Easiest Vegetable to Grow

Casie Becker wrote:It depends on the season here. In summer, sweet potatoes, and a recommendation to use the leavs.

Especially with a beginner I think it would be important to choose something they are familiar with. Being able to visualize exactly how they'll use it can help motivate their efforts.

I've never tried that, and looking it up, what I was finding was saying they are extremely healthy, comparable to spinach, with an even more mild taste. That is awesome! I'm probably going to add this to my garden this year after seeing this! It grows like a weed here too, so that's always a big plus, and getting a double crop of the sweet potatoes and greens is awesome!

I agree that to grow something they are familiar with and love to eat, will make it a lot more gratifying and motivating!

I think potatoes are one of the easiest. They do not even need soil, yet their biggest problem is potatoes bugs and they can be picked off by hand. Obtaining seeds is as easy as buying potatoes at the store of the variety you like, cutting them up and planting them. Harvesting I nothing more than a shovel...

Really the only problem is, they are so easy, they can be bought dirt cheap at the store so a person is really better off growing more expensive veggies.

Jan White wrote:Peas are way up there for me, too.

Everyone says radishes are super easy, but I can rarely grow them without them bolting.  We just don't really have a spring here most years - it's cold, cold, cold, HOT.  Now rat-tail radishes on the other hand, those I can do.  The only problem is picking them fast enough!

My favourite easy, torture them as much as I want and still get a decent crop vegetables are tomatoes, ground cherries, and squash.

I can't get regular peas to grow great where I live, but I'm going to try to grow Chinese long beans that is suppposed to do really good in hot humid climates, so that should be interesting!

I also would like to try adding ground cherries this year, they sound amazing!

Jim Guinn wrote:I grow salad greens 12 months out of the year because I love fresh salads. So easy to grow....just plant the seeds and water.

I love salad greens too, nothing like a freshly picked salad!

Steve, I consider small tomatoes very easy and Hardy to grow.My last growing season I grew the seedlings in a tray then when Hardy I transplanted three in a coffee can.I had been collecting the 13 ounce coffee cans for a year.(we drink a lot of the stuff).I cut the bottoms off with a can opener and put the plastic lid on the cut-off  bottoms.I punched with an awl four holes in the plastic.I then filled the cans with rich soil.I poked holes and put in the Hardy young plants.All this was grown in house by a south window.When the plants were 5 inches tall Ieft the hardiest and let it grow to 10 inches.Then in my area N.Y. I dug a hole outdoors removed the plastic lid on the bottom and tamped down and the happy undisturbed root system flourished.When the lawn was mowed I spread the clippings around the tomatoes (this was May) and began clipping lower nodes and trellising.I had such an abundant and tasty crop that I had 5 gallon buckets of green tomatoes left in October.Which we made into green tomato jam with a touch of cinnamon ,allspice,sugar and hotsauce.Great for burgers!

Cabbage seems to be our easy grow here. Everybody loves it in every form. Probably because of the plague proportions of voles and weird molerats (not the bald ones) that decimate everything else given half a chance. And the fact that colorado beetle here is unavoidable. And wild boar. They love potatoes too. Gonna get me a gun. I love wild boar....

For subtropical or tropical I would say easiest leaf veggies are Aloe, Chaya,  and Opuntia other easy vegetables are cassava, yams and chayotes.

Amanda Launchbury-Rainey wrote:

Gonna get me a gun. I love wild boar....

I feel exactly the same about our local deer. If they're eating my veggies, then fair is fair. The trick is to make sure any harvesting is sustainable and improves, rather than damages, the gene-pool. Locally, the cougars are the main deer predator, and they would prey on the old, the weak and the very young.  Humans need to emulate that behavior.

