5 Essential Crops Every Gardener Should Grow

Choosing your favourite vegetable’s a bit like trying to name your all-time favourite song, or perhaps your favourite child. It’s tough – but not impossible!

So after giving this all some long, hard thought I’ve come up with my ultimate shortlist – the crops which give a good mix of abundance, value for effort, and versatility in the kitchen.

Beautiful Beans

Coming in at number five we’ve got beans. All types of beans are winners in my book! What I adore about these leguminous lovelies is the fact there are both winter-hardy heroes and summer sun worshippers to grow, so you’re covered for much of the growing season.

Broad beans are one of the few crops you can plant in late autumn to sit right through the winter then give you the earliest beans of the season. Plant them directly into the ground or start them off in plug trays or pots to keep them away from the mice and protected against exceptionally cold snaps. Plant them into their final position in late winter, then add string supports in spring as they grow tall to keep them from flopping over… and that’s pretty much it til you’re ready to pick. They’re genuinely low maintenance, which I love!

Then in late spring it’s time to start sowing warm-season climbing beans to race up supports, and dwarf French beans to follow on from early summer finishers. Sow climbing beans direct against supports or in pots or plug trays to transplant as young plants. My tips for these warm season beans is to avoid starting them too early, because they don’t like chilly nights; to keep them well watered once they’re planted, to support all of that vigorous growth; and, of course, to keep picking them to ensure those pods keep on coming.

If you notice that beans are dropping off or failing to form properly, it’s likely plants aren’t getting enough water, so give them a really thorough soak, and don’t forget to lock in that moisture with a mulch of organic matter.

Dwarf French beans can be sown right up until midsummer, helpfully filling recently vacated ground to follow on from the likes of earlier crops like carrots or salads. I love the fact they can be slotted in here, there and everywhere, rapidly germinating to grow on into the warmth of summer. And they need little to no support, which is great for time-starved (or lazy!) gardeners like me!

Super Simple Potatoes

Potatoes rank highly for ease of growth. Sprout spring-planted potatoes the moment you get them, then plant into rich, fertile soil from early spring. I really, really rate the first potatoes of the season – those sensational salad spuds that are boiled up and served still steaming with lashings of butter and pepper. You just can’t beat them!

Protect young shoots from late frosts, which can set growth back a few weeks. To check when your last frost date is likely to be, just enter your location into a free trial of our Garden Planner.

Water your potatoes well if the weather is dry to help swell the tubers, but try to avoid wetting the foliage to minimise the risk of blight. And, if you want to store your harvest, lift your spuds on a dry day so they can dry off in the breeze.

As well as growing potatoes in the ground, I also grow them in large containers, and I must say I’ve been impressed with the results.

I know potatoes are as cheap as chips to buy, but the flavour and beauty of homegrown spuds is what secures their place in my top five!

Essential Onions

Think of any recipe and there’s a good chance it starts with an onion! I love these pungent bulbs for so many reasons: the way they cook down into an unctuous, caramelised deliciousness; the fact they store for soo long; and their amazing resistance to those dreaded slugs! This really is another easy-growing crop worth making room for.

I grow onions in two slightly different ways: from autumn-planted sets (immature bulbs), and multi-sown seedlings. Started right at the end of last season, the autumn-planted onion sets are good to lift about a month sooner than the while the multisown (and grown) onions.

Sowing is so easy: scatter some seeds into plugs of potting mix from the second half of winter, grow them on in clusters of up to six seedlings (remove some if more than that pop up), then plant them out about a foot (30cm) apart in spring. Keep them well watered, especially in early summer, and then, as if by magic, the bulbs will swell to their full size in as little as a few weeks.

Growing in clusters saves time as you’re growing several plants in one go, while planting onion sets avoids the hazards of sowing and handling seeds and seedlings, so both have their advantages.

Onions should be dried out on racks somewhere warm and dry to cure before storing,

I also love my salad onions (aka green onions), sown in rows as needed to give a flavoursome punch of stems a few months down the line. But here’s a little tip for you: save the bottom of your bulb onions when you use them, and replant them! They’ll throw up new shoots, which can then be enjoyed much like salad onions just a few weeks on. It’s a deliciously simple way to enjoy a bonus harvest from something that would otherwise have ended up on the compost heap.

Charming Chard

Chard just pips kale to the post as my top leafy green, thanks to its soft, luscious leaves and its colorful stems and midribs. It’s remarkably hardy and crops for months on end, giving a lot of leaf for minimal effort.

Chard is a great choice for sowing later in spring or in summer, when warmer weather ensures quick, steady growth and reduces the chance of them going to seed prematurely, which they can sometimes do in response to chilly nights.

To sow, just pop one chunky seed into one plug and cover. Like beetroot, each seed is in fact a seed capsule containing potentially more than one seed, so you may get a couple of seedlings come up in each plug. Grow them on together, or carefully tease the seedlings apart – the choice is yours!

Here are some chard seedlings I sowed a month ago, and they’re itching to get into the ground, so let’s get them planted. And they’re going into well-drained soil improved with plenty of compost, at a distance of about a foot (30cm), or just a touch more, apart.

Once they’re in you’ll need to keep your chard watered in dry weather, and if you’d like to know more about the best way to water, do check out our recent video on watering, which I’ll link to below.

Chard really is a stunner for its gorgeous colours and steady cropping. This lot will be ready to start cutting towards the end of summer, then they’ll slow right down for winter before picking up again in early spring, when the harvests should come thick and fast. If it gets really cold where you are, consider protecting plants in the depths of winter to keep leaves from getting too tattered.

Ben’s Top of the Crops: Zesty Zucchini

Winning the crown of best vegetable is – drum roll, please – zucchini!

I really agonised over my top vegetable. It was a close toss-up between tomatoes and zucchini. I’ve chosen the latter because they’re so quick and easy to grow, and just so prolific. Once they pop, they won’t stop, so long as you keep on picking them.

Zucchini grow so darn quick they can be sown at just about any point during the growing season to race ahead and reliably crop within as little as two months. So, even now, there’s time to sow them.

I love zucchini for their dense, nutty fruits, and while I’ve never quite succeeded in making it myself, I go mad for stuffed zucchini flowers (fiori di zucca). They are absolute perfection – true culinary gold!

Sow the seeds on their edges into pots of potting mix, keep them well-watered and plant out as soon as the roots have filled the pots. Plant them into extravagantly enriched soil – lots of compost or well-rotted manure is the order of the day – then continue to keep them quenched for steady, truly relentless growth.

I like to harvest the fruits while they’re still fairly small. Not only does this stop me getting overwhelmed with great big whoppers, they also taste so much better while they’re still small and dense-textured. Grow a few plants close to each other to improve pollination and try a mix of varieties, such as yellow ones or beautiful ribbed, stripy ones that look like little cogwheels when sliced.

Well, that’s my top five, but what’s yours? Tell me in the comments below!

Plants Related to this Article

Zucchini Grow Guide

Silver Beet Grow Guide

Beans (Broad) Grow Guide