Growing vegetables yourself isn't hard; all it takes is a little time and space. Indeed, gardening can be as simple as throwing some arugula seed onto a forgotten corner of your garden and harvesting gourmet leaves a few weeks later. In return, you will save substantial amounts of money - $500 is easy - or you can obtain high-end grocery items that you would not normally be able to afford as part of your diet, like heirloom tomatoes and fresh herbs.
In this short article, I'm going to focus on vegetables that are simple to grow and expensive to buy. Because different parts of the world have different climates, I'm going to focus in this article on plants that are suited to the Mediterranean climate (such as Italy, Provence and California), but of course a lot of the information will be useful to anyone considering adding fresh fruit and vegetables to their lives at minimal cost.
The advantages of growing your own food
First, lets go over the likely benefits to you of growing a little of what you eat. I shop at a fairly cheap large supermarket, and one day I was shocked to realize that the two tomatoes I was buying were going to set me back almost $2. For that price, we're also talking a chicken leg or even a small cheap cut of steak. I put the tomatoes down and backed away. Last year, I grew hundreds of pounds of heirloom tomatoes, which usually sell at $4 per pound in the markets. Not only did I have wonderful fresh tomato salads from June until October, I was also able to sock away several jars of intensely flavored tomato sauce and a gallon of sun dried tomatoes for the winter.
Having a fresh supply of oregano, marjoram, thyme, basil, chives, lemon balm, and other fresh herbs is even easier; these herbs usually cost a dollar per serving in the shops. Because of these high prices, people usually don't use fresh herbs in their food, needlessly depriving themselves of an easy way to make food that is better than that served in some top restaurants.
Finally, growing your own food will double your pleasure from the food you eat; not only will your food taste better and be more nutritious, it will be pesticide free if you choose and free of all evils associated with factory farming. But even better, because you will have grown the food yourself, you will taste pride in every bite. You will have developed a sacred connection with what you eat, and this will nourish more than just your tastebuds.
What to grow for maximum results from minimum effort
If you are starting a small garden, it doesn't make sense to grow many types of vegetables; either the yields might be poor, like artichokes, or the crops might be cheap and easy to buy in the supermarket, like carrots, or the taste might not be very different from that you can buy, like onions. Furthermore, many crops might be difficult to grow, depending on your climate, soil, and so on. For these reasons, I'm giving a short list here of the absolute best bang-for-your-buck in time and effort vegetables and fruit to grow. Although several of these crops will grow easily anywhere, the following list is what I grow most of here in Almaden Valley, in South San Jose, which has a hot, dry summer, and a cool (but generally frost-free), moist winter. In this area, we have two major seasons (hot and cold), during which different types of vegetables are grown. Accordingly, I will divide the list into two halves.
Cold Season Vegetables
Fava Beans
As I write, in mid-april, my fava beans are cropping well. Although this crop was sown in mid-december in a dug piece of ground, I have sown a later crop directly into an unprepared piece of land. I simply lifted off the top 2 inches of soil or so with a spade, threw in the beans a few inches apart, and threw the soil back on top. Fava beans are very tough plants, and will dig their roots reply into compacted soil, and largely look after themselves. Bacteria on their roots provide them with all the nitrogen they need. The roots will improve the soil, and if you decide to get into composting, the tops make excellent compost. There are only 3 things to pay attention to. First, this is a cool season crop, unlike other beans. Really, you need to sow this with the first rains in winter, anytime from November through February. Much later, and the beans will not pollinate properly. In hot weather, the flowers will not set. Second, these plants get floppy. If you have plenty of space, let them flop. If you want them to stay upright, throw in a few stakes and loop some string around. Not much is needed, just something to help them with the spring winds. Third, black aphids will occasionally infest them. You can either pinch out and throw away the infested tops (the aphids love the sappy top growth) or you can spray them with soapy water. You can eat the favas in 4 ways: (1) whole in their pods, when the pods are a few inches long and no thicker than your little finger, like snap beans, (2) shelled when small, like peas, (3) Shelled, when big (when the beans start to develop leathery shells, which can be taken off or eaten) and (4) as dried beans, cooked like other dried beans. The benefits of this crop are that they improve the soil, grow in winter, need little attention and are otherwise hard to come by.
Lettuce
Lettuce is of course reasonably cheap and easy to find, but its so easy to grow that it should be in every garden. Just make sure that the last is harvested before the summer gets hot, because at this time the lettuce send up flower stalks and grow bitter and tough. For this crop, you're going to need lightly dug soil with some compost thrown on top and lightly worked in. Make sure that the crop is watered during dry spells. Simply scatter the seed lightly over the soil, cover with another thin layer of compost, or rake lightly in. Thin the plants to about 6 inches to a foot apart, and harvest when they get big enough. A little fertilizer would help (leafy things love nitrogen). Generally pest-free, but overseed to begin with to allow the slugs to take some. Once they get big enough, the slugs won't be much bother. An especially easy way to grow lettuce and other salads is to not thin the crop but rather simply pick the leaves as needed. Many types of lettuce are "cut-and-come-again", meaning that they will regrow leaves after cutting. So you can simply have a patch of leaves that you harvest every now and then with a pair of scissors. With lettuce, you have a great choice in variety. I do not recommend growing iceberg lettuce, as it is slightly more difficult to grow and is tasteless. Cos lettuce is expensive in the shops, while some varieties are very pretty, like Lolla Rosso. Many seed companies sell mixed seed of named varieties, so you can pick a pretty salad with many different leaf shapes and colors.
