EIGHT Crops Every Beginner Can Grow

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my Gardener Channel so you're a beginning Gardener and if you're a beginning Gardener you're probably wanting to start your seeds soon but one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of gardeners making is starting the wrong seed seed that's too difficult for beginning gardener so when it comes to having a successful garden a lot of gardeners pick the wrong varieties and believe it or not that can make the biggest difference between success and failure in the garden there are a lot of varieties that are just tricky to grow and if you fill up your garden with those and you don't have the knowledge or the know-how to grow the Garden or to grow those plants you're just going to be setting yourself up for frustration and failure and a lot of wasted time and money and in my opinion the best thing that you can do as a beginning Gardener is to stick to these varieties that I'm going to give you guys use them as a foundation use them as kind of a building block as a gardener and then grow from there you know we weren't born perfect gardeners at least I wasn't and if you were congratulations you're one of the few but we did not just pop into the world and instantly know how to grow everything and so I found that when I was first starting out I wanted to try growing literally everything and I filled up my garden with kind of 80 difficult stuff and 20 simple stuff and what I found is I ended up really setting my development back as a gardener because I was trying to really figure out what I was doing wrong with that 80 percent rather than focusing on the 20 that was easy to grow and I could really learn from I was just distracted by all the hard things and so in this video I'm going to give you guys those easy things you can challenge yourself if you want to but I would say only challenge yourself with maybe 10 of your garden stick to 90 this could be easy and also all the varieties I'm going to give you guys we do have in-depth growing guides on we have videos full-length videos on each individual thing so that you can dig deeper and actually build that foundational knowledge [Music] all right so the first variety that I want you guys to put into your garden especially if you're a beginning Gardener are beans now not any type of bean specifically bush beans the difference between bush beans and pole beans and drying beans we've talked about that in another video about the differences but the Bush Bean is the easiest to grow it doesn't need any support you don't need a specific time to like dry the beans know when they're dry things like that you literally just plant the seeds make sure they are you know well watered well fertilized in good fertile soil and they're going to grow now any bush bean is going to do great for you things like strike Bean it's just one of the bush beans that we have but there's Contender there's Jade there's the maximal heracot that's like a French slenderette bean there's antiqua there's provider Landreth top crop now you might be thinking yourself whoa which one do I pick that's really where you have to go in read the descriptions read kind of the profile of them how big they get how much they produce the flavor you know different things like that those nuances are up to you to decide I can't tell you what you're going to like because that's up to you know that's really up to you um I can tell you that you know the the household varieties are things like Blue Lake bush bean Landreth bush bean um you know the um the strike Bean or Contender Bean those are really common household name varieties that you could maybe if you've never tried growing beans before there's a reason why they're household name varieties you could start with those but also like I said leave some room for some surprise I've been pleasantly surprised by varieties that I've never heard of before and now they're Staples in my garden every single year all right now the next vegetable you can grow is actually kind of a grouping of vegetables and those are leafy greens leafy greens could not be simpler because they're just leaves you basically just have to grow some leaves and as long as they end up on your table congratulations you've grown them successfully this is just a small example of some of the leafy greens available to you there's one not represented in here that is a little trickier and we'll talk about that in a second but you can grow things like arugula kale Swiss chard lettuce and mustard greens these are all different leafy greens your collard greens could be another one like I said there's so many leafy greens available to you as a gardener and all you have to do is just grow them to the point where you can cut a few leaves and put them on your table eat them in a salad or stir fry them saute them down juice them throw them in a smoothie whichever way you consume Your Greens you just have to end up with some greens in your body or in your family's tape plate and you've grown them successfully there's nothing really difficult about these leafy greens now the nice thing with these leafy greens is that they're very forgiving there's one that is not as forgiving and that is spinach now spinach is trickier and that's just because there's a specific window you have to plant spinach if you missed that window you're sorry out of luck and that's because if you plant it too late in the season it's going to go to seed if you plant it too early it can die on you it can just really struggle growing and sprouting uh it's just a trickier one it's very heavy you know it's very heavy feeding so you have to know how to fertilize things these are leafy greens that they are going to require some care check the growing guide on them for more information but you don't have to care for them nearly as much as say spinach all right so the next variety that a lot of you are going to love are tomatoes now you'll be happy to find out that as a beginning Gardener tomatoes are actually pretty easy to grow but I want you to stick to a specific type of tomato because not all tomatoes are going to be the same the ones that I want you to stick to are called determinate Tomatoes now if you've never heard of this term before determinate tomatoes are just tomatoes that have a determined height determine fruit yield everything about them is determined so they're