October is for...taking it easy

I can never resist trying something new and exotic in my garden, so there's a lot of trial and error happening at our place. The real benefit of that is that I can share some of what does or doesn't work for me! For anyone just starting out growing veggies or whose choice is limited by space, here are my picks for the easiest veg to grow, so that you can make the most of your patch of earth with little effort.

Peas & beans  

If you have a little piece of ground and something to climb up, these are hands down the easiest veg to grow, and super productive too. Best grown from seed, just poke them a centimetre or 2 under the ground, water and wait. They say if you soak the seeds in water overnight before planting you will get better germination, but I'm not one to plan far enough ahead to manage it, and the little fellas always come up! Snow peas especially cost a fortune to buy fresh, but they are so easy I can't believe everyone doesn't grow them. PS. Grow peas in cold months, beans in hot ones. PPS. These don't even need much fertiliser- they are legumes and take Nitrogen from the air and put it in the soil. Very clever.

Silverbeet
A great option for spinach lovers that live in warm or dry areas, as English spinach needs cool moist areas to grow nicely. Silverbeet has loads of flavour and is incredibly good for you, I tend to chop it up and add it to just about anything I'm cooking. These days you can find varieties that have different coloured stems, in white, yellow, orange, pink and red, and some of the leaves colour up as well. I find the rainbow mixes just gorgeous in the garden, as well as delicious. The plants are quite long lasting- I grow a new row every 6 months but they can last a year or more if you water them every now and then, and cut the leaves from the outside as you need them.

 Cherry tomatoes
Most tomatoes are easy to grow and the flavour is well worth the effort, but the smaller fruiting ones are so hardy they often pop up on their own. Easy to eat too, you can just munch on them while watering the garden, throw them in a salad or roast them whole. Because the fruit is smaller, they don't need staking and often escape the dreaded fruit fly. Kids love to collect and eat them too, so try enticing a fussy eater into the garden with you and see what happens! 

Beetroot
A very under-rated vegetable, beetroots are a staple in the garden at our place, and grow almost year-round. I just put them in the ground, and 2 or 3 months later their round tops are bursting out of the soil, asking to be eaten.The beets themselves are wonderful pickled or roasted, and the leaves can be cooked up like spinach when you pull up the roots. There are a few different colours of these available too, and I think the white ones are the sweetest.

  Corn
Sweetness and flavour are great incentives to grow your own, as the sugar starts to turn into starch straight after picking. Corn is wind pollinated, so it's best to grow it in blocks rather than rows, to make sure you get full cobs. Other than that, just poke the seed into the ground and watch it grow. They are ready when the cobs feel full and the kernels are yellow if you peek under the husk.


   Cucumber

In summer we go through so many cucumbers in salads, wraps and sandwiches. I like to grow the Lebanese cucumbers because the size is convenient, but there are all sorts of shapes and sizes around if you look. They can be a bit rampant if grown on the ground, so they are best given a strong trellis to climb. If you are in a cool moist area they can be a bit prone to mildew, but it's not usually a problem here. You can spray the vine with a milk mixture to keep mildew at bay if you need a safe remedy. If you don't have something for them to climb, zucchini grow on the ground and are just as simple. Just make sure you pick them while they are small, otherwise you will find zucchinis as big as your arm hiding in your veggie patch!

If you don't have much time to devote to your garden or don't know where to start, try some of these. There are so many options available and I can't help wanting to try them all, but in my experience they are the easiest to grow and the most rewarding with plenty of produce. I'm still trying some new plants this summer, and have some chickpeas and mini pumpkins growing, plus some unusual varieties of the old favourite tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini and squash. I will let you know how they go!