Things in the cabbage family also grow well in my "Pacific Wet Coast" area. Unfortunately, to keep the soil healthy, they need to be moved around and a *huge* number of popular human annual food plants are directly (cabbage, broccoli, kale etc) or slightly more distantly (radish family, mustard family etc) related. I've even been given "lettuce" starts that turned out to be leafy cole family plants - look at the flowers when they bolt and the seed pods. Since a number of the leafy kale and similar will actually live several years unless we have an unusually cold winter and are pretty good at volunteering babies (which I find difficult to kill - sad to admit!), keeping the plants from developing club root is a constant balance.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Garlic Chives = Unkillable

The same was true for me, I can't remember if I had garlic chives or another variety, but I let them go to seed and they were huge and tough! They got so big I had to walk on them, and it didn't hurt them at all!

I've got some sort of Egyptian  walking onion and by planting it in a large variety of "micro-climates" - around the purple plum for an early crop, in the shade on the north side of a hugel for a later crop, a place I can actually water a little for the driest part of the year - I can cover mid-Feb to mid July and early Sept to the end of Nov with pretty much enough green onion for two meals/week. I use it in place of cooking onion much of the  time as it adds the same flavour. I guess I was thinking annuals when I read "easiest vegetable to grow".

Tina Hillel wrote:I find chard an easy crop.  It lasts from spring until frost hits and can be substituted for pretty much any green. I leave part of them in the ground through the winter to get a jump on some early greens since they are biennial.

I love chard! It's probably my favorite green right now, especially the colorful ones, they are so beautiful and delicious!

Stacy Witscher wrote:Squash is definitely the easiest here. And it's prolific, 4 summer varieties and 4 winter varieties will get you squash for the year.

I love squash, stir fried or cooked with onions!

I've never really tried winter squash though, I may give that a try this year!

Walt Chase wrote:Location dependent of course, but greens (turnip, collard, kale etc), radish, Leaf lettuces, and carrots are usually a fairly easy veggie as well

Yeah, my greens have done well for me too here!

I usually have a lot come up, and I love how they can be thinned/harvested at the same time if needed!

I have to plant them early or late in the season because they bolt fast here with our hot summers!

Chris Wang wrote:Rocket/arugula, amaranth and as already mentioned, garlic chives. All of them self seed and go well in hot dry conditions, without any watering.

That is always a nice feature!

In addition to being fast, delicious and easy, arugula is also forgiving if you miss a harvest because of its awesome pods. I like those even better than the greens.

Runner beans.  Enormous harvests, beautiful to look at and if they go over, yummy dried beans to harvest. Wonderful over a pergola, especially 'painted Lady', make a shady bower, feeds the bees and grow like there's no tomorrow.  So good steamed .

Laura Nunes wrote:Runner beans and courgettes here but entirely depends on where you are

I had never heard of the term courgette for zucchini before. Both of those grow really good here too and are some of my favorites!

Okay, I have to weigh in here as well since I wrote a book for beginner gardeners! But I'm not an expert (I hate that term and all of the associated ego-mania that goes along with it), just someone who has gardened for 8+ years and learned some things the hard way.

Here's my list of easy plants for beginners:

Cherry tomatoes - produce in spades and are so delicious to pop in!
Early Tomato varieties - they might be labeled “Early Girl”, or some such other name with Early in it. These will fruit sooner, just in case you get an early frost or plant too late.
Kale & Chard - can harvest in a month some baby greens
Fennel
Arugula
Lettuce (my favorite varieties are Pirat & Black Seeded Simpson, both heirlooms)
Mixed greens (sometimes called Mesclun Mix)
Dandelions (these are usually considered a weed but are super nutritious! Bulletproof plants)
Chicory, Sorrel, Radicchio, Frisee (all gourmet greens, but easy)
Nasturtium - this plant has gorgeous bright colored edible flowers and is a fast grower
Calendula (an edible flower, that you can also make salve from for cuts and wounds)
Parsley
Chives (for a garlic-flavored salad dressing)
Strawberries (you can easily grow these in hanging planters or pots)
Dill
Potatoes (very easy and grow well in deep containers)
Basil
Runner Beans

This list is predicated on buying plants from a nursery...starting from seed is more for intermediate gardeners as there can be lots of loss and problems with leggy plants if growing indoors without lights. However, lettuce and other greens are really easy to grow from seed and you don't need to buy the plants. Same for chives and potatoes (using potato starts). It is also very rewarding for a beginner to have some plants from the nursery and they start producing almost immediately with very little assistance. In my first year of gardening I started from seed (with everything) and was disappointed when I didn't get as much reward and had a lot of loss.