Arugula (Rocket)
Another salad crop, this one is so easy to grow, I'm giving it its own paragraph. Expensive to buy in the shops, its a weed in the garden. I even have some growing in the lawn. Simply scatter the seed during rain in winter anywhere you have space. It will easily look after itself and grow 2-3 feet high with pretty white flowers. Use the leaves in salads, on pizza, or as herbs. Its a reasonably strong peppery taste, but incredibly easy to grow. Leave some plants to go to seed, and you will never be short of it in the garden. Needs as much attention as dandelions.
Hot Season Vegetables
Tomato
There is no comparison between store tomatoes and home-grown. Most importantly, home-grown tomatoes are picked when ripe, but the variety of heirloom tomatoes in appearance and taste is staggering. You simply cannot top a mix of heirlooms sliced, salted, and drizzled with olive oil. With a few perfumed basil leaves, its transcendent, with some fresh mozzarella, it makes a highlight of the summer eating season. The simplest way to grow these is to buy plants, but if you can't find heirloom plants nearby, try growing some from seed, which you can get online. Tomatoes grow easily from seed, usually a 100% germination rate, and I have even grown some plants from salted and sun dried tomatoes from last year. Plant the young plants in buckets of compost and tie up to a stake or a cage. Indeterminate varieties will keep fruiting until winter sets in, while determinate varieties set their entire crop at once. Cherry tomatoes are also great, because these just keep fruiting and are expensive in the shops. Diseases are usually not a problem, but you may have to pick off a few hornworm caterpillars. If you do get disease problems, plant disease-resistant varieties.
Zucchini
While not expensive in the shops, Zucchini are also very easy to grow, and provide high yields. I find that 8 plants will usually give 2-3 zucchini every couple of days, on average, often more. If there aren't enough bees pollinating them, I like to take the male flower, remove the finger-like pollen holder in the center, and wipe it on the larger pollen receptacle of the female flowers (you can tell these by the baby zucchini on the end). You can eat zucchini shaved into salads, fried with some herbs, or even use the flowers stuffed or in salads. Zucchini are dependable fruiters, and will continue until the autumn. These also grow easily from seed, but you can also buy plants.
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These 5 plants I recommend to everyone for growing in a Mediterranean climate, but to round out the picture, I would recommend that everyone grow a lemon tree (very useful in cooking and better than the expensive fruit in the supermarkets) and some basic herbs. At a minimum, I would recommend growing Oregano and Thyme. Both of these plants grow like crazy, you can hack them back and they will regrow, and are useful in cooking. Marjoram is also easy, but although it is more fragrant than Oregano, it doesn't spread so easily. If you have a damp spot, perhaps on the edge of a watered lawn, mint will prove invasive. But regular mowing should keep it in its place. Just make sure not to place it in a vegetable or flower bed. Mint is quite expensive to buy, and the kind I like -peppermint- is rarely seen in shops. During summer, I like to make tea with peppermint and lemon balm (another invasive plant that can look after itself), with a few slices of lemon thrown in when its cool. Mint is also a natural with lamb or peas.
Finally, I recommend growing a few fruit trees; once planted, these give little trouble and yield fruit for years. In San Jose, You can have apricots in June, peaches in August, apples in October, pomegranates in November, and persimmons in December. Citrus fruit, of course, are available all year long. Avocadoes, too, are outrageously expensive. One mature tree can bear hundreds of fruit, but will grow large if allowed. San Jose used to be known for its fruit and vineyards, because this area is excellently suited to these crops.
A garden with these fruits, vegetables and herbs would take almost no effort, apart from watering in the summer, has few problems, and can mostly look after itself. It can save you hundreds of dollars in grocery bills, and take your mind off your daily stress. With a little extra planning, you can introduce other items like borage (bees love it, and the flowers are good in salads), california poppies and blue-eyed grass (wonderful color in spring), nasturtiums (edible, if strong and peppery), and sage (which has a wonderful blue-purple color). Most of the plants mentioned look after themselves, even self-sow themselves year after year.
Then, when you gain confidence, you can consider tackling slightly more challenging plants, and tasks such as making your own compost and enriching your soil.
For more on my experiments in gardening in a suburban garden in San Jose, including the successes and failures with experiments such as combining peas with lava beans for support, please check out my blog at http://almaden-garden.blogspot.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Finucane
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