Growing your own vegetables and herbs is an extremely rewarding process. These plants add beauty to your garden, while also giving you the satisfaction of knowing that you are self-sufficient and living off the land.
(And serving up soup with ingredients you grew yourself is always a great way to impress guests!)
But if you’re just starting out, you may be a little unsure of where to start. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the best vegetables and other edible plants to get started with.
Buckwheat
Buckwheat is an ideal plant to start your garden with for a number of reasons. For starters, it is a great source of nutrients for your garden and can be used as green manure. What’s more, is that it can shade out weeds and provide you with plenty of green materials for the compost.
On top of that, buckwheat is also very hardy and particularly easy to grow. You just need to let it mature and then harvest the seeds. The leaves are also very tasty and can be used to make a great (and healthy) salad.
Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes are a great choice because they allow you to marry your gardening with a healthier lifestyle. Sweet potatoes are particularly in vogue at the moment because they offer a good alternative to regular potatoes that release carbs more slowly. That means that you’ll get less of a sugar rush, less of an insulin response and less fat storage as a result. This is an ideal way to instantly improve your health and they’re also relatively fun and easy to grow. They need light, sandy soil and good drainage though – so if you have soil with a lot of clay, you may be out of luck.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are another relatively easy thing to grow that have a wide range of uses and are very tasty. Tomatoes are super high in antioxidants and can be used in numerous different recipes – especially healthy, Mediterranean dishes. They’re such a staple of organic gardening, that it’s very easy to find specific tips for these plants and you can’t really go wrong with them.
Of course a tomato is actually a fruit, not a vegetable. But we’ll try not to get too picky about that!
Blueberries
Speaking of fruits, blueberries are incredibly nutritious and very often considered a ‘superfood’. They also happen to be beautiful and will add a real splash of color to your garden. They’re expensive to buy, so why not save yourself some money and just grow your own? It’s a very rewarding feeling with blueberries in particular and it’s one of those produces that will impress guests when you point out you made them!
Garlic
Another incredibly useful ingredient in numerous recipes, another healthy superfood and another very easy plant to grow. Garlic comes from basil and will grow indoors and outdoors. It responds well to pots and garden spots and if you forget to water it, it won’t instantly die!
Sprouts
You may have painful Christmas memories of sprouts but now your taste has probably matured, it’s time to give them another go. They’re nutrient rich and very hardy. They’ll work even when other vegetables suffer and you can even grow them in a jar in just a few days.
