List of Easy, High Yield Garden Crops
Another Therm request poat! Here’s a free bunny kiss.
Asparagus– OK, this one is a bit of an up front investment. Because this will be a permanent planting, asparagus requires some careful siting and significant bed prep. This involves finding a site with full sun at at least a few feet distance from other crops, and especially piling on the rotted compost or composted manure. But after that, asparagus is a tough perennial that can pump out a large crop each Spring for several decades. For that reason, it should be the first vegetable you plant. I’ve been on this property for over 25 years and only planted asparagus last year and I feel very much the foo. If I had known I’d be here this long, I’d have had an orchard and an enormous asparagus row producing for many years by now. The fact that I didn’t do it ten years ago either…*smacks self*.
Choose a variety that is all male or mostly male plants, unless you want asparagus seeds that you can use to start a new row somewhere else. Just put another inch or two of compost on top of the bed each Fall and cut away the ferns when they turn yellow in early Winter. Each year asparagus makes more spears to pick in Spring. Start picking in the second or third year after planting, to allow the plant to build a strong head of steam, and you may (likely) never need to plant asparagus again.
Pole Beans- I still grow bush beans occasionally- they are also productive- but pole beans win because they produce bags and bags of green beans in such a tiny footprint. They can be grown up a 6′-8′ trellis, fence, or rough pole. After the soil has warmed up, sow the seeds outdoors, 1-2 inches deep, next to a fence or under a trellis. It’s okay to crowd them, they don’t mind.
Protect the small seedlings from crows, jays and bunnies with a little row cover or wire fence bent over them. Uncover when they start to get tall and are no longer attractive to birds, but still protect them from rabbits. The bean vines will climb the trellis and produce until Fall as long as you keep them picked. This is the trick with beans and peas. If you don’t pick several times a week, there is a chance the plant will be able to mature some seeds. When they mature some seedpods, that plant has achieved its reproductive purpose and will stop bearing more beans. At that point, you can leave the pods on the plants to mature and dry, and at least you will have the same seeds to try again next year.
Having the duty to pick all the time can be a bummer, but having high quality veg in the freezer to eat all Winter is pretty nice. Grow a few different varieties, some will do better or worse in heat or cold, etc. and this way you will always get a nice harvest even if one doesn’t do well.
Beets- caveat to this; there is only one specific beet I consider crazy productive and it is the Lutz (aka Winterkeeper) beet. Lutz beets are known for their large green leaves used for salads or cooking greens (crop 1). But if you don’t take too many leaves, the roots also grow to large sizes (crop 2). Lutz beets usually reach around 6″ diameter, and remain sweet and tender to the core. They can be lifted out of the garden in Fall, the soil gently shaken from the roots, tops trimmed back to 1″, and the beets stored in a very cold place (even freezing) in a rubbermaid tub layered in pine needles and damp leaves.
Some sources say they can be stored through the winter right there in the garden soil, but it’s for sure that those articles were written by field mice. Nice try, Nibbles. Over the Winter, the beets remain sound in dormancy and can be eaten as needed (I recommend roasting whole). Simply wonderful. They keep until Spring, when they wake up and start to grow; the roots will start getting too fibrous to eat then.
When that times comes, you can replant those in the very early Spring garden. With the stored energy in their bulbs, they will produce many tender new chard-like leaves and shoots for you to harvest (crop 3) until they finally start to put up flower spikes. You can either wait to collect the seed (crop 4!) or finally pull and compost the plants. Or feed them to chickens, who love the greens too.
Non-heading Greens- Loose leaf Lettuces, chard, kale, chicory /escarole, mustards and Asian Greens- Tatsoi, Southern green mustard, komatsuna, any mustard plant that makes nice leaves for salad and cooking, mizuna, so much to choose from here. Just choose ones that don’t make a tight head that is meant to be harvested only once. That way you can continue to harvest the outer leaves while the plant continually produces more, growing from the center outward.
Upright kales should have their growing tips pinched off to encourage more branches and a bushy habit. This way you can create many salads off the same few plants for weeks and weeks. Start a few new lettuce seeds every month and plan to replace the older plants when they start to bolt. Mustards and other cole family greens tend to produce more when grown toward the end of Summer into Fall. The beds that held recently-harvested garlic or onions are the best to plant cabbage-family greens into for a Fall crop. If Spring planted, mustards and others of that family tend to bolt quickly, as soon as the weather gets warmer.
But it’s not a bad idea to let a few of them go ahead and bolt and scatter seed anyway. I haven’t had to plant red russian kale or Osaka mustard in at least a decade but I eat plenty of them every year. I just relocate the seedlings when I see them show up. Some kales appear to sort-of perennialize, at least for a couple years, and turn up in Spring with an enormous show of bushy growth. They flower very early. When this starts to happen, you will notice each flower bud cluster looks like a little broccoli stem. These are choice eating, can all be picked off before they bloom and eaten raw or cooked in a stir fry. A nice bonus crop that you didn’t have to plant, and at a time of year (usually in May) when the garden is producing little or nothing. Eventually the buds become very slender and you either have to let the plant bloom and set seed, or cut it away at the base and compost it.
