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10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for Beginners (Plus 5 You’ll Want to Avoid)

March 12, 2020

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Planting your very first garden can be both exciting and scary.  You can’t wait to eat fresh vegetables you’ve grown yourself, but you soon realize that there’s so much about gardening you just don’t know.  Add in a few incidents with killing houseplants and it’s enough to make a beginner gardener throw in the trowel.

Don’t give up before you get started.  You can grow vegetables as a beginner and be successful at it too.  As long as you have a location with 6 or more hours of light a day, are willing to add some compost to your soil, and you water regularly, you can grow a vegetable garden this year.

I’ll show you the 10 easiest vegetables to grow, plus 3 I think you should avoid your first year.

P.S. All the vegetables you see in this post are ones I have personally grown in my own garden.

Before we get into the vegetables, a few disclaimers.  I garden in zone 3 in Saskatchewan, where the soil tends to be pretty good quality right out the gate.  If you live in a region other than the Canadian Prairies, your results will likely differ from mine.  However, I still stand by my selections and I try to make notes about different regions where applicable.  

If you live elsewhere and have notes to add, please add them in the comments.  Your comments are quite helpful for my readers!!  

Okay, on to the vegetables!

10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for Beginner Gardeners

1. Lettuce

Anyone can grow lettuce.  It tolerates shade better than other vegetables and will keep growing after you cut it, meaning you can plant once and enjoy fresh lettuce all summer long. There are plenty of varieties to choose from.  I personally like Buttercrunch because I feel it holds up well in salads.  If you don’t know what you like, start with a mixture of leaf lettuces and figure it out from there.

2. Swiss Chard

Planting your first garden?  Here's 10 of the easiest and best vegetables for beginners to grow, plus 5 surprisingly hard ones to avoid. P.S. You'll want to add Swiss Chard to your list!  #gardening #beginner #ideas #vegetables #vegetablegarden #garden #swisschard

Spinach bolts easily and Kale tends to get eaten by pests.  Enter. . . Swiss chard, the leafy green vegetable that keeps on giving.  Use it cooked or raw, just as you would any other leafy green.  The Rainbow variety is the prettiest, but the white variety is the most productive.

One caution: if you have lots of birds near your garden, cover your tender Swiss Chard plants.  I didn’t get any one year because the birds kept eating the tender shoots.

3. Beans

Planting your first garden?  Here's 10 of the easiest and best vegetables for beginners to grow, plus 5 surprisingly hard ones to avoid. P.S-These green, purple, and yellow beans are practically no-fail!  #gardening #beginner #ideas #vegetables #vegetablegarden #garden #beans

I love growing beans because they give nutrients back to the soil and a small patch can yield an impressive amount of produce.  Our family loves the yellow varieties the best, but I recommend growing green and purple ones as well.  I prefer the bush varieties, but I am a sucker for a beautiful scarlet runner bean on a trellis.

4. Potatoes

Do you have some old potatoes you bought that are growing shoots?  Perfect.  You have everything you need to grow potatoes this year.  (Side note: If the potatoes are from the grocery store, they may not work as well.)

Cut your potato in half or thirds, depending on size and how many eyes (the growing parts) there are.  Dig a deep hole, put the cutting in, and cover.  Hill your potatoes once in July and again in August so they don’t turn green.

Think you have a brown thumb? Here are 10 easy vegetables to plant, and 5 you should probably avoid.Click To Tweet

If you have the space, plant a few just for harvesting early.  Eating baby potatoes are one of the best simple garden joys.

5. Zucchini

Zucchini is easy to start from seed, needs almost no upkeep, and will give you more produce than you’ll know what to do with.  Don’t plant more than 1 or 2 plants, unless you have a family of 10, or like giving away zucchini to everyone you know.

I have a practical love affair with zucchini and use it in a lot of my baking.  Here’s three recipes I think you’ll enjoy:

  • Lemon Poppyseed Zucchini Muffins
  • Zucchini Sandwich Bread
  • Kale and Zucchini Side Dish

Need some help processing your harvest?  Here’s how to do it.

