Top 5 Favorite Garden Plants

I love growing my own foods as much as possible. There is a very rewarding feeling from start to finish when growing a garden. You start with preparing the earth and spot where you are going to plant, pick out your seeds or starts, plant, care, weed, fertilize, and harvest. Those who can plant with intention find the most satisfaction, and are able to get the most out of their plot. It's so easy to go to the nursery and see a ton of beautiful or fragrant plants and get the impulse to but them.

First group of starts just in the ground, End of April

Resist this urge, and plan ahead when you purchase plants for your garden. Think about your favorite foods, things that you will actually eat the most of. Versitility is also important, especially if you will have a large crop of a particular vegetable. Remember that unless you stagger your crop- not planting all of one variety at once and instead planting each week- you will have a huge amount of that particular fruit all at once. So planning ahead and picking plants that you can eat fresh, pickle, can, or otherwise preserve for later, will save you from either getting sick of something or wasting it because you can't use it all before it goes bad. I've been gardening since I was a kid. We always had a pretty decent garden growing up, with a variety of different fruits and vegetables, and my mom and grandma have always been good about preserving foods. I've made a list of my favorite things to plant. These are all great choices, and easy to grow. If you are a first time gardener, I would highly recommend starting out with these almost foolproof crops. All of these are super versatile also, and can be used in a variety of ways. I give you my top 5 Favorite Garden Plants!

#5 Carrots

If you have never had carrots fresh out of the ground you are missing out! There is absolutely no comparison between the sweet, flavorful, beautiful orange vegetable that comes fresh out of the dirt, and the sad, lackluster carrots that are found at the grocery store. When pulled fresh from the earth, there is still the slight smell and taste of dirt, but it is such a strangely pleasing essence.

Second raised bed. Almost half carrots!

Carrots do best when planted 2" apart in rows 12" apart. Give them plenty of sunlight and water, and they are almost guaranteed to produce for you. Fertilizing monthly also will give you not only bigger carrots, but also a sweeter flavor!

What to do with all these carrots? Obviously you have to make a carrot cake, because that is my favorite cake. Sautee them, grill them, put them in salad, puree them, make carrot ginger soup and freeze it for those cold winter months. I've never pickled carrots, but I'm sure they would be good. Try playing around with Rainbow Carrots, too. They add an awesome pop of color to any dish with whole carrots.

#4 Tomatoes

Tomatoes are funny to me, because I absolutely hated them until a year ago. I know! 22 years old and I still didn't know the wonderful sweetness that is a freshly picked tomato. That is because my first few tomato

I've got 5 tomato plants this year!

experiences were those gross ones from the store. Did you know that tomatoes are one of the vegetables that will not continue to ripen once picked off of the vine? And fresh tomatoes are such a delicate fruit that they cannot be shipped and packaged ripe, so the ones that you find in the store are actually green, unripened tomatoes that have been treated with ethylene gas to turn them red. It's such a betrayal! No wonder they always taste like gross tomato flavored water and have a nasty too-hard texture.

 I knew that I hated them, so I never bothered to eat any that we grew in the garden as a kid, so I spent 22 years of my life missing out on the awesomeness that is a perfectly ripe tomato. Until last year, I decided to pick one off one of our plants that my roommates had growing and OMG it was a revelation! I couldn't believe how sweet it was, almost like candy. I started eating so many tomatoes after that, and I'm glad that I do.

Tomatoes will get much larger than their little starts, so make sure to plant them at least 12" apart, and from the beginning, I would put a cage of some sort around them to help them from tipping over once they reach adolescence and get top-heavy.

Tomatoes are great fresh and on their own. But even better when put in a simple salad of basil, fresh mozzarella, and balsamic vinegar. Make pasta sauce, pizza sauce, tomato soup. Can them, pickle them, make more pasta sauce and can that. There is plenty that can be done with the humble tomato.

#3 Beets

Beets are another of those vegetables that I am ashamed to say I didn't like until I was in my 22nd year. Growing up, the only experience I had with beets were those terrible canned ones that are sooooo gross. I hated it when my mom would pull out a can of beets to go with our dinner because they were my absolute least favorite. It's funny how picky I was as a kid, because I now love every food. I tried thinking of a food that I hate the other day, and I couldn't pick any out! Going to culinary school has re-opened my eyes to many of the foods that I had written off until this point, and I am so glad. Beets are the shit! Goddamn are they fucking wonderful. Such a complex earthy, sweet, wholesome flavor. They are really versatile too. And absolutely beautiful. Beets come in such a variety of colors, they are one of the most lovely veggies in my opinion. They brighten up any dish, but make sure that if you are cooking both golden and red beets, make
sure to cook them seperately because the red beets will bleed their color like nothing else, and mute the golden brilliance of the yellow variety.

Beets should be planted 2" apart, in rows 12" apart. Plenty of sun and water are required.

Beets can be eaten in many ways. But when I started culinary school, I had never eaten fresh beets, so I didn't know about peeling them. I've seen other people make the same mistake of just going for their peeler
and peeling them raw. You can do this, and it is much faster than boiling them or roasting them for an hour or more, but it takes away from the natural beauty of the perfect beet. And beets are so hard that it is good to soften them up by cooking first, unless you plan on shredding them raw for a salad. Cover them in boiling water and let it rip for as long as it takes to let the skin come right off. You can also bake them, covered in foil. I prefer boiling.

This is the same garden as in the first picture,.
Just 2 months later.

Beets can be roasted, steamed, pureed, made into soup, or chocolate beet cake. They are fantastic pickled in some red wine vinegar! There are so many things to do with beets, and they always look absolutely beautiful.

#2 Sugar Snap Peas

Sugar Snap Peas are my #2 favorite just because I love picking them and eating them off the vine. They are so sweet and crunchy and perfect. And they just look beautiful climbing up a trellis or whatever you decide to climb them up. You can also use the peas in a variety of preparations , like sauteing, adding to pasta, pureeing, making soup, salads, and just snacking on!

Plant them close together, about 1" apart and give them something to climb. I like using a wooden trellis, because they can get too hot and burn if you give them a metal grate to climb.

#1 Squash- any kind

Oh God, do I love squash. I would have to say they are my favorite vegetable, because there are so many varieties that are all so different, and each one has so much potential for different things. And squash are one of the most fun plants to grow, because of how HUGE they get. The vines grow all over the place, and if the fruit can get gigantic. Growing up, everybody in town would always have a surplus of zucchini at the end of summer, and it was hilarious to see neighbors 'gift' zucchini to others who were also swimming in an ocean of the summer squash. And butternut squash is so great roasted, put in sauces, soups, breads anything! Then spaghetti squash with brown sugar and cinnamon and butter...I could go on and on, but the point is that squash are the best! We have 5 different varieties of squash in our garden this year, I can't wait.

Give them lots of room to grow. I like to give them a large corner of any garden bed so they can grow out of the box, instead of onto the other plants. Give them anywhere from 18"-6' of space because they will GROW!