Easy Vegetables

As the cost of living rises growing your own vegetables is becoming more and more popular.  If you are a rank beginner you might want to start with the easy vegetables and get your confidence.  Vegetables can be grown in surprisingly small spaces and even tucked in between your flowers in the mixed border.  Herbs and salad plants are easy to grow and popular among the easy vegetables are courgettes, french beans and lettuce.  Tomatoes are not difficult and you can feel very smug when you are harvesting them by the bucket in late summer.

If you are short of space in your garden you can grow easy vegetables in containers on the patio.  You can use flower pots, tubs or boxes or some of those sturdy, soft, re-usable plastic growers that are being sold in the garden centres and garden shops.  The beauty about growing in containers is that you don't have to dig the soil or break your back weeding.

If you have got yourself organised early in the year you can grow your vegetables from seed which is not only the cheapest, but you also get more of a choice.  If you've left it late or are short of time you can buy young plants in the garden centres, nurseries and markets.

When it comes to easy vegetables courgettes are definitely among the easiest.  Plant your courgettes in a tub or straight into the ground and give it plenty of water as courgettes are very thirsty plants.  Make sure that the young plants are not eaten by snails and you might want to put down slug pellets to prevent this.  Snails and slugs are also very fond of young tender courgettes once they have formed.  When the flowers start to open feed weekly with tomato fertilizer.

Lettuce are very easy vegetables to grow, either from seed or from small plants which you can get in the nurseries and markets.  There is a huge variety of lettuce and it depends on your own taste and preference which you want to grow.  You could sow some mixed salad of the type that regrows after you cut it, as well as some of the more exotic types that are now on offer.  For mixed salad simply sow into a tub or in the ground, water well and wait for it to grow.  If you are growing in a bed you need to keep the birds and other garden pests off it. 

French beans are definitely among the easiest of easy vegetables and are a joy to grow.  Once again you can grow from seed, which is really easy and then pot on the young plants and with repeat sowing you can be harvesting beans right into the autumn.  There are an amazing number of varieties and you might want to try some of the more exotic ones which come in different colours, black, yellow, and some of two-tone.

You should definitely try to grow tomatoes if you are after easy vegetables and it is a good idea to try several different varieties as they vary greatly in flavour.  Perhaps you could plant some of the large beef tomatoes and some baby tomatoes, which are lovely in salads.  When your tomato plant is growing make sure that you pinch out the sideshoots and once the fruit begins to set feed once a week with tomato feed, which is high in potash.  Remember to water your tomatoes, especially in hot dry periods.