My Top 5 Things to Grow in Your First Vegetable Garden

2021 is YOUR year - this is the year you are going to start your veggie garden!

You've picked the perfect spot in your yard, you joined a handful of gardening groups on Facebook, and now you're ready to roll.

That first garden can be overwhelming.  There is so much to think about - raised beds or in ground garden?  Where is it going to go?  Do I need to start tomato seedlings?  If so, when and HOW?

You might be like me and want to jump in head first and ask questions later (guilty!).  Here are my top 5 easy-to-grow veggies for a gardener in their first year of growing!

Zucchini will be a prolific vegetable in the garden all season long starting in mid-late July.

We use ours fresh in various main dishes and side dishes, but we also shred and freeze

for the long winter months!

1. Zucchini

Now to preface this, you will not need 13 zucchini plants.  Ask me how I know...  Zucchini are quite easy to grow but a couple plants will be all you want or need.  It's a versatile vegetable that can of course be used for baked goods, but also as a side dish, in a stir fry, on a kabob...the possibilities are endless!

We grow a plethora of tomatoes every single year.

The bulk of them are used for canning various tomato products starting in late July.

2. Tomatoes

Here's the catch - tomatoes can be somewhat difficult to start so if you are a total beginner, I would recommend getting some starts at your local garden center (or from us in May - more info to come!  :) ).  Seed starts can be somewhat particular and if they don't have the exact right environment they won't always be successful.  However, tomatoes fresh from the garden are so versatile!  You can eat them right off the vine, you can add them into a salad or a main dish, you can make a sauce, you can dig out the water bath canner and can them...the possibilities are endless!

Though carrots can take a while to germinate at first, we put a hay mulch around the plants and let them be most of the season until they are ready for harvesting.  Carrots fresh from the garden are very tasty, and they keep well!  We will dig a bunch at one time and put in a container with water to keep them crisp in the fridge.

3. Carrots

There's something special about eating a freshly dug, freshly washed carrot.  The flavor is incredible, and there are a wide range of varieties to try.  In addition - they are incredibly easy to grow!  We tend to plant them and forget about them until it's time to dig.  Even if we don't weed the area for a few weeks, the carrots continue to grow strong as they are so hearty.  Additionally, did you know you can leave them in the ground even after a freeze?  I know some gardeners who harvest the carrots as they use them, some have even dug them with snow on the ground!  I will forewarn you, carrots take a notoriously long time to germinate at first!  We usually start to see our seedlings around 2 weeks.

We never buy onions from the store as we always grow enough to last us all season long.

They can be cured - which means they are dried out after harvest - and stored in a cool dry place.  Our unfinished basement is perfect for storing all of our vegetables that need cool, dry storage over winter!

4. Onions

This is another "plant it and forget about it" vegetable.  We use onions in a number of different recipes throughout the year so we like to grow a ton to cure and we overwinter them in our basement.  We are using onions from our garden all year round!  I often will pull a couple as needed during growing season too.  You can buy onion seeds, but it's easiest to get onion bulbs, or sets, to plant in the spring.  Ours usually are some of the first things to go into the garden in April.

Green beans are so tasty fresh! Instead of canning them, we blanch and freeze ours to use throughout the year.  This preserves the crisp "crunch" of the beans better than they do when they go through the pressure canner.

5. Green Beans

Beans are versatile and hearty.  Even though we had significant Japanese beetle damage on our beans in 2020, they still produced crop after crop after crop.  You can plant bush beans that will only grow to about 2 feet tall or you can plant pole beans with a fence for their vines to climb up.  I really like pole beans for the ease of harvest, however we have found that Japanese beetles feast on pole beans sooner than they will on bush beans.

Above all, have fun!  Your first garden certainly is something special.  I am not here to tell you what or what not to plant; that is all up to you, and I encourage you to grow things you enjoy.  It certainly is rewarding to grow any fruit or veggie.  These 5 are staples in our garden that are relatively easy to grow and they are veggies we plant every single year.  Sometimes it can be overwhelming to know where to even start, so I hope this gives you some ideas.

My BEST recommendation is to take more pictures than you think you'll need and also lots of notes to help you in the future as you continue on your garden journey.  I often will look back on pictures from previous years to help me determine how to set up my garden for the current year.  One of the best things about gardening is that there is always something new to try!  Dig right in and have some fun!