Gardening: Hard and easy vegetables to grow

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UPDATED: July 27, 2018 at 10:45 PM PDT

Nothing is as easy as growing weeds. No planting. No water. No love. Zilch. Zip. Nada.

Unlike weeds, a vegetable garden is not low maintenance. To be successful, it takes some planning and work. You need to understand soil quality, water requirements and have totally aced Botany 101.

Now the good news- don’t sweat it.

Why? Because I know a thing and I’ve seen a thing or two. And like a good neighbor, I’m here to help.

When you’re new to gardening it helps to grow crops that are easy so you have a good first experience. I have found the following vegetables to be pretty easy to grow whether from seed or seedling: carrots, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, peas, potatoes, radishes, summer squash and tomatoes.

Undoubtedly, some experienced gardeners are thinking, “Well, kale is also pretty easy.” Others are thinking, “I couldn’t grow tomatoes if I bought a plant with tomatoes already growing on it.”

Everybody is different. Every veggie is different. Each growing condition is different.

Not all seeds are available in seed tapes, but for those which are, I would recommend buying them in that format. They make planting and spacing a lot easier than individual seed planting.

Some vegetables might need some extra babying. This means they will need perfect temperatures, the right soil nutrients and the occasional bedtime story.

Artichokes grow over 6 feet wide and 3 feet high so make please allow roughly one acre per plant. They have problems with aphids which stunt the leaves and spreads viruses. Grow artichokes that have thorns because they have more meat and flavor.

Asparagus? A gardener can wait two-plus years before seeing any real crop. I had several sprouts in my first year. Then we had a very weak Santa Ana with winds reaching upwards of 1.6 mph. They promptly dried up and blew away. Surprisingly, they were reborn the following season and there was much rejoicing.

After three failed attempts at getting anything that looked like a broccoli head, I swallowed my pride and went to the Farmers Market. Please don’t tell anyone.

Cauliflower, whose family relatives include broccoli and cabbage, requires a long growing season. Hot weather conditions can cause browning, undersized heads or premature flowering. To keep cauliflower heads white (i.e., “blanch” them), loosely (so water can drain out) tie four or five of the large, outside leaves over the crown. There are some self-blanching cultivars, and purple and green cauliflower cultivars that do not need blanching before harvest.

I had an excellent eggplant crop on my first try. The following two seasons were met with utter disappointment, accompanied by a lump in my throat and half a box of Kleenex. My plants’ leaves had tiny holes that were caused by flea beetles.

Garlic grows from individual cloves broken off from a whole bulb. Use a high-nitrogen fertilizer (e.g., Osmocote). Harvest garlic when the leaves have turned brown. Dig the bulbs up and lay the garlic out to dry for two or three weeks in a shady area with good air circulation.

Leaf lettuce is easy to grow. Head lettuce like they sell in the stores gets a little finicky when the temperature changes. Lettuce can suffer from bolting, which is a premature flowering or seed formation of the plant which can make it taste like yuck.

Melons, and I’m including cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelons, have a long growing season. They require about five feet between each plant. Watch out for beetles. Excitement mounts when you start to see teeny tiny melons the size of limes. The excitement disappears when you see they aren’t getting any bigger than limes. Boo. Hiss.

If you are growing onions from seed, expect to wait three months before you can transplant them. The type of onion you select makes a big difference. There are different varieties of onions that require shorter days of sun, about 12 hours per day, and others that require 13 to 16 hours of daylight. Good luck with that during our May and June gloom.

Really though, it’s not that hard. It’s almost as easy as growing weeds. You can do this. Life is all about being positive… and testing negative.

Schmidt is a Poway resident with 40 years of gardening experience.

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