pretty easily maintained if you're in like year two or year three of your gardening uh I was going to say career but like your gardening lifestyle um because it's a lifestyle it's a hobby um you can actually grow some more things but basically these determinate tomatoes are going to require the least amount of Maintenance they're going to be the easiest to actually kind of control they don't require things like pruning they don't require as much staking they're basically just going to be nice and Compact and easy to grow with determinate Tomatoes you can pick from any type of tomato so there's cherry tomatoes there's plum tomatoes there's beef steak tomatoes there's paste tomatoes there's lots of different you know uh kind of types of tomatoes but you want to stick to a determinant and most places will tell you if they are determinant or indeterminate I can say that am I at migartner.com we do tell you if they're determined or not because that's really important information to give someone so for example you'll see here this roma tomato is a determinant so you'll see here on the packet it'll say determinant but also on the website it'll also tell you that it's determinate or indeterminate and those are the ones that I would recommend you stick to as a beginner now again it's not to say that you're going to fail if you're growing an indeterminate it's just that once they get really big if they get unmanaged if you don't know how to take care of them or you don't know what to expect you can potentially be setting yourself up for frustration because they do just keep growing I mean they're basically a Vine they just keep growing and keep fruiting and they can get a little bit wild and unmanageable so that's why I'd recommend for year one sticking to determinants but after that hey there's like the world's your oyster there's so many indeterminants that's available to you that just get your footing you know get your feet wet first and then you can explore from there all right now cucumbers are really easy not all of them are going to be as easy as you know the other but I would say most cucumbers aren't going to be great for beginning gardeners now it doesn't matter necessarily if you're going with a pickling cucumber like this homemade pickles or if you're going with more of a slicing cucumber like the Ashley cucumber or if you're even going with like a greenhouse cucumber like the tender green they're all very very simple to grow they require very little maintenance you just have to make sure that you keep them planted either along a trellis or on the ground making sure that you're watering the soil not the leaves because cucumbers are something that they can get diseased fairly simply but also the remedies to the diseases are also really simple so growing cucumbers are something that I think are very rewarding something that most people can grow not only in ground but also in containers which is great because as a beginning Gardener you might not be growing in ground so these are ones that can grow in containers and basically you know the size of the container is going to dictate how much fruit you get but even in like a five gallon container you should be able to have success with literally any cucumbers so you know hey there's we carry like 15 different varieties of cucumbers so give a couple a try and see which one you like best because I guarantee you you'll have success with them and then there's squash now squash is so easy a lot of people over complicate squash but you don't have to especially when it comes to summer squash and zucchini those are the two that I would recommend for beginning gardeners the reason why is because you can eat them at any stage now with things like winter squash those again are kind of like year two or year three type of squashes that you should be growing then once you kind of have gotten your feet wet and you know how to grow a squash the nice thing with summer squash is you can eat them when they're like this long or when they're like this long they're still just as edible now some might get a little seedier than others but there's still a very edible squash with winter squashes you have to wait for them to kind of cure you have to wait for the Skins to harden the plants to die you kind of have to know when they're ripe and ready to harvest with zucchinis and summer squash literally if they look good to eat to you they're good to eat and so those are really really easy now I want to talk about the next crop which is like probably one of the easiest crop so you can be growing and that's Peppers so these these are peppers now peppers are so easy to grow whether you're growing a hot pepper mild pepper sweet pepper it doesn't matter they are so unbelievably easy to grow now they do take a while longer than other crops in the garden but in terms of their difficulty they're extremely easy because again Peppers just like summer squash can be eaten at any stage now the flavor will kind of kind of mature as the fruit kind of ripens but you can eat a green bell pepper or you can eat that same green bell pepper once it's fully ripened into like a red bell pepper and it's just going to get a little bit sweeter but you can eat it at any stage the other nice thing with peppers is the fact that they're low compact they don't need a whole lot of support they basically are as soon as you fertilize them which check our growing guide for the fertilizing and stuff like that but as soon as they're fed and fertilized they're basically just to set it and forget it plant which I love again longer grow time but they basically take care of themselves once you get their needs taken care of so peppers are soup super easy a common question we do get asked with peppers is are there any Peppers that are easier than others and I kind of already touched on that and the answer is not really if you're growing a super hot pepper like a habanero those are just going to take even longer to mature than say a bell pepper but in terms of their overall needs they're exactly the same so those are super easy let's talk about the last one that I think well we have two more we're going to talk about but there's one specific vegetable that we're going to talk about which is broccoli we're gonna talk about that and then we're gonna talk about some herbs so let's go all right and so then comes broccoli broccoli is super easy to grow