6. Tomatoes

Tomatoes are actually not the easiest vegetable to plant, but I feel that no garden should be without them.  Cherry tomato varieties are the easiest to grow, but you can have success with any tomato as long as you water it consistently and give it 8 or more hours of sun a day.

Need help choosing a tomato variety? Click to read about my favourites!

If you want more tips on growing the best tomatoes, subscribe below and get my 10 page guide to everything tomato.

7. Carrots

If there was a prize for the most low-maintenance vegetable, carrots would probably win.  Plant them, weed them, and harvest late July for baby carrots, or wait until after the first frost for larger and sweeter tasting ones.

You can, in theory, leave them in the ground all winter and dig them up as you need them.  I personally don’t want to be digging up carrots in -40 weather, so I harvest them after the first hard frost and store them in the basement all winter long.

Also, even though I’ve pictured a bunch of different coloured varieties, I recommend sticking with an orange variety your first year.  You’ll have a better and more reliable harvest.

Here’s 6 ways to preserve your carrots this fall.

8. Onions

Onions should be purchased in sets (small bulbs) instead of seeds.  The growing season is too long in most areas, so you’ll need to plant from a set to get a decent sized onion.  Wait to harvest once the tops have fallen and dried up.  You can learn everything you need to know about harvesting your onions in this post.

Related: Vegetable Gardening for Beginners and the 6 Vegetable Gardening Truths you Need to Know.

9. Pumpkins

Pumpkins are easy to start from seed, grow really large, and kids love having a special one of their own for Halloween.  While all pumpkins are edible, choose a variety that is good for pies if you plan on processing them for pumpkin puree.  The skin is much thinner than those bred for jack-o-lanterns, which means it’s a lot easier to cut.

Related: The best pumpkin cupcake recipe, a cool pumpkin and succulent DIY, plus decadent-but-healthy pumpkin pancakes.

10.Beets

Beets are easy to grow and you can eat both the leafy green part and the beet itself.  I prefer the conical varieties, only because they are easier to harvest without ripping off the greens and getting stuck in the dirt.

Are you reading this list thinking you might be in over your head?  Enroll in my beginner gardening course and get everything you need to garden with confidence, plus a 40 page garden journal and 17 page backyard planner.

Bonus Vegetable: Turnips!

Planting your first garden?  Here's 10 of the easiest and best vegetables for beginners to grow, plus 5 surprisingly hard ones to avoid. P.S. These turnips are super easy to direct sow and are so pretty!  #gardening #beginner #ideas #vegetables #vegetablegarden #garden #turnip

In 2018 I tried growing turnips for the first time and I was so impressed with how easy they were to grow, that I had to add them to the list.  The turnips still thrived when I neglected them and continued to produce all summer.  This year, I will thin them out to get a few larger ones.

5 Vegetables Beginner Gardeners Will Want to Avoid

If you have your heart set on planting these vegetables this year, plant them anyway.  I’ll tell you why I think they’re hard to grow, but it doesn’t mean that they’re impossible or should never be planted.

1. Spinach

I would love to grow spinach, but I still haven’t had any luck.  I find that it doesn’t germinate for me, and the few plants that make it seem to bolt before I can get to them.

2. Radishes

I’m sure I’ll get comments from people who don’t agree, but radishes are harder to grow than you would think!  Sure, they are ready in around 30 days, but they don’t do well in the heat and can get woody quickly.  If you have too much nitrogen in your soil, you’ll get lots of greens, but teeny tiny radishes.

3. Peppers

It took me 4 years of trying to grow peppers to get a successful, grocery-store-sized bell pepper like this one.  Unless you live in the Southern United States, wait to grow peppers until you’ve had a few gardens under your belt.

The years before, my pepper plants grew, but I got peppers that were a 1/3 of the size of what they should have been.  Pepper plants need the hottest spot in the yard, and in a Northern climate like mine that can be tricky to find.

The one exception to this rule in zone 3?  Hungarian wax peppers.  Even when I got sick half way through the summer and had to give up on my garden, the Hungarian wax peppers still produced.  They do well in containers and are easy to start from seed.

