harvests from a single plant by simply snipping off what you need.
Thin romaine and head lettuce heads if you want them to grow into full heads. Keep the delicate small leaves for salads as you thin your plants.
Radish
These fast-growing vegetables can be harvested with slower-growing vegetables. Radishes can be planted as they prefer warm soil and can be planted in small spaces such as window boxes if needed.
Sow seeds 2 inches apart or thin after sprouting and cover the seeds with compost or soil.
Radish seeds go well with carrots, so mix radish and carrot seeds before planting, especially if you don’t have loose dirt. Cover with a light soil coat. 5-7 days to sprout seeds.
Radishes push through the soil, breaking it up for the carrots. The carrots then fill the rows as you harvest the radishes. Radishes are appealing because they can be harvested quickly. Most varieties are ready in 4–6 weeks!
To grow radishes, avoid using high-nitrogen fertilizers and planting them where beans were grown last year.
Seeds should be sown directly 6 weeks before the last spring frost and 4 weeks before the first fall frost. They only need 4 hours of sunlight and little water, and hot weather can lead to spicy or bitter-tasting radish.
Carrots
Root vegetables such as carrots are included primarily because they are straightforward to grow if planted in loose, sandy soil throughout the milder months of the growing season—spring and fall, where carrots can tolerate some frost.
The carrots of many novices are short and misshapen. This is typically due to poor, rocky soil; therefore, soft, loose soil that drains effectively is essential. Add additional sand to loosen it up even further. Also, to avoid overcrowding, carrot seedlings must be thinned for the appropriate spacing.
Kale
Kale is a hardy plant that can grow in a wide range of temperatures if you have ample space. Its edible buds and flowers can be harvested at various stages. Mustards and collards are easy to grow and related to kale.
Kale grows from early spring to early summer until it gets too hot. Plant again in the fall, especially in the south cooler weather as kale gets sweeter after a few touches of frost. Try baking, stir-frying, or steaming kale. (Learn How to Harvest Kale)
Green Peas
Green peas are one of the easiest vegetables to grow from seed because they require little work! Peas are a cool-weather plant that germinates quickly, so they do best when planted directly in the ground in early spring.
The soil should be soft enough to work 6 weeks before your average last frost date. Sow pea seeds 1 inch deep and 1-3 inches apart. 7-14 days to sprout seeds
Peas require 6 or more hours of sunlight per day and moderate watering. Give them a trellis to climb.
Peas, like green beans, are easy things to grow in a garden, container friendly, and make vertical space. To get enough peas for one meal, you need several plants. Snow peas or Snap peas take up a fraction of the space that shelling peas do.
What Are the Best and Easiest Vegetables to Grow?
You get popular vegetables such as leaf lettuce, but this cool weather plant may not be among the priority of some gardeners. Here are a few great tips on better and easy vegetables you can grow that offer a more substantial harvest.
Cucumbers
You can either plant cucumbers in your garden or containers while planting them.
Cucumbers can be planted straight in the ground, sown three weeks before indoors, or purchased as seedlings at your local nursery. The warm-weather crop should be planted after the last spring frost, in either case.
Plant cucumbers in well-drained soil with plenty of sunlight if you want to grow them in your garden. Cucumbers are vines, so as long as you give them enough room to spread their vines, you’ll have plenty of cucumbers.
You can plant conventional full-sized cucumbers or choose a different variety if you decide to plant them in containers.
They make a patio cucumber that is grown in patio containers. Fill the bucket with earth and compost if you decide to use this method. (Read Why are My Cucumbers Bitter)
In each bucket, plant one cucumber plant. Place sure they are in the light and that the plant is watered regularly. Fertilizing your cucumbers once a month is a good idea. Cucumbers are ready to be plucked when they grow to full size.
Zucchini & Summer Squash
When the weather warms up, you can start these seeds indoors or direct sow them outside. If you want to direct sow zucchini seeds into containers or raised garden beds, make sure you have warm temperatures and are frost-free.
1 inch deep and 3-6 inches apart, sow the seeds, and in a week or two, the seeds should sprout. Thin your seedlings to 2-4 feet apart once they emerge.
The plants need to be kept separate from one another, or they compete for nutrients and water. Nasturtiums can fight squash vine borers, which can damage your zucchini and summer squash plants.
Cucumbers and zucchini have comparable requirements, such as plenty of light, plenty of water, and plenty of nutrients.
Okra
The growing season for okra is warm and humid. While it grows best when directly planted in the garden, you can start your seeds indoors if you live in a chilly area.
4 weeks before you intend to plant them outside, sow your seeds 1/2 inch deep in a deep container. If you soak your seeds in lukewarm water overnight, your okra plants will germinate faster. They also appreciate warm soil, so use a heating pad or keep your seed tray in a warm location.
You can transplant your okra outside after the weather is reliably warm. Because the okra roots are lengthy, it grows well in raised garden beds with a lot of depth. Choose a warm location in your garden.
When temperatures reach around 26°C (80°F), okra grows swiftly and requires at least 8 hours of sunlight. Okra has a minimal watering requirement — a weekly deep watering should suffice. If you want to grow okra in a container, search for varieties that are “compact.”
What Should I Plant in My Garden for Beginners?
Some of the easiest vegetables to grow can be done when you sow seeds directly rather than from cuttings, although for some, this can help extend your warm growing season and get a head start.
Here are some gardening tips to get the best benefits you can find when you purchase vegetable seeds for vegetables to grow from your garden center.
- Seeds are less expensive, especially when purchased in larger numbers. They usually last for a few years and can be shared with friends and neighbors.
- Seeds for easy garden vegetables provide more variety than a garden center nursery that often has a restricted selection of transplants.
- Some vegetables cannot be transplanted from one place to another.
- Starting the easiest vegetables to grow in a garden from seed allows you to spread seeds directly in the garden for better germination.
- You can grow crops that do not thrive when transplanted from one location to another, like maize, melons, squash, beans, and peas.
- Starting easy summer vegetables to grow plants from seed ensures that they are healthy from the beginning.
- Many people don’t recommend beginners start tomatoes from seeds, but they are easy to grow in a garden; it just takes you a little longer for these easy gardening plants.
Tomato plants can be grown from both, and many recommend not growing from seeds. However, you can get to choose from the bush varieties to the vining type. You will find the two types, such as indeterminate and determinate, offering different benefits and a different way of growing. For example, bush types can grow in hanging baskets where the other types can’t.
Vine tomatoes can also help with a light shade to other shorter crops in the very hot weather and full sun. (Read White Spots on Tomato Leaves)
If you live in an area with a short growing season, look for tomatoes that mature quickly; otherwise, they may not have enough time to mature and ripen before the first frost.
Sow seeds indoors 6 weeks before your last frost date. You can germinate the seeds on a heat mat or in a warm place. With bottom heat, seeds should germinate in 7-14 days.
