Shake That Weight ^™ • 25th March 2015 • 10 years ago

The Best Vegetables To Grow This Summer!

There’s no fresher feeling than going out in to your garden and picking your own vegetables to add to the meal your making or throw in to your blender to juice up. Here we have a list of some of the easiest crops for you to grow at home, just pick the ones you like and plant away.

Even if you have the smallest garden, from pots to plots there are vegetables to suit all sizes of growing space.  All you need is love, no wait, sun, all you need is sun, and water of course to make sure you get the most out of your vegetable patch.

Salad Leaves

Crunchy fresh leaves with a fantastic range of textures and flavours. Try and find an easy salad speed mix and you’ll be cutting fresh leaves for your salad in no time! Better still, they will continue to grow all summer so you can harvest them again and again.

Spring onions and Radishes

Spice up your salads with spring onions and some rosy red radish. Spring onions and radishes make easy vegetables to grow in pots, or you can sow these two beauties directly into the ground for a succession of crunchy, colourful crops.

Potatoes

One of the easiest vegetables to grow. Plant potatoes around late February to March in potato bags filled with compost, and then you only need to remember to water them! 10 to 20 weeks later, when the foliage starts to turn yellow and die back, get your hands in to the bags and rummage around for your fresh home grown potatoes.

Peas

A problem free crop that will even enjoy cooler weather. Sow them directly into the ground from March to June and look forward to the incredible sweet flavour of fresh picked peas from June to August. All they require is support for their stems. You’ll be amazed at how good fresh peas taste and the more that you pick them, the more they produce!

Broad & Runner Beans

Sow either of these beans in spring in small pots of compost, and within a few weeks these quick growing beans will make sturdy plants that can be planted out in the garden. If that sounds like too much work then sow them directly in the ground. You’ll also get some pretty flowers with this one and before you know it you will be harvesting a bumper crop of fresh picked beans from June onwards, with a flavour that puts supermarket beans to shame.

Onions and Garlic

These crops are virtually maintenance free and really are such easy vegetables to grow! Simply plant onion bulbs and individual garlic cloves on well drained soil in spring or autumn – then leave them to it! In late summer when the foliage yellows and dies back, you can lift them and dry them in the sun before storing them. What could be easier?

Tomatoes

Tomato plants are so quick that you can almost watch them grow so they are the ideal easy vegetable for kids to grow. Choose a bush variety like ‘Cherry Cascade’ that can be planted in hanging baskets and window boxes. Bush varieties don’t require training or side-shooting so you only need to feed and water them. If you don’t feel confident enough to grow them from seed then order tomato plug plants. For a nice bonus you could also try Tomatillos, like a tangy tomato and they are fabulous in a fresh tangy salsa

Beetroot

For an easy to grow root vegetable try beetroot. Often used in salads but equally tasty eaten warm and freshly boiled as a vegetable. Beetroot can be sown directly into moist ground from March to July. As they grow, thin the seedlings to about 5cm apart. From May to September you can look forward to harvesting your own colourful, succulent beetroot.

Chilli Peppers

My all time favourite, I have been growing these on my kitchen window sill and garden for years, and don’t be surprised by how much heat you can get from a freshly picked chilli. The hotter the pepper the longer the growing season. Slim cayenne types are best, being prolific and tasty, plus you can dry them on the window sill for warming winter curries.

Courgette

Tasty in a pasta or a nice veggie curry, a must have for the fridge and the garden. It has big edible flowers and if you leave it to grow it will turn into a marrow. Don’t sow too early – wait until May.

Cucumber 

The perfect accompaniment to your salad, or that cool pitcher of Pims. They are produced early and have a distinctive flavour.

Pumpkins

Great starter crops that will smother out weeds and don’t need much looking after. Getting planting in the spring and by Halloween you’ll have your own home grown lantern.

Quinoa

The true hipster crop this 6ft-tall crop produces buckets of home-grown high-protein grain. The plants are pest-proof and the grain, after a soak, cooks like rice. Sow in spring for autumn harvest.

Spinach

Sow in pots for crops of baby leaves through winter and into spring. In cold gardens try the closely related spinach beet and rainbow chard.