In keeping with my overall plans for our yard, most of what we grow here is edible. Since my basic plan is to convert as much of the yard to useful plantings, I focus on vegetables, herbs and pollinator attracting plants. In this section, I’ll be talking about the vegetables I have found to work the best for my family.
Though there are plenty of choices for vegetables that will grow well in our zone (6b) in central Maryland, not all of them are a good choice for us, and some do better than others in this zone. I only use heirloom seeds as I actively save seeds from my best plants each year.
Tomatoes are a must have for us as the store varieties lack that rich flavor that I remember so well from my childhood. The store-bought tomatoes are also fairly expensive – I haven’t bought any tomatoes in a store in quite awhile but I do remember that it was several dollars for a small bunch of vine-ripened tomatoes. I can buy a market pack of 6 tomato plants from my local garden shop for about 4 dollars, and and up with far more tomatoes for much less money. Most years, we’ve used Mortgage Lifters, a versatile, heirloom variety. This year, however, our favorite local gardening supply could not provide them, so I decided to try a variety called Celebrity that was highly recommended. So far, they look great – the plants are very sturdy and are covered with lots of tomatoes.
Green beans are also a staple crop for us. We use Blue Lake Pole beans as we prefer having a steady supply over a long season rather than a large supply all at once. If you want the bigger supply and can handle lots of beans at one time, than choose the bush bean varieties instead of the pole type.
Onions are another crop that we enjoy and this year we are raising both red and yellow onions, started from onion sets. Perhaps because we had a cool, wet spring this year, our onion plants are very tall and sturdy, so we should have an excellent crop. Generally, onions are pretty cheap in the grocery stores, but they have a tendency to not last very well unless they can be stored somewhere cool and dark, not always an option for suburbanites.
Potatoes from the grocery store are another crop that never seems to last well here, even when kept in a cool dark place, so they were an obvious choice to try growing at home. This was a new crop for us, so I’m looking forward to seeing how they do. Right now, we have about a dozen plants, all looking very strong, so hopefully, they’re doing good things under the soil.
Our final vegetable crop for this season is green pepper. Since they’re always expensive at the store, they’re definitely a bargain crop for the home garden, as we can buy a market pack for under $4. We have 6 plants, all of which currently have at least 3 peppers growing. The variety we are growing is California Wonder, which eventually ripen to a very nice red.
In other years, we have tried lots of other vegetable crops, but the ones above are those that make the most sense for us.