Cucurbits- cucumbers, summer squash, edible gourds, winter squash– Easy and amazingly productive provided you choose disease resistant varieties. Cukes and summer squashes are even more productive if you harvest them small and tender and keep them picked. It’s a good idea to protect young plants with row cover or insect netting until they start to put out female flowers. They are easily killed by borers and other bugs as young tender seedlings. Some old standards, like Blue Hubbard squash, are hopelessly susceptible to bugs and disease and aren’t worth being your first try, if you’ve never grown squash before. Same for certain cucumbers like old Armenian and Asian varieties. Go for the resistant varieties first and taste success.
Garlic– There’s almost nothing easier to grow. This is not really considered all that productive compared to other vegetables- you plant one clove and get one bulb- however you are growing food in the garden during Winter, a time of year that normally gives you nothing. Plant the cloves in rich soil three inches deep and six inches apart in mid October to mid November. Harvest in June or early July. You can leave deliberately empty spaces in the garlic bed if you are planning ahead and want to interplant Spring crops there, or you can simply wait and put your Summer-to-Fall crops there as soon as the garlic is harvested. Lots of things are successfully planted in late June through July.
Snap Peas- This is going to be long and boring because I love them and they are special. Tall vining type peas are notable for their ease in picking. Picking shorter varieties is a pain in the back. I only grow ‘Sugarsnap’ edible-podded peas, a tall variety. Since they are harvested when nice and round and fat, and the pod is also food, you get so many more pounds of produce from a row of snap peas than from a snow pea or shelling pea. You also eliminate the whole bother of shelling. And they are the best tasting snap pea. I have tried others but nothing compares to the original Sugarsnap. My family prizes the bags of Sugarsnaps in early Summer as a seasonal treat. They can be blanched and frozen for Winter eating but I rarely bother anymore. They are best enjoyed fresh, sweet, and crunchy. A great cold finger food for serving with a grilled burger in Summer is a little pile of ice cold Sugarsnaps with Ranch dressing.
I buy my pea seed from Johnny’s Selected Seeds because Johnny’s clearly really does eliminate off-types and thoughtfully selects their seed crops, instead of just collecting and selling everything in the field. This is why their seed is more expensive. I have bought cheaper seed from other producers from time to time, and their seed is contaminated with up to 25% non-Sugarsnaps; usually they are vines of a shelling pea and a large snow pea, which I believe are the ‘parents’ of the Sugarsnap line.
Pea vines are feather light and can be grown up a string or a trellis of long twiggy branches driven into the ground. You can grow them up a chain link fence or other solid trellis, but using something that sways, like string or twiggy branches, will reduce the predation of birds like Cardinals that tear open the pods to eat the young peas inside. The birds need something firm to stand on in order to cut open the crunchy pods. If the trellis moves under their feet, they can barely dent them.
Peas get sown in very early Spring (mid March through mid April in cool areas). Soak the pea seed overnight, scatter them thickly in a wide furrow or trench under your trellis (ignore the myth that they need to be planted 1″ apart, it’s dumb and reduces your yield, they love the crowding) and cover with 2″ of soil. I inoculate mine with legume inoculant first, as I do with all beans and peas to improve production.
Protect the seedlings from bunnies, as this is their favorite spring treat. You will need wire fencing, they will chew through plastic bird netting or deer fence to get to delicious pea shoots. As with beans, once they start producing, keep them picked! No matter what, though, they can’t take any heat and are usually done producing in July, when they start turning yellow. Cut them off at ground level and pull the vines off the trellis. Last Tip: In late May or so, start some cucumber hills on the sunny side of your pea row, right up against the base of the peas. When the pea vines turn yellow and get pulled down in July, the cucumbers will be right there, ready to take over the trellis. You can use the dead pea vines to mulch the cucumbers.
Grafted Vegetable Plants: This is a weird category but meets the criteria of easy and productive (but not cheap!). Grafted veg are something I have only started hearing about less than ten years ago. Some nurseries produce and sell their own grafted versions of common vegetables like tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, melons, etc. Check the nurseries and mail order places in your geographical area for these offerings.
Grafted plants are said to be incredibly productive, and resistant to whatever diseases would ordinarily kill your plants. You can read more about it here. One of these days I want to try my hand at grafting a few. The rootstock seed is expensive and you have to time the sowing of both rootstock and scion so that they will be the same diameter during the short grafting window. I predict a lot of learning curve and wasted seed! That will have to be a hobby for another year.
Have a great day and a Blessed Easter.