Organic Home Vegetable Garden: Five Top Crops

Organic is the only way to garden. It does not matter whether you grow flowers, herbs or vegetables what does matter is how you grow what you grow.

What does make a difference is why you garden. If you are growing roses or cut flowers for example, your goal is to produce beautiful and healthy plants. You are not necessarily aiming for maximum yield, in fact you may not be thinking about yield at all.

However, if you are growing vegetables to supplement your family’s food supply then yield is important.

If the space you have for the organic vegetable garden is limited then you want to focus your efforts on growing plants that will require a minimum amount of fuss, and yield a reasonable quantity of food. The following five plants will enrich your menu, and while they do need some attention, they are not overly demanding.

The five top crops for the home vegetable organic garden are and this is not in order of importance: leaf lettuces, radishes, snow peas, tomatoes and cucumbers.

The snow peas, cucumbers and tomatoes can all be grown vertically in containers if your space is limited or if you simply do not want to bend over to tend them.

Leaf lettuce is a lettuce with an open growth habit, which forms loose clusters of leaves rather than a tight head of lettuce, red leaf lettuce is an example.

Leaf lettuces reach maturity before other lettuces and are ideal for the short season garden. I like growing several plants that are early producers, because where I live the winter is long and begins in the fall and drags into spring so having something fresh from my own garden as soon as possible is most welcome.

This is why I also grow radishes. Radishes can reach maturity in 28 days. This means I have something that I grew something fresh and healthy quite early in the growing season.

Snow peas are great in a stir fry served with rice or make a great addition to a salad. In fact, all these vegetables can be combined in a number of ways for salads.

Cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce make a fine sandwich. Cucumbers are one of the foods that remind me of my youth and a garden just would not be complete without them.

Tomatoes can be grown up trellises and in tomato cages stuck into a container. You can grow quite a few cherry tomatoes in a container that is 24 inches across and at least 18 inches deep.

If you need to keep it simple then the five top crops for the home vegetable organic garden are leaf lettuces, radishes, snow peas, tomatoes and cucumbers.