for the beginning Gardener now you have to pick the right type of broccoli just like with everything there can be a more challenging type and the type that I want you to stick to if you're a beginner is known as sprouting broccoli now there is a heading broccoli and a sprouting broccoli also a quick side note if you're curious about the different varieties like sprouting broccoli and the differences between sprouting broccoli and heading broccoli or leaf lettuce very versus heading lettuce go check out I'll link in the description box below a great video we did kind of highlighting the differences between the two varieties like pole beans and Bush Beans and drying beans or shelling beans and snap our shelling peas and snap peas I talked about all the different varieties and so broccoli is no exception sprouting broccoli is great because it does not form a head and that's what makes it really easy you're going to be harvesting the little side shoots that grow off from the broccoli plant meaning that you don't have to wait for a certain time you don't have to get the planting date right you don't have to get the temperature right you don't have to get a whole lot right to harvest something from your broccoli and in my opinion when you're starting out gardening just getting something is better than getting nothing and getting something kind of gets you excited about the Potential Prospect of well if I'm already getting something this year imagine once I've learned something imagine once I've you know actually gotten a year or two under my belt where I'm going to be and so sticking to two sprouting broccoli is a great one all right and finally is another grouping of plants and that is herbs so we talked about all these other vegetables that are really easy to grow and I know that herbs are an integral part of most people's Garden because if you do any cooking at all spicing it up with some different flavors is kind of important and so that's really where herbs come in now some herbs are more complicated than others so I'm going to give you in my opinion the easiest herbs to grow not only again all of the vegetables and all the herbs I've been talking about are going to be good in not only containers but in ground so regardless of how you're growing these are going to be the easiest to go with the first one are Basils there's a lot of different Basils they're all going to be the same with how easy they are to grow now again the biggest thing is is the growing guides I cannot stress this enough that the growing guides are going to give you in-depth information on how to grow them if you're curious on you know how to grow them more and you you don't even know how to grow them I'd recommend checking it out but basil super super easy the other ones that are really easy are things like Dill they basically are well they're called dill weed for a reason they grow like a weed you really cannot kill them they're so simple to grow another one that is kind of an herb but kind of a vegetable are chives chives are basically something you cannot kill they're in the onion family they spread super easily and in some cases can spread too easily and so they are very very easy to grow super drought resistant super you could throw them in a small pot throw them in a big pot you can neglect them they love life they just they love life no matter where you put them and then finally our herbs like parsley and oregano these are your other kind of popular Italian herbs very very easy to grow they dry they grow in a variety of different conditions they like dry arid environments as well as you know more damp conditions as well they are pretty hearty when it comes to cold so they're cold weather oregano is a perennial it's going going to come back year after year and it kind of just grows like a bush you plant it as long as you've got it in good quality soil it's going to grow for you and Thrive for you parsley is something you're going to plant every year but I've grown parsley from basically the first part of spring all the way through summer even into winter no problem at all and so parsley is another very very easy one now there are lots of other herbs I'm aware you know there's like sweet marjoram which is kind of in the oregano family there's things like spearmint there's tarragon there's lots of other herbs that are pretty similar in in just like their growth habits that are going to be easy but I don't want to get you guys bogged down by giving you guys too many because I also want to end on this there are so many varieties that do exist and there's lots of easy crops that I didn't mention in today's video the reason why I didn't is very intentional I don't want you to get bogged down and get overwhelmed trying to grow everything because sometimes when you're first starting out gardening having a small all garden and a more kind of controlled Garden is great because it allows you to kind of control what you have maintain what you have so it doesn't get out of hand because as a beginning Gardener myself when I first started out I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have a 700 square foot garden I ended up failing miserably and dialing that way back to about 150 square feet because I couldn't manage it all I didn't know how to manage that big of a garden at first and so if I gave you so many different things you might think well I'm going to try growing all those different things and you don't have enough space for them so I gave you the things that I think you're going to have the most fun with the things that I would start if I was a beginning Gardener how I would have started and you know I really hope that that you learned something from this episode again if you did make sure to throw a thumbs up check out those complete growing guides we have an entire playlist I'll plug the playlist rather than each individual growing guide that way you can kind of check it out and learn if you want and so check that out hit the like button subscribe if you haven't already join the family joined the community and yeah I'll catch you guys on the next episode as always this is Luke from the my Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger let's go bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 49,299

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: ZvQ8Uo2rp5E

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2023