Planting A Vegetable Garden: The Wishlist
Along with preparing my soil this month, I am also planning my garden. So far, I have made a wishlist of plants I want to grow. It is as follows:
-
Tomatoes
Bell Peppers
Jalapeños
Lemon Cucumbers
Peanuts!
Zucchini
Butternut Squash
Crane Melon
Green Beans
Snap Peas
Carrots
Potatoes
Radishes
Chard
Leeks
Basil
Parsley
Fennel
Beets
Sunflowers
This is in addition to plants that are already growing in my garden:
- Fava Beans
Garlic
Artichokes
Strawberries
As well as several fruit trees and an herb garden.
There are several factors going into how I pick which vegetables to plant. Here are the things I think about:
1. What are my favorite vegetables? I could eat tons of all the vegetables above. And that’s good because I am likely to end up with a ton of them. It’s important to like the vegetables and fruit you grow because even your favorite vegetables can get a little tiresome in the middle of harvest.
2. Which vegetables will save me the most on my food bill? I try to plant vegetables that are expensive in the store, like melons or leeks or red bell peppers. Last year after weighing how much money I “made” by planting different plants (I compared my yield minus the cost of the plant to how much the same amount would cost in the store), I found that if I planted the expensive vegetables, I saved a considerable amount of money on my grocery bill. Conversely the same is true of “cheap” vegetables. I discovered that some plants, like radishes, are barely worth the cost of seeds to plant since they are so cheap in the store. (However, radishes are on my list this year because I still have some radish seeds and might as well plant them.)
3. Which vegetables taste better fresh? Strawberries and tomatoes are two examples of plants that are dramatically different when you plant your own. The difference between a watery, flavorless store-bought strawberry and a sweet, juicy homegrown strawberry is shocking. You gain so much in flavor that it’s crazy not to plant them if you like them at all.
4. How well do these crops store? I try to plant things that can be frozen, canned, or dried. Tomatoes are the ultimate for this. They can be preserved dozens of ways and they maintain most of their flavor. I will still be eating from last year’s tomatoes up until I start getting fresh ones because I was able to freeze most of last year’s crop. This helps your winter food bill considerably.
5. Can these plants grow where I live? I have never been able to get lettuce or spinach to do very well here because it gets too warm too fast and the crops tend to bolt—i.e. go to seed and sprout flowers. On the other hand, peppers and cucumbers thrive where I live. So you have to take into account how well a plant will do in your areas. I’ll probably write another post on this later on.
6. What experiments do I want to try? Every year I plant something I haven’t planted before because it gets me excited about the garden. This year, it’s peanuts and chard. Gardening is supposed to be fun, after all.
If you need some inspiration for your wishlist, try perusing the selection on some gardening sites. Burpee, Henry Field’s, and Gurney’s are a good start.
