Don't Grow These Crops

gardeners often spend a lot of time trying to figure out how they're going to set up their garden and how they're going to grow in raised beds in a greenhouse in containers or in the ground and that's great but i find it interesting that often we don't spend nearly enough time figuring out what to grow join me today as i share with you 12 crops that maybe you shouldn't grow in your garden [Music] hi i'm gardner scott and every year i spend a pretty good amount of time figuring out just exactly what plants i'm going to put into my vegetable garden because i want success i live in a pretty challenging area in a zone 5b in colorado and my season is pretty short and so the plants i put in really make a difference as to whether i'm going to be able to get a harvest or not if you're the kind of gardener that wants success in everything you might have a smaller garden you might not have the time you might not have the money and maybe you aren't willing to put in the effort to grow the plants well then the following 12 are some that maybe you should avoid it's those four factors space time cost and difficulty that i use to determine what seeds and plants i'm going to grow in the garden and i suggest you take those factors in determining what plants you're going to grow in your garden and that's how i identified these 12 plants the first being corn corn is a wonderful plant and many of us would love to have a big crop of corn but corn is one of those plants that requires that you grow a lot of plants and a lot of plants relatively close together because it's wind pollinated you need a block a group of corn plants for them to be pollinated which means at least 20 plants growing and if you don't have the space to grow a lot of corn stalks well then you're going to be wasting your time you can't plant a row of five or six corn stalks and expect to get any type of harvest and unlike a lot of the other plants we grow in our vegetable garden i think the corn you can find at a farm stand or even in the grocery store in summer tastes particularly good if you're lucky you might be able to get a harvest of 20 or 30 years well in my area at the peak of the harvest i can buy corn at the store 10 for a dollar which means not only am i getting great tasting corn but i can get that corn cheaper than i can grow it myself watermelons are another crop that you might want to reconsider growing a melon vine takes up a lot of space a bed like this can only handle a couple plants before they sprawl everywhere onto the path even interfering with other beds and if you live in an area like mine with a short season you might not even be able to grow watermelon in the time that you have it's another one of those crops that at the store in summer or from a farm stand you can get delicious melon for very little cost and while i've grown some smaller watermelons that are suitable for my climate most of the time they don't taste as good as the ones that i can get elsewhere a plant that i haven't grown but really want to is artichoke but the problem with artichoke is that it falls into all four categories it takes a lot of space to grow an artichoke plants four maybe even five feet wide and it gets quite tall while it only produces a couple artichokes the time involved is pretty extensive i would have to start the artichoke from seed grow into the plant put the plant in the garden and then hope everything is perfect for the entire season for me to expect to get a harvest and when i do get to harvest because there's just a couple artichokes on each plant it's really not cost effective i can go to the store again and buy artichokes as many as i want without going to all that trouble and it is some trouble because there are only one or two varieties of artichoke that i would be able to grow in zone 5b because in most areas the artichoke can overwinter and in the second season be much more productive but most of the artichoke plants that we would choose for our garden can't handle the cold temperatures that i have i recently read of a poll that identified brussels sprouts as our least favorite vegetable and that doesn't surprise me at all i'm guessing it doesn't surprise you either while i've had some delicious brussels sprouts dishes i've had an awful lot of brussels sprouts that i just didn't enjoy at all and so right off the bat if you don't like brussels sprouts then don't grow them in your garden but if you do like brussels sprouts you might want to think twice this is one of those plants that requires some very specific conditions to do best if you can start them in late summer grow them through autumn and have a late winter you might have some good success with brussels sprouts many of us don't have a season like that and even if you do have the situation where you can grow them they're very susceptible to many garden pests and so when it comes to the harvest you might not be harvesting those beautiful sprouts that you can find at the store and so i prefer to find them at the store from those farms they can grow them in the perfect conditions without having to go through all the trouble that i know is ahead cabbage is another one of those plants that can be challenging and can be very susceptible to insect damage and if you want to grow a nice big head of cabbage i have to ask you why if you like corned beef and cabbage at st patrick's day well very few of us live in an area where we can have the cabbage ready to harvest that early in the year if you want cabbage to make sauerkraut like i do well you can make sauerkraut any time of year so i wait until the cabbage goes on sale for saint patrick's day and that's when i make my sauerkraut for the entire year if you like cabbage throughout the year well it's not that expensive and with the time and effort and pest control that you have to be concerned with i think this is another one of those that is best bought in the store rather than trying to grow it ourselves this is my huge culture bed where for the last couple years i've grown squash and it's grown very well here squash is one of those plants that i do recommend you try growing in your garden the problem is that many of us grow too many plants there's really no reason for you to have more than one maybe two zucchini plants it's going to give you all the zucchini you want and more squash can take up a lot of space in a single garden bed it can easily overrun the bed it can be grown on a trellis but when you put a trellis in place