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Tips on Deciding

What to Plant in Your

Vegetable Garden

Excellent tips for vegetables to include in your garden are included in the Appendix of The Mittleider Gardening Course, a great vegetable gardening book available 3 ways - in paper HERE, as part of the 10-volume Mittleider Gardening Library CD available HERE, or as a digital download HERE.

Rule number one is buy and plant what you enjoy eating! Second should be what produces the highest value, and third is what varieties do well in your climate.

I. We don’t eat much broccoli or cauliflower at our house, so we seldom grow them. On the other hand, we love tomatoes, so Big Beef and Grape tomatoes are our largest crop.

II. Crops that produce the most fruit with the highest value include tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans, peppers, eggplant, zucchini and yellow crookneck, as well as cantaloupe or other small melons and climbing squash.

These are all ever-bearing, and most can be grown vertically (see growing vertically), so they take up relatively little space in your garden. Single crop varieties like cabbage can also be good, but they should be harvested quickly at maturity, before they become over-ripe and infested with pests and diseases.

Corn is not a good choice for the small family garden because it takes so much space and produces very little, unless you’re able to use the leaves and stalks. For example, a single corn stalk takes the same space as a tomato plant, but only produces one or two ears, while a single indeterminate tomato plant can produce as many as 50 tomatoes.

And potatoes are usually much less expensive than tomatoes, so if space is limited, that may not be a high priority.

On the other hand you may want to consider that potatoes, along with winter squash, cabbage, carrots, etc., will store for many months and feed you through the winter, if you take care of them right. Look into winter storage for vegetables.

III. The third rule in deciding what to grow is finding things that grow well in your climate, and planting at the right time of year. Cooler climates have shorter growing seasons, so you may not be able to grow sweet potatoes and peanuts.

Large watermelons also require at least three months of warm weather. Find what does well in your climate by looking on the seed packet or a catalog, or in a plant database such as the Garden Master CD.

And guess what! There is a way of getting around rule three! By growing your own seedlings and using greenhouse-plastic coverings – which we call mini-greenhouses – as described and illustrated in Gardening by the Foot over your plants in the garden will let you extend your growing season by several weeks in both spring and fall. This can even help you to grow long-season crops you thought were not possible in your area.

Download an electronic copy of this and other outstanding Mittleider gardening books immediately by going to www.howtoorganicgarden.com, or get a paper copy at www.growfood.com.

Remember the three rules for deciding what to plant in your garden: Plant what you will enjoy eating; “get the most bang for your buck”; and choose varieties that will do well in your area.

And if you follow the recipe outlined in the Mittleider gardening books we promise you “a great garden in any soil, in any climate.”