For most gardeners , deciding which vegetables to plant is greatly affected by yesterday ’s issue : whether they ’ll be gardening in traditional bed , conjure up bed , or container . You would n’t want to attempt to grow corn in a pot , and a number of other vegetables would also be impractical . But there are luck of other choices — no matter what type of garden space you ’ll be using .
manifestly , a tumid garden in full sunshine offer abundant possibilities . But before you start ordering one of everything from the seed catalog or gathering up flats of veg start from the garden center , take a trivial time to consider your gardening goals . Will your garden provide food for thought just for you and your family , or will you also be give produce to friend , neighbors , or coworkers ? Do you stand for to can and preserve some of what you ’ve grown , or only use it overbold ? Do you like a wide variety of vegetables , or just a few thing ? How much time will you be capable to consecrate to your garden ? The answer to these questions may assist you decide your veg planting card .
I like a quite a little of different case of vegetables in my garden , and I also love growing unusual variety — in particular heirloom types — and I do it to give them away . I often try out with planting mediums and growing techniques , and I do n’t mind if some thing do n’t do as well as I ’d hoped . If I ’ve read something from the experience or I ’m able-bodied to try on a unexampled variety then I feel it was deserving the endeavour .
Chard, anyone?
Other gardeners are n’t as willing to digest that sort of trial and wrongdoing . They want reliable results from plant , with high yield and resistance to disease being the most important attributes , and they want vegetables that look and savour much like what you’re able to buy at the supermarket . That nurseryman might prefer to limit her choices to try out - and - true hybrid seeds or plants . In choosing vegetable miscellanea with higher yield , however , gardeners should be careful not to over - works . At my community garden , every year I see plot where the nurseryman over - planted intercrossed types and seriously lowball their power to incline or harvest their crops . When things startle coming in , it can be an explosion of produce , and it ’s distressing to see the tomatoes dropping off the vines to molder on the primer , or enormous zucchini piled like cordwood on the compost pile . I urge vegetable gardeners to be aware of local food shelves where their surplus produce will be welcome .
Sometimes experience supply the best counseling for what to plant . I wish the taste and the neon rainbow look of Swiss chard , but I now love that if I implant an entire short six pack of them , I ’ll have a half twelve monsters on my hands by midsummer , and not many the great unwashed I know like it very much or even know what to do with it . I was scheme by the fuzzy texture of Wapsipinicon Peach heirloom tomato , but the year I grow it people were put off by that when I tried to give them some . My community garden has been molest by Colorado potato overhang the last few seasons , so growing spuds there is off my list for now . And it will be a long time before I again plant squash vine of any kind — not while so many of my fellow gardeners beg me to take some off their hands every summer .
Sometimes , deciding what to imbed make right as a group effort , where two or more gardeners get together and divide up which types of produce they ’ll each grow , and then share the results with one another . When that pass , what ’s partake in is more than just vegetables ; it ’s their experiences as nurseryman .
Tomatoes are a popular vegetable to grow for their incomparable flavor.
— Tom McKusick