that often adds to the cost of growing the squash every year i grow butternut squash yellow squash zucchini sometimes a few others but i've got the space for it and in all of my years i really haven't been able to discern much difference in the taste from what i grow to what i can get at the supermarket so i suggest growing it just a few plants and for the most part the squash that you want through the rest of the year when you're not harvesting use the supermarket as the best option the crop that i probably get the most questions about from gardeners who have tried it and just not been able to grow it is sweet potatoes sweet potatoes can be challenging it's another one of those plants that requires a long season with some very specific weather and it's more than just taking a seed and putting the seed in the ground there are many steps involved you have to do your research you have to find the right kind of sweet potatoes to grow and you have to hope that everything goes right i don't grow sweet potatoes in my garden because it's just too much of a challenge and my climate just doesn't support the success with sweet potatoes i put this in the category of plants to try someday when i want to push the limits of gardening but for most gardens the space can definitely be used for growing something that's easier to grow and that you'll have better success with another plant that poses some challenges and begs the question why do you want to grow it is celery how much celery are you really using in your diet most of us i suspect eat celery on a fairly regular basis but it isn't the kind of thing that we want a big crop of celery all at once i can buy celery at the supermarket relatively inexpensively and it's going to last quite a while for the effort to make sure that the soil is right that i keep it evenly moist and add a lot of water during the growing season to finally get to the point of harvest well celery just isn't worth it for me it is a nice plant to grow a couple of just to see if you can do it but as far as choosing a plant that you're going to eat a lot of and that's worth the effort i just don't think celery stacks up i think a crop that if you try it you're very likely to give up on it is cauliflower of the gardeners i know at least in my region cauliflower is one of those plants that most of us have tried we've had marginal success and then we give up and never grow it again because you can find those big beautiful white heads of cauliflower at the store and what we grow in the garden rarely looks that way now if you figure it out and you can grow the cauliflower that looks good enough for you to eat it is a great plant to grow i love making fermented cauliflower it just takes that little bit extra effort and things have to turn out just right and the bugs really like it for me i'll buy the cauliflower ferment it that way and use the space for another plant that will do much better there are some crops that many of us grow and have pretty good success with and they grow in many different regions but if you're growing these crops with the intent to feed your family and save money they might not be the best choice the first being russet potatoes now last year i grew four different varieties of potatoes and if you're growing fingerling potatoes or specialty potatoes those are the kind of things that you can grow and save some money because they often charge a premium for those specialty potatoes at the store but when it comes to the basic russet potato you really can't compete with the big growers you can buy a big bag of russet potatoes for very little cost and they'll store for a long time so if you can time your purchases to take advantage of sales there's just no way you can grow those same quantities of potatoes in your garden go ahead and get them at the store another crop to reconsider that many of us are trying to grow is carrots i get a lot of questions from gardeners who are trying to grow carrots and just don't have success with it they can be challenging they can often have very low germination rates and unless your soil is perfect you're not going to get that long orange carrot they're better suited to go to the supermarket and buy those carrots that you're expecting if you like specialty carrots like i do the purple carrots i can't find those very often at the store and i love growing those it does make sense but for the low cost at the grocery store and the difficulty in growing them you might not want to add orange carrots to your garden plan this year this crop might surprise you when i suggest that you don't grow it and that's beans now i think growing beans in the garden is a great idea they can be very easy to grow they can be very productive and the varieties that you can choose can be quite delicious the beans i'm talking about are the dried beans the beans that you're going to have in your garden that will take pretty much the entire season to grow and then you have to leave the pods on the plants to dry well that might not be as good a thing to grow a pinto bean will save for a long time but the space in your garden that you're going to devote to grow pinto beans and the number of beans that you can grow to actually feed your family for a prolonged period of time it just doesn't make sense when you compare the cost that you can buy a bag of pinto beans at the store so grow beans to eat fresh but maybe reconsider growing the beans that you're going to dry with the intent of long-term storage there's no doubt that i'm going to have gardeners disagreeing with my choice of these dozen plants and that's okay because these are all vegetable garden plants that are grown by many gardeners in many regions but if your garden is limited by space time cost and difficulty these are twelve that you might want to reconsider they're plants that are grown so much we often think we should be growing them and all i'm suggesting is maybe you shouldn't be growing them but there are many other plants that you should be growing and to choose those plants go ahead and watch this video next i'm gardener scott enjoy gardening [Music] you

Channel: Gardener Scott

Views: 292,581

Keywords: gardener scott, gardner scott, gardening for beginners, vegetable gardening, gardening tips, garden plant selection, choose garden plants, what plants to grow, what seeds to grow, plants not for beginners, difficult plants to grow, plants to avoid

Id: N9m5L-lB06I

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 03 2022