Wondering what to plant in your vegetable garden but have not had a chance to hit the garden store for seeds? Are you looking for ideas on what to plant?
If you are new to gardening, this article will help you find 5 cheap and easy to grow vegetables you can start growing today. And that is without stepping outside your house (except for planting outside). You can grow these straight from what you already have in your pantry. If you are a veteran gardener, this may be a refresher for you. You may even have your own tips to share.
Either ways, gardening is a great way to connect to mother earth. It is so relaxing, and fulfilling. Gardening became a bonding experience for one of my friends and her special needs son. My own son and I have had a blast this year planting various seeds using a square foot gardening tool.
More on square foot gardening in another post…by the way your kiddo will love it.
Home grown food tastes better and fresher than what we get to buy from the store. …Besides inspiring your next epicurious chef d’oeuvre.
I love pinching off fresh mustard leaves or that random basil leaf to add to a salad. And oh those fresh green pea pods: they are so crunchy and sweet straight off the plant. My son would snack on them right in the garden. Sautéed with butter, they just melt into soft little marbles of flavor!
On the random day when I feel uninspired to cook, my culinary revelries may be sparked just by the promising sight of my garden harvests that day.
So whether you are a seasoned gardener or a newbie, here is a list of five vegetables you can easily grow from your pantry. As my special favor to you, let me also share a few tips from my journey, to help you have the most success growing them.
Green peas: When it comes to a random pick from your pantry, nothing beats the success rate as green peas. And there is something magical about how they grow. No wonder we have the fairytale “Jack and the beanstalk” inspired by a cousin of this star.
The first time I grew green peas, it was an experiment. We had these yellow looking peas in my pantry. I folded a paper towel into four, placed it on a saucer, dampened it with water and placed a few seeds (about 6-10) between the folds. I kept this under our kitchen window. By the way, this also doubled as my son’s science experiment.
I wetted it daily to retain the moisture and within a week, each of those sprouted a white root. A green shoot soon followed suit. At this stage, I planted some in peat pots (one per pot), and a few in washed egg shells (one per shell), in organic raised bed soil. If your native soil is fertile and appropriate, you could use that instead.
Another week later we had seedlings. As I planted them, the ones in the peat pots survived the best. The ones in the egg shells remained stunted and ultimately shriveled up. Yes, as they say the egg shells are biodegradable but take a long time to decompose. And cracking the bottom of the shell before planting did not seem to help much. You could also use empty clean toilet paper/ paper towel rings and newspaper rolls instead of the peat pots if you don’t have them handy.
Aphids were also found on the ones in the egg shells. Later I learnt you could blast them off with a jet of water or just squish the aphids between your fingers to get rid of them.
This year, I also tried sowing the seeds directly into my raised beds: in a container by themselves, under my apple tree and in my large tomato containers. The biggest threat was seed rot. Only about 60% of what I planted germinated when sown directly into the soil outside.
I also found they need something to climb up on as they grow. Last year I used stakes and wires to help them climb. This year I got these stack-on-top trellises that really seemed to keep them going. The best bet would be if you have a chicken wire (or similar wire) fence, then growing them right under it will let them naturally use that as a trellis. Easy pea-sy!
Interestingly all of the ones I started indoors survived. This year the harvest was increasing in successive stages. As I type this article, we have already had four harvests by God’s grace. The largest was about 1.5 cups by volume and about 6 oz by weight, from about 6 plants.
Then it looked like the bottom leaves were turning yellow and the stems turned brown closer to the ground. I almost thought they were done with their growth for this season, but did not feel like uprooting them.
About a week later, there they are standing tall with green leaves and fresh flower buds on each plant. Aren’t they marvellous?!
By the way lovely, if you are banking on these to add to your food significantly, you may want to have at least 16 – 20 plants. o999;p
2. Mustard: Remember the biblical saying of having the faith of a mustard seed? I guess I ventured into this with the faith of a mustard seed, with a few mustard seeds in my hand.
Again, my favorite way is to start them indoors. I used a large sieve placed on top of a pan of water that I changed frequently. The mustard seeds were placed on the sieve. Then I covered them with two layers of a paper towel, drenching it to keep it damp till they sprouted in a few days time.