4. Broccoli

Last year was also the first year I grew a successful head of broccoli, but I forgot to take a picture of it!!  I got greedy with the rest, wanting them to be bigger, and they ended up bolting before I could get to them.  Broccoli is also very susceptible to butterflies and worms and should be grown with a netting over it.  Too much fuss for your first year.

5. Peas

Peas are easy to grow, but I always find that I never get enough to make a meal out of, much less process them.  Grow a few for fresh picking, but unless you have space for 3 or 4 giant rows, don’t expect much.

Peas are also not forgiving if you forget to harvest them.  They will get hard and taste awful.

Need Help in the Garden?

Green thumbs aren’t just given out at birth. They’re a combination of learning about gardening and trial and error. If you wish you knew more about gardening and had more confidence in your abilities, you need the Growing Roots Gardening Guide.

It’s an e-book plus 6 bonuses–everything you need to go from complete garden newb to confident in one growing season. Get all the details of what’s inside here.

Ready to grow? Click this button and buy now:

Happy gardening!

What vegetables will you grow in your garden this Spring?

Let me know in the comments what you’ll be growing.

****

Kristen Raney

Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots.  She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden.  She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.

19 Comments
Filed Under: Gardening Tagged: beginner gardening, Gardening, gardening tips, growing vegetables, how to garden, plant a garden, plants, vegetable gardening

About Kristen Raney

Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots.  She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden.  She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.

Comments

  1. Danielle says

    April 12, 2018 at 12:41 pm

    Those all look so yummy Kristen! Can you recommend what to plant if you only have a small balcony and still want some sort of fresh produce or herbs? I was thinking Kale but I'm not sure if that's great for zone 4A (or if that even matters on a balcony).
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      April 12, 2018 at 4:38 pm

      Kale is great for containers! Kale, lettuce, and Swiss Chard will all do well in your situation. I also love Cherry Tomatoes for patios. Chives are a nice perennial herb that you could plant in a container and take indoors for the winter. I haven't grown a lot of herbs, but I've had good luck with basil.
      Reply
  2. Dan says

    April 18, 2018 at 10:29 pm

    Love the post Kristen :) And especially loved the main image you created. Sharing it on Pinterest :)
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      April 19, 2018 at 11:00 am

      I’m glad you liked the post, thanks for the share!!
      Reply
  3. Amna Qamar says

    July 15, 2018 at 5:49 am

    I grown broccoli in winters. I was bit late. So got the fruit in late winters.
    Reply
  4. Mighty Green says

    August 7, 2018 at 5:59 pm

    I can understand what you mean about some of these vegetables being hard to grow.I've had some pretty good luck with peppers though!
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      August 8, 2018 at 11:53 am

      Yeah, I'm finding a lot better luck with Hungarian wax peppers and cayenne peppers. Bell peppers were a challenge for me.
      Reply
  5. Megan says

    August 21, 2018 at 5:23 am

    What does harvest mean and what does hill them mean? I think I want to plant tomatoes, zucchini and potatoes next year! And I’ve ZERO experience. I assume harvest means to just pull them out of the ground. But I don’t know.
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      August 24, 2018 at 1:44 pm

      Hi Megan! Thanks for your questions! To harvest a potato means that you dig them out of the ground. Hilling is what you do once or twice in the growing season. You hoe the dirt around the potato to make a hill, so that your potatoes don't get green from too much sunlight, which happens when they are too close to the surface. Hope that helps, and let me know if you have any more questions!
      Reply
  6. Alma says

    August 25, 2019 at 8:41 am

    Hi Kristine! Great post indeed. I have a question. The soil of my selected spot for a garden is slightly acidic. Is it a good idea to plant potatoes in that garden? I am a beginner and your guide will be appreciated. Thank you1
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      September 4, 2019 at 10:57 am

      Just add some compost to it before you plant and work it into the soil. It should be fine!
      Reply
      • Alma says

        September 6, 2019 at 12:33 am

        Thank you, Kristine, for your honest opinion.
        Reply
        • Kristen Raney says