One tip for beginner gardeners who have a slug infestation: start plants indoors and your slugs will be less likely to eat bigger, more established plants. I've had slugs eat every plant you can imagine when the seeds were put directly in the ground outside. But when I started those same plants inside or bought them from a nursery, the plants were probably too "tough" tasting for the slugs to eat. It seems like the plants need a bit of a head start before being put out into the garden. This tip is really for folks who have a VERY heavy slug infestation. Just wanted to share that since I went through a whole season being very frustrated about not being able to grow anything due to "slug predation", haha.

S Bengi wrote:Squash Family  (bugs and powdery mildew overall a no save for a few that comes from the compost pile)
Cabbage Family (Except for daikon radish, bolting in summer, aphid infestation in fall, spring and winter okay for kale/collard)
Lettuce/Dandelion Family (Pest hardy, but they bolt quickly)
Tomatoes Family (Potatoes are good, cherry tomatoes are good, pepper need the most sun and heat)
Legume Family (bush beans need the least amount of heat and the most pest hardy)
Spinach Family (these guys are the best in my book, the 'traditional ones are cool temp nut slow to bolt in summer, and the new world ones are summer weed, so delicious)

I love growing spinach, especially the dark green wrinkly kind, it's so delicious!

Artie Scott wrote:I have had pretty good luck with jalapeño peppers - pop them in the ground and get ready to figure out how to use them all!  Very prolific, and they make you feel like you know what you are doing. They really like the hot weather, but keep producing well into October (at least here in Zone 7a).

Good to hear! I've grown cayanne peppers which did similar once they got going!

Get some tomato’s and onions and cilantro going and -voila!- salsa!  Delicious. I have also pickled my peppers, which is super easy and fun, and also delicious!  Just don’t call me Peter Piper!

I'm going to try making salsa this summer, can't wait, so yummy!

Summer squash was going to be my pick for easiest, but I have to hand pollinate it which led me to leave it off the list. I totally forgot about runner beans, I grow them every year for the hummingbirds and they always do well, even with a lot of neglect.

Casie Becker wrote:More than what vegetable to grow, for a new gardener I would like them to try a fall garden.  Here the hardest part of the growing season would be during the highest point of enthusiasm and as they grew tired of weeding and watering the temperature would become mild and fall rains would take off some of the load.  Sometimes summer hits like an anvil and kills a garden from the shock.

Yeah Casie, a fall garden is a great idea! Like you said, it can be easier to manage weather and temperature wise also!

John Paulding wrote:Another vote for Irish Potatoes. I like growing the yukon gold.

I love potatoes too, I just have to get motivated to harvest them! It's kind of fun though too seeing what's down there!

Re: peas... they grow better in early cool spring weather, if 'chitted', i.e., soaked and pre-sprouted indoors, then planted in the ground.  (And I've had some self-planted peas sprout and grow through our Zone 7-8 winter... don't know about this one, as we've had an exceptionally cold couple of weeks.)

I'm a bit surprised not to see more perennial veggies listed....especially on a permaculture site.  What is easier to grow than something that you don't have to plant after the first planting.  A few were mentioned.  I'd also add rhubarb as a high yielding easy vegetable.   Better yet, wild veggies....you don't even have to plant them once!  I think ramps and milkweed are great examples in that category.  Heck, I don't even weed for those....pick, cook, eat!

I would advise perennial vegetables myself to reduce yearly work. Some examples are prickly pear cactus, Egyptian walking onions, certain types of elephant garlic, sunchokes, lovage, asparagus, rhubarb, bamboo (Yes bamboo), and many more including shrubs like Rose of Sharon.

Jeff Hodgins wrote:For subtropical or tropical I would say easiest leaf veggies are Aloe, Chaya,  and Opuntia other easy vegetables are cassava, yams and chayotes.

