EIGHT Crops Every Beginner Can Grow 

Hi good evening i will try every thing you say this weekend

I encouraged a friend of mine to try carrots again after failing 2 years, and she had a great carrot harvest.

@@kari-gs4eq 🙌 Exactly! We gardeners have to be stubborn.

Also, look for alternatives to common stuff. Regular celery doesn't grow well for me, but Lovage and Chinese Celery and celeriac do great.

Would you please share a few variety of beans? I prefer pole beans because of limited space. Thank you. Julie 🌷

@@juliecarns - I'm a huge fan of the Chinese noodle bean. It's a really nice purple. Easy to see. I can grow 2 crops during the growing season in NC. Enough for the full year

@@christines2787 Thank you! We miss the beans till they are huge and not edible; excellent idea to use contrasting colors.

Yellow beans!

@@kari-gs4eq and purple peas!

I'm doing the same thing like 2 types of slicing tomatoes, 1-2 cherry tomatoes and 1 paste variety; zucchini but not squash because I personally think zucchini is more versatile, fewer varieties of lettuce and beans, etc. There's not much point doing jalapeno peppers because I am the only one that eats them so I might try poblano instead

I loved Luke's encouragement to stick to what you're good at and only experiment 10% or so. I try to balance what I can reasonably expect to grow with what I am excited to try each year. Last year was my first success with carrots! I keep trying new things, but keep "old faithful" in heavy rotation. And only grow what we want to eat!!!

I agree, and I actually find indeterminates to be easier to keep alive because they can recover from damage more easily. Last spring a deer came by and lopped off the tops of several of my tomato plants, but since they were indeterminates, they simply formed a new main stem and kept growing. Similarly, if they suffer damage from disease or weather, they're more likely to grow back than a plant with a restricted growth cycle. For tomato preservation, the most efficient method I found was to slice and oven dry them. I've tried other methods, but they simply took up too much space and energy.

Jeff, if comes down to knowing the difference (and that there is a difference). When I was growing up mom canned tomatoes off what didn't seem like many plants. My 1st year gardening I grow the same and despair because there aren't enough ready at the same time to DO anything, lol.

You can freeze tomatoes….most don’t know this. 😉

In my short season, I don't have that choice, at least until I can get a greenhouse set up.

@@jjc2323 True, but they took up way too much room in our freezer, which uses a lot of electricity. I ended up having to take the tomatoes out and pickle them.

Asparagus! :)

I'm over near Cleveland in zone 6 and would love this too. I work long hours. I have my first home now and would like to promote permaculture....and even grow some veggies in my front yard if possible!

You already have a lot of berries, but blackberries grow like weeds. My mom in Indiana always has more blackberries than she knows what to do with. Also, artichoke is a great one. If you don’t harvest it, it just becomes a beautiful flower. Sorrel and lovage are leafy green perennials you’d be able to grow. Edit: I almost forgot, he mentions dill in this video, and while dill is an annual, people people mistake it for a perennial. It seeds so easily, you don’t have to replant it each year. It will just pop up. Seeds will often blow into your grass, and start growing faster than the grass if you don’t mow for a few weeks.

@@nicholehillabush7211 Yes, it is my third year growing asparagus so I’m hoping for a bumper crop. Julie

Elderberry, etable flowers,,your natives, dandelion, purslane,chives,kales

You are right. That is how you learn. Keep it up and enjoy your garden.

Took me a couple of years to get the hang of Indeterminates. The key is to learn about suckering and growing vertically, to control the jungle. My favorite cherry, Super Sweet 100, will feed a family of 4 all summer long! There are indeterminate slicers that will do the same, such as a Black Krim. One plant of each is plenty--just learn about your pruning (simple, once you get used to it). Welcome to the gardening world! 👩‍🌾

@@lauriedavis4045 My first year of gardening I bought a couple of Black Krim tomatoes. They were planted in a wooden window box type planter, stayed small, produced very few fruit. Zone 6a, can’t remember whether the summer was wet or dry, but I do have trouble watering correctly. I use a water meter, but I don’t know at that number tomatoes and peppers should be kept. I tried to water when the pointer was below half, but maybe it should have been kept at a high number. I still have no clue. I got only 3 tomatoes and I wouldn’t call them “black.” 😅

Jealous! 😉

And they are easy to save, for next years garden.