          September 13, 2019 at 8:58 am

          You're welcome!
          Reply
  7. Vanessa says

    January 4, 2020 at 10:04 am

    When should I start planting the seeds and bulbs? This will be my first garden in a long time. We live in Texas. Thanks for the post! Really helpful
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      January 8, 2020 at 9:46 am

      Hi Vanessa, You could probably start right now! I live in the Canadian Prairies, so my weather is very different than yours. But from what I understand from my readers who live closer to where you do, you all need to start planting in November so that your garden is mostly done before it gets too hot. Hopefully someone who actually lives in Texas can chime in and let us know when your season starts!! I should also add, that for you, any of the warm season vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers will be way easier for you to grow there than they are for me here. On the flip side, you might struggle with the cool season vegetables like peas, broccoli, spinach, and lettuce. I wish I could be more helpful, but I hope that at least helps you somewhat!!
      Reply
  8. Heather says

    February 3, 2020 at 4:02 pm

    In Regina, I plant spinach in the fall, right before the snow ("as the first proper snow is falling" was what I was told). It comes up wonderfully first thing in the spring, and I have baby spinach for salads for at least several weeks. I let some of it go to seed, to collect for the next planting. If I stick it in the corners of my garden beds, it's easy to access, and easy to remember where I put it. That said, I don't like mature spinach, so if that's what you want, it may still not work - I honestly don't know.
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      February 11, 2020 at 3:10 pm

      What a great idea! I'm going to throw some seeds down under the snow and see if I can make it work. I love spinach, so I really want to get better at growing it.
      Reply
  9. Maddie says

    April 1, 2020 at 9:09 pm

    This has been the most helpful post I have found yet! Gets me really excited to start! What would be a good, beginner raised garden size?
    Reply
    • Kristen Raney says

      April 3, 2020 at 7:46 pm

      Oh I'm so happy to hear that!! Most raised beds are 4x4, but I personally prefer 3x3 or 3x5, because I'm short-ish and find that size easier to reach. 2 or 3 beds that size would be great to start with.
      Reply

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Welcome!

Hi, I'm Kristen and I help new gardeners learn to grow their own vegetables and beautify their yards. I also share recipes that use all that delicious garden produce. Grab a coffee (and your gardening gloves) and join me for gardening tips, simple recipes, and the occasional DIY, all from the lovely city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

P.S. First time gardener? You'll want to download the quick start gardening guide below!

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Welcome!

Hi, I’m Kristen and I help new gardeners learn to grow their own vegetables and beautify their yards. I also share recipes that use all that delicious garden produce. Grab a coffee (and your gardening gloves) and join me for gardening tips, simple recipes, and the occasional DIY, all from the lovely city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