Most folks aren't familiar with these veggies, so I don't usually mention them. In my own area, I find than the following are extremely easy veggies to grow that are not a trial to learn to eat :
...chaya
...pipinola (aka - chayote)
...sweet potato greens
...cholesterol spinach
...taro

But these are tropicals, thus most folks cannot grow them. There are others but one needs to learn to eat them. The flavor, texture, or intestinal acceptance are issues to overcome.

Perennial vs annual easy veggies........ I grow both. Frankly, I spend just about as much time tending my perennial beds as I do, say for example, a bed of annual beans. While I don't need to replant perennials as frequently, there is still need to remove weeds, apply mulch, incorporate compost, apply nutrients, monitor disease, control pests, irrigate as needed, and prune/trim/train/clean up plants. I happen to grow a lot more annuals, so it just seems that annuals take more of my time. But in reality, I'm not so sure that's true. Perennials need attention too if I expect them to thrive and produce for me.

Just as with annuals, not all perennials are easy to grow. At least not here in the tropics.

Anne Miller wrote:For me, the easiest have been Garlic Chives

And Egyptian Walking Onions

I had some from a garden a few years ago that looked like the ones in the photo, and they were so tough, they survived getting walked on and high and low temperatures with no problem!

I would go with peas too.  Though if you are looking for help with how to be more of a green thumb I would recommend this book pack, Caring for your Roses naturally, you don't have to grow flowers but it is only $6.99 and come with a free expert gardener to answer all your garden questions for 3 months so for that price its worth it. Plus comes with some other free stuff like another book and unlimited garden labels. I thought it was helpful.  Here is a link for anyone interested. https://www.greengardenchicken.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=85_229&product_id=343

Ben Zumeta wrote:Green onions are pretty easy, I get mine out of our local organic grocer's leftovers, take the greens if they are good and replant the base 1.5". It was probably the first veggie I may never have to buy again and I use it daily.

Awesome Ben, great idea!

I need to start using green onions more.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:The easiest vegetable to grow, is the one that you are most passionate about. Find the vegetable that is most joyful to you, and you will long to be with it often: to nurture and protect it. It will be easy to pay enough attention to the vegetable that you love, that you will be weed and water it appropriately.

Yeah Joseph, I've found that to be the case for myself too.

If I really like a vegetable or am really interested in it, I give it the necessary care to help get it established and succeed!

I think it's important for newbies to start out with things that are not only easy to grow, but familiar, easy to get seeds for (our grocery store even puts out a seed rack in the spring), and that people already know how to use in the kitchen. If newbies are successful with their early attempts, they're more likely to keep at it, expand their repertoire, and  hopefully move more towards a permaculture approach. For me it's been a journey, not a leap of faith off a high cliff!  

Rosemary Hansen wrote:

One tip for beginner gardeners who have a slug infestation: start plants indoors and your slugs will be less likely to eat bigger, more established plants.

For those interested, there's a whole thread on that one here: https://permies.com/t/101018/Direct-seeding-transplanting-vegetable-starts#834078  
This is another area where there is not, "one right answer for every garden or gardener", and slugs aren't the only predator that may force someone to change tactics!

Ken Zemach wrote:Another vote for Chard. Plus it looks really nice. I love Kale but don’t grow it because it gets seriously infested with aphids.  Some sacrificial Kale here and there as aphid traps and to lure ladybugs to the area, yes, but it’s too frustrating to grow to eat for me.

I love rainbow chard with all the colors!

My favorite is asparagus. plant it and forget it, harvest once it is old enough.
Love it fresh, love it cooked!

Additionally, I love planting onions and garlic because you just can't screw it up.
I've earned the moniker "Onion Lady" from my neighbors that donate their grass clippings and leaves because that's what they get from me in return.

Sara Rosenberg wrote:
Additionally, I love planting onions and garlic because you just can't screw it up.
.

Hmmmm. The first time I grew onions they were a huge success. About 1990. Since then........ DISASTER!

Lambs Quarter practically grows, well does grow itself. One of the first crops to be harvested.