As soon as the first leaves were visible, I planted them, one each, in the cells of a cardboard egg carton. I learnt by experience that the best time to place any seedling outside is when the third leaf (first true leaf) has started growing. At that point, I tore off the bottom of each cell, and placed it in the raised bed.
You could also directly sow it in the soil outside. My neighborhood seems to be rich in expert diggers and stompers: from my neighbor’s cats to the tree squirrels, the deer (stomper not digger) and even a ground hog slightly bigger than my cat! So my best bet at giving my plants a good head start is to start them indoors.
When I let the remaining seeds grow in the sieve, I got these mustard microgreens.
When the leaves are longer than 3 inches, we may harvest them for use.
Again, please be mindful of the growing season which is different for each plant. Mustard is typically a cooler weather plant. After graciously blessing us with a few harvests of those antioxidant rich foliage, our mustard plants are now bolting, swaying in beautiful sunny yellow blooms.
They say you can sow the seeds closer, then pinch off some seedlings to thin them, but that sounds brutal to me. So I plant them in a way that goes with my conscience.
3. Cilantro: Which Indian kitchen does not have cilantro seeds in the pantry? I used this cultural heritage to my advantage in my vegetable garden.
This is another plant suited for beginners with good success rates. Again, I tried sprouting them along with my peas. As soon as I saw a root sticking out, I transferred them to the soil in the egg carton.
The plant flourished for a good few weeks. This time my challenge was to stop it from bolting. In the southeast we have lots of sun and heat. Even the June weather could set the cilantro off into bolting: where the plants focus on making seeds for the survival of the species, and less on growing edible foliage.
I planted them in full sun, and learnt that with our weather, they would do better with partial afternoon shade, as from a shade cloth.
I planted some directly in the soil on a bed at another part of the yard with partial shade. When they popped up a feet away from where I planted them, I realized they had been washed around by the rain off the initial planting site. But they still sprouted. However they succumbed to the rolly pollies in that area.
I also learnt that harvesting the leaves regularly keeps them producing more.
4. Potato: It gets interesting in our household with potatoes. Legend has it that my husband planted some a while back, they did not grow that year, but the very next year without us doing anything to the site where he planted it, it grew by itself and gave us five solid big red potatoes!
That was when I also found these four tiny red potatoes in our pantry that had started sprouting buds. The buds were now about an inch to 3 inches long when I found them. Out of pity for wasting potential life, and the curiosity of a newbie gardener, I planted them about 12 inches apart in our raised bed.
Once they were about 6-8 inches tall, I kept hilling them with soil. I learnt that straw is an easier and less laborious material to hill them. But with straw I saw more weeds growing around them, so I went back to using soil.
Long story short within about 2.5 to 3 months, we got about 4 pounds of potatoes from 4 one-inch big potatoes.
To read about an invaluable life lesson I learnt from a miraculous badass potato plant that beat all odds, please click here.
5. Garlic: Another easy to grow plant for the newbie gardener and veterans alike. There were these garlic bulbs in our pantry that started sprouting green shoots. Again, the pity of wasting potential life and newbie gardener’s curiosity got the better of me.
So I set the bulbs with water touching the bottom few millimeters of each clove, in a dessert stemware glass. Within 1-2 weeks, the foliage grew taller. I planted them in the garden after that.
Within 1-2 weeks they had sprouted roots upto about 1 cm long.
Again, please remember that garlic is a cooler weather crop. My first crop was planted in the peak of summer. And not realizing their cooler nature, I harvested mini bulbs that fall. I could still use them for home made vegetable stock.
The next time I grew them was in spring. They took off really well but soon the leaves started turning yellow on some of them. I discovered they succumbed to fungal rot that killed the bulb. The remaining bulbs were lost during our diggers’ excavations.
But I know of many gardeners who succeeded with the garlic started in plastic bottles and planted in the soil after about two to three weeks.
Oh by the way, I did spray all my plants every two weeks with homemade insecticidal spray.
Hope you find these tips helpful. Can’t wait to hear your experiences growing vegetables.
Hey Harsha, lovely blog! Hope to touch base someone soon.
Thank you Smitha! Glad you liked it!