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Growing eucalyptus for the first time this year? Growing eucalyptus for the first time this year?  A new post is on the blog to walk you through it.  While in theory eucalyptus is easy to grow, it's challenging in my zone 3 garden for three reasons: ⁠
⁠
➡️It needs a long time to mature⁠
➡️I have a short growing season⁠
➡️I live in a cool climate, and eucalyptus grows better when its warm.⁠
⁠
That said, you can see by this picture that it can be done!!⁠
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Are you growing eucalyptus this year?
Oh friends, if any of my nice, curated photos sums Oh friends, if any of my nice, curated photos sums up how this last week went, I think it's this one.  Babies crying, trying to stay calm, outwardly looking like it's all under control, but feeling very overwhelmed.⁠
⁠
This post isn't gardening related, so feel free to scroll by if you're here only for the gardening content.⁠
⁠
Thankfully it's January, and I keep reminding myself that the Internet will not break if I don't keep to my self-imposed posting schedule.  But it doesn't make a week full of teething-and-not-sleeping baby any easier. ⁠
⁠
Felicity slept through the night for the first time ever last Monday, then proceeded to punish us with frequent wakings and terrible sleep until Saturday.  And as tough as this is in regular times, in Covid times its extra frustrating because I don't have my village.⁠
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I can't just call up another Mama friend and go for coffee at her house.  I can't take my son out for a Mommy-and-Dominic date because everything he'd want to do isn't really much of an option.  There's no playgroup or play place to just drop in on.  And forget just taking everybody out to get groceries just for a change of scenery.⁠
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I know people have way more serious problems than this, and I hope I don't sound whiny and entitled, it's not my intention.  Please know that I'm very grateful for my family and job and that so far we've been healthy. ⁠
⁠
A lot of you who follow me do so in part because you are also juggling life with very little people through this strange time.  I hope that in occasionally sharing my struggles, it makes you feel better about your struggles. (You're struggling too sometimes. . . right?)
Do you tend to plan out your garden to the nth deg Do you tend to plan out your garden to the nth degree, do you just wing it, or are you somewhere in-between?⁠
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I tend to plan it all out, and then when I actually get out in the field, so to speak, the plan changes a little bit. ⁠
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If you need a garden planner that's both pretty & practical, my garden planner is available in the ebooks section.  It's only $9 and has lots of upgrades from the previous planner.  Use code CANADA if you're Canadian to account for the exchange.⁠
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P.S. You can see exactly what you're getting in the video--no surprises. ⁠
P.P.S  I get my planner bound and printed at a printing place.  Lots of people just print their own and put the sheets in a binder.
Are you gardening in containers this year? When y Are you gardening in containers this year?  When you're shopping for vegetable seeds, look for varieties that have names with words like patio, tiny, small, etc.  While lots of vegetable varieties will do fine in a container, you'll have an easier time with ones that are specifically bred for that situation.⁠
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📸 by @blushbrandphotography
I'm living the pepper dream in this photo. While I'm living the pepper dream in this photo.  While these ones are a bit on the small side, who doesn't want ripe peppers in July in zone 3?!?! ⁠
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Over the years I've gotten better at growing peppers, and I promise I'll spill my secrets in February when it's actually time to start them.  Until then, get yourself all or one of my four favourite varieties: ⁠
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🌶️Carmen⁠
🌶️Escamillo⁠
🌶️Candy Stripe⁠
🌶️Hungarian Hot Wax⁠
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Do you have a favourite pepper variety?⁠
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Have you flipped open a seed catalogue lately? It Have you flipped open a seed catalogue lately?  It's so easy to get completely overwhelmed, especially if you're new to gardening.  Why are there so many varieties of everything and which ones do I choose?⁠
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Here's how I try to narrow it down.⁠
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🌤️ Short growing season like me?  Try and prioritize varieties that have short dates to maturity.⁠
🥗 What do you or your family actually eat?  While I think you should always try a couple of new things, there's no sense in planting a giant garden filled with vegetables that you're not going to cook with. ⁠
🥒 Do you care whether your vegetables are heirlooms or hybrids?  Heirlooms are the kind that have been around for 50+ years and you can save seeds from.  Believe it or not, this year we're prioritizing hybrids for some of our garden.  The Hermit @mgsraney is obsessed with production this year, so anything that's going in "his" greenhouse better be able to produce a lot.  I'm using more heirlooms in my "glamour garden" as we call it, because I want things that are pretty and I can save seeds from.⁠
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What do you prioritize when you're picking out seeds?⁠
Last week we started thinking about our plans for Last week we started thinking about our plans for cut flower gardening, now this week we start thinking about plans for our vegetable gardens.  Unlike cut flowers, there's not as many vegetables that need to be started ridiculously early.  However, it's still fun to plan and dream and get your thoughts sorted.⁠
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I'm curious--what size of garden do you have to work with?  Are you on an acreage or farm, city backyard, or do you have a couple of pots on an apartment patio?⁠
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As for me, I have quite a mix.  I have my container garden on my backyard deck, the small cut flower garden in my yard, then vegetables in raised beds.  We also garden at my Mother-in-law's acreage, so there's a giant garden over there where we're figuring out how to grow food on a larger scale.  Then finally, sometimes my Mom grows things for me in her garden if I'm nervous that I'll ruin them in my own garden--call it a backup garden if you will.⁠
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