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10 best plants to grow for beginner veg gardeners
- Buzz OnNature
- Aug 9, 2024
- 6 min read
Gardening can be overwhelming for a newbie. With lots of expensive kit and thousands upon thousands of plants with specialist needs, it's difficult to know where to start. But beginning gardening doesn’t have to be difficult, get your green fingers on with cheap starting materials and fall in love with the growing process.
What you Need:
As a complete garden rookie, the bare essentials for growing from seed is compost, seeds and something to grow in!
While it's common knowledge amongst weathered gardeners that the quality of your compost is a key part in successful seed starting, this is not necessarily the case for many easy to germinate vegetable seeds. A small bag of basic compost will be perfect to start your growing adventure. As a well-practiced gardener myself, I don’t bother with expensive growing equipment for my personal gardening needs. Reusing old yoghurt pots or fruit trays are an excellent alternative to expensive seed trays, paper pots are easy to make, and there’s always people giving away pots online. For more cheap and environmentally friendly pot ideas, check out our sustainability article here.
What is germination and what do seeds need to grow?
Germination is the process of utilising energy stores inside the seed and absorbing water from external surroundings to produce a shoot, sprouting from the seed. Simply, it's the action of a seed to become a seedling.
To undergo germination, viable seed (also known as potential seed) needs to absorb water. A damp growing environment is needed for most types of seed, however for some plants the seed packet may suggest soaking in warm water for a few hours before sowing. This is usually because the seed coating can be a lot thicker for certain plants e.g. some stubborn sweet pea varieties, and therefore soaking beforehand provides the water whilst reducing the likelihood of the seed rotting in wet compost. Seed soaking is a debated art in gardening and is not something I would worry about as a new gardener!
Other factors that will affect seed germination are soil temperature, light levels, and native climate. Some plants such as strawberries need periods of cooling and warming to simulate the start of spring, requirements like these can make germination difficult and unpredictable. The ideal conditions for your seeds will usually be listed on the back of seeds packets - so take a look before you buy that lovely exotic fruit that requires stints of 3 months in the fridge!
Now you’ve got the basics, it's time to decide what to grow! Many vegetables are easy to germinate but to give you a head start here’s 10 of our tried and tested almost fool-proof varieties to give a go:
Beetroot ‘Boltardy’
A highly recommended variety with bolt resistance, this beetroot can be grown early on in the growing season until late autumn for gorgeous sweet flesh and tasty baby salad leaves. Reliable and tolerant, beetroots are an easy to grow crop that work well with successional planting.
Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’
A colourful favourite for many gardeners, swiss chard will happily grow between other crops and can have a prolonged harvest by removing the outer leaves. A relatively quick to grow crop, Bright lights are a vibrant attractive variety that have a high germination rate. Relatively tolerant and slow to bolt, sowing in spring and again in late summer allows for year round harvest (mine even survived the winter outside and I kept harvesting into late March!). Eat the baby leaves raw in salads or cook the mature leaves like spinach.
Radish ‘Cherry Belle’
All radishes make excellent first crops to grow. Easily squeezed in small spaces and reliable germination, harvesting a tasty pretty radish can really lift your mood when waiting for other crops to mature. Cherry Belle is a mild flavoured radish with typical red skin and white flesh. This variety is also known for its ability to be left for a long time before turning woody, perfect for those who can’t check on the garden everyday.
Carrot ‘Chantenay’
A perfect carrot for containers and shallow soil, the Chantenay variety allows all gardeners to experience the joy of pulling up carrots! Incredibly sweet and suitably adorable, Chantenay carrots inspired my gardening journey - growing them in a balcony window box during my university years. The frilly edible foliage and gorgeous mini carrots are easy to germinate via direct sowing and work wonderfully as successional crops.
Salad Leaves e.g. Spinach ‘Apollo’, Lettuce ‘Lollo Rosso’, Mizuna
A common recommendation for new gardeners is to grow salad leaves. But there is more to salad than just lettuce! Mix up your greens mix by adding mustard or mizuna for a kick or grow spinach for smoothies. Most salad leaves, although tender, are easy to germinate and are pretty tolerant to transplanting and cutting back. Salad leaves, especially cut and come again varieties, are definitely worth their value in any growing space.
Courgette ‘Sure Thing’ or ‘Defender’
Getting the environment right for courgettes can take a little work, ensuring that they have enough nutrients and water without overdoing it. Though, that shouldn’t stop you growing them! Reasonably easy to germinate, courgette plants once established are prolific and happy to sort themselves out. A word of warning though, you won’t need more than 3 plants for a family. Last season, a single plant produced over 30 fruits for me and I was handing them out to anyone and everyone!
Climbing Beans ‘Mixed Colours’
Many beans are eager to grow and make fantastic crops for newbie gardeners to grow from seed. Climbing beans (fine beans or french beans) are great producers and can be harvested steadily over a few weeks or even months with some successional planning. With very little preparation, these beans can be frozen or even canned to preserve them into the winter period. The Mixed Colours variety is a fun multi-coloured spin on green beans that if left to dry on the plant in the pods, make very viable seed to save for the next year. A great variety for seed saving.
Mangetout Pea ‘Oregon Sugar Pod’
Growing upwards can really help make the most out of small spaces and peas are easy to germinate from seed. A sweet edible pod variety like ‘Oregon Sugar Pod’ Mangetout is a perfect addition to any new growing space, with a wonderful fresh taste when raw they are mainly enjoyed straight off the plant, usually during the harvesting process. Minimal training will be required to stop the plants falling over, though the indifference to soil types and conditions make peas a great option for those starting out on their gardening adventure.
Leafy Herbs - Parsley, Coriander, Basil
For a more cottage garden vibe, why not grow some common herbs from seeds. Tender herbs such as Parsley, Dill, Coriander and Basil grow easily from seed with a little care. Grow these herbs on a warm window sill or in a greenhouse to give them the best start, then slowly introduce them to external temperature late spring to transplant outside. Some herbs can last longer than one growing season with a little tough love, for example, I now have two wonderful curly parsley bushes in my borders that survive the harsh winter with a little mulch and neglect when pruning. For hardwood shrub-like herbs (lavender, rosemary, thyme), taking cuttings or buying plants would be the better option as germination is difficult and time-consuming.
Potatoes
All potatoes will grow like weeds if given the chance, making them the perfect crop for a beginner. To maximise results, add a slow releasing fertilizer to your soil before planting (blood, fish and bone is a classic) and just through in your potato. Chitting (the process of sprouting) is not necessarily required! Mounding up or covering your emerging potato plant stems is an old method to increase potato yield by converting stems underground into roots that can support tuber growth. However, a gardener can still harvest potatoes with minimal effort throughout the growing season - throw in a potato, cover it up and remember to water. Easy!
There are many plants that a new gardener can easily grow from seed. Most vegetables are worth a try; with salad leaves, radishes, beetroots, carrots, potatoes, peas and beans being the most reliable starter crops. Specific or expensive equipment is not needed to get started, reusing old materials and basic compost will make your attempts a success. Remember to read the seed packets for specialist instructions and the general rule that the fresher the seed, the more likely it will germinate.
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