Gardening

Your first-year gardening can easily be intimidating. You have new skills to learn and every plant seems to have its own needs. For starting your first garden I recommend choosing plants that are easy to grow that anyone can do it. Now is a great time to start planning your spring garden so you cha help fight the rising cost of food as inflation continues to hit the grocery store later. Easy to grow vegetables for first-time gardeners Root Vegetables Root vegetables are fairly hands-off. The most they need during the gardening season is more soil added and to ensure they get water in a drought. If you need an easy plant to grow root vegetables are a great option. Carrots Carrots are easy-to-grow vegetables that can be grown in the ground, raised beds, or even pots. In order to grow great carrots, it is important to till the soil properly and remove hard stones, sticks, and other items that may cause forking. Turnips Turnips make great root vegetables that can be used in place of potatoes, and they grow easily. After they have been planted, they can simply be kept moist and weed-free by watering the area in which they are planted. Use care when digging up your turnips with a shovel to avoid cutting them. Roast, mash, or use in stews just like you would your favorite potatoes. Radishes Radishes are a good option for gardeners who are impatient and would like to see a reward for their work fairly quickly because they grow relatively fast and are small. Fill in the edges of your garden beds with radishes each season to get the most from your garden space. These were a staple of my grandmother's pasta salad. Potatoes Potatoes and sweet potatoes are a great option for growing a filling vegetable at home. You can grow these in your garden beds or in a large container like a grow bag with a door so you can harvest early potatoes without disturbing the entire plant. Allow the greens to turn brown and die back if you are intending to store potatoes for the winter. Nightshades Nightshades are fairly easy to grow and perfect for the rotating garden that you plant to grow potatoes and lingams in. Tomatoes Tomatoes are one of the most commonly cultivated vegetables. Growing tomatoes requires more water than work. If you can provide them with plenty of water your tomatoes will provide you with an abundance of food. Burying a bucket with holes with your tomatoes surrounding it is a great way to make deep watering your tomatoes and keeping them with enough water easy. I like to grow a variety of tomatoes like cherry tomatoes for my son to snack on, paste tomatoes for making homemade pasta sauce, and beefsteak tomatoes for adding to sandwiches or making fried green tomatoes. Peppers Peppers are available in a wide range of flavors, so you can pick up sweet or spicy kick your socks off chili peppers to add flavor to your favorite foods. My use of peppers and spice in my cooking is where my Mexican roots shines through. Peppers are easy to grow and once they have been planted they do not require much care as long as they are provided with support, such as a tomato cage. Gourds Growing Gourds is a great way to get a large and bountiful harvest that allows you to feed your family a range of hearty meals to sweet treats in the garden. Zucchini Zucchini is one of the easiest vegetables to grow in the garden. It is common for forgetful gardeners to neglect their gardens and come back to them with only enough zucchini to feed the neighborhood. The best way to ensure that you get a bountiful garden crop is to grow zucchini. One time my best friend and her mother-in-law planted a small garden between their homes and forgot about it. Eventually one day she wandered into their e little garden patch to find a bountiful harvest including a zucchini the size of her own arm. Pumpkins Pumpkins and other hardy fall squashes are easy to grow. With these plants, you can maximize the benefits of your garden beds by growing beans and other lingams alongside them. These days, many gardeners are even growing pumpkins vertically in order to leave more space in their gardens due to the large vines they produce. There are many types of pumpkins that can be grown. To ensure that your pumpkins do not rot before you can harvest them, try lifting them out of the moist ground with melon baskets. Pumpkins are a fall staple around our house we roast them and use them to make sweet baked goods. Pumpkins are a major part of our Samhain and Día de Los Muertos decorations. We love to paint pie pumpkins for the holidays then wash them to use for food. Cucumbers Cucumbers are easy to grow and useful. If you're looking for a simple, fresh way to prepare a summer salad or to make a large number of pickles to snack on throughout the winter, Cucumbers are cousins of common melons are in fact a gourd. My husband and kids go through a large number of cucumbers and pickles making them well worth letting run wild in the back of the yard. Lingams Lingams are a great way to provide your garden with improved solid conditions. These make a great companion plant or can serve and a food-producing cover crop to help improve depleted soil. Green beans Green beans grow quickly and can be harvested after six weeks with a minimum amount of effort. Companion plants like green beans can be very beneficial for high-demand vegetables like nightshades. Linguams like green beans have roots that contain bacteria that fix nitrogen in the soil around them. You can grow climbing green beans along the north side of your garden beds to allow the leaves to reflect heat back at heat-loving plants like tomatoes. After the first harvest is complete, you will be able to harvest a great harvest every week after succession planting every two weeks. Growing green beans is one of my best tricks for providing the kids healthy snacks they can enjoy right out of the garden. Easy to grow fruit Fruits are a summer staple snack that helps keep the kids content and settle sweet tooths without added sugar and junk food. Strawberries Strawberry plants make great garden fruits to grow in your garden. Give them their own bed, and they will quickly spread and take it over, providing you with an increasingly large harvest year after year with relatively little effort on your part. If you want a set it and forget it fresh fruit option for your garden, mulch the berries well and drape some bird netting over them to protect them from pests and rot. I like to grow spinach in our strawberry beds to help provide cover from the birds. Watermelon Watermelon is one of our favorite late-summer treats. We even leave some slices out for the bees to help them gather enough food for the winter. We live around the corner from a bee sanctuary and our yard gets an abundance of bees to partake in our fresh clover backyard, garden flowers, and fruity treats we leave out for them. Easy to grow herbs I find a herb garden to be essential to our household. From cooking to medicinal uses. Some herbs are relatively easy to care for. Making them a great addition to your garden. Garlic Garlic while a vegetable is most commonly used as an herb for flavoring. You should plant cloves of garlic in the fall in an out-of-the-way area and simply forget about them. In the late summer, the greens of your garlic will begin to die off, signaling that the garlic is about ready to cure and harvest for using all winter long. A kitchen staple and a great beginner vegetable, this vegetable can be set and forgotten. Basil Growing Basil in your garden is one of the easier tasks. You can plant it almost anywhere and it will flourish. To make a traditional Italian pesto or to enhance the flavor of summer salads, use this. Basil has many health benefits making it a great addition to your kitchen and medicinal herb gardens.