I have been learning more and more about no-till gardening and it's related topic of soil health which relates to fertility, these past several years, and am so excited for my current and next gardens ! - I have kept on having to move, for various reasons and hope to get our own property this spring - . Anyways, I love MIGardener for so many things, but am very convinced of the truths and benefits of feeding the soil, not the plants/going even more natural than where Luke is at yet ( I see him growing that direction, no pun intended ;) ! ). Anyways, in case u or anyone is interested in more on that, by some other wonderful, wonderful gentleman, mostly long-time gardeners, go check out Charles Dowding, Huw Richards, Jim Kovaleski, and lastly, Singing Frog's Farm for scientific coverage of supposed issues with compost such as "too much nitrogen", & their beneficial hedgerows ( see interview on that topic w them, by Curtis Stone/The Urban Farmer) - all here on YT. I DON'T mean any offense to Luke, his teachings are amazing (!!) and also don't think he'll mind me sharing this info here !

He sells seeds, rather than bulbs etc. He grows his onions from seed (omg the struggle) and doesn't sell seed potatoes. I grow onion sets from local feed stores and farm markets and they do amazing. I grow potatoes pretty well, and I love them, but I have a bad wire worm problem. I wouldn't have recommended them for beginners either.

I’m doing that in containers due to tree roots. At least the plants get evening shade (Tx) I am trying to start some of these MI seeds in between cold fronts row cover) as I’ve never been able to get spring plants going early enough.

I'll give ya a tip. When an onion in the kitchen starts to sprout, put the entire onion in the soil with your other plants and just let it grow all season with everything else. Nothing seems to like the smell so it helps keep a lot of stuff away. As a bonus you will have onion seeds you can harvest by the end of the season.

Or, grow indeterminates for more than one season or even years. If they over winter, they have a major head start in the spring. I also want to let you know, that even though they're not tomatoes, I have two pepper plants still producing that I planted in Spring 2020. I leave them in the ground all year long. (9b)

Wow. Do u/have u watched any of Richard Perkins'/Ridgedale permaculture's content ? They are also in a very short growing season, in Sweden ( he's British, speaks English). From the "no-dig" I'm guessing you already follow Charles Dowding or have read his books... ? I love his channel too. I love Luke here so much for so many things, esp. the teachings on the individual vegetables, I get a lot of very helpful tips that way, which I didn't know. But the others are great for the overall, no-till gardening approach ( and some other stuff) which I LOVE and am having great success with. Also doing no-dig/no-till ( I know they're not technically the same thing, but these people are teaching the same things TO do) & are great to learn from or just follow for the joy of it, are : James Prigioni, Jim Kovaleski and Huw Richards .

Swiss chard pretty darn hardy. I’d try that 1st indoors under light.

I had ended up with a Bell pepper variety " Lady Bell" this past year, which I'd never even heard of b4, and it WENT TO TOWN ! Wow ! LOTS of BIG peppers, and the ones I left ok long enough to, started turning colors - rare for me here in zone 4 WI ! ( not sure but guessing it was a hybrid too, so, maybe thus the high production ? I have usually been growing mostly OP). Mine were protected from deer etc. by a fence we had to put up anyways, as a nursing doe - turns out they'll eat EVERYthing but the marigolds, ALL my other flowers set out front 😂 - living here in our rental's yard, whom the landlord who also lives here ( a relative) likes to see and didn't want scared away ( no shooting over her head/at her feet... ). Anyways, I loved it. Plenty for stuffed peppers and chipping up w onions for the freezer, salsas ( I can't handle a lot of heat yet). On squash : the very mature/harder skinned zucchinis keep really well, even the medium ones keep awhile in a cool place, up to several weeks but keep em checked over ! I do this to pick em b4 they're total monster-sized and to keep the plant producing more, and while not able to eat or deal w em all just yet. Some catalogs leave out a lot of very relevant info on things, so, I learned after the fact the not all winter squash store reliably all winter long ( WI winters...). That I'd accidentally been growing one of the best storage ones in the past, Butternut, but my favorite, Buttercup, doesn't keep for nearly as long ( only a few months on average). I've never eaten them immature on purpose, the under-ripe ones I tried, baked like usual, were NOT tasty, but I was looking for winter-squash flavor. Winter squash are generally among the easiest things to grow, so, I'd been surprised to not see them on this list, but I understand his reasoning. I did used to have increasingly horrible issues w cucumber beetles, 1st on cukes then on all squashes too, til I started putting a palmful of tobacco in the soil at planting time. Works great ! This idea was from the classic " Carrots love Tomatoes" book, and is supposed to be for squash bugs I think, which I also haven't had any more problems with, but it doesn't stop the vine borers. Mostly I do fine as the vines out down their addtl. roots. Thai chile peppers put out tons. I also had major harvest with the only other peppers I planted last year - we had an extra-sunny summer - were bananas, Anchos and Pasilla bajios. I'd gotten what was left in late June, at a local store after moving.

Ditto. 😂

Pole beans are now my bag. Or 'bean bag' if you will. 😝 Arched cattle panel trellises are the best for these--I gang them up withe winter squashes.