The Best Vegetables for Beginning Gardeners

If you are just starting out into the world of vegetable gardening, the last thing you will want to do is choose hard to grow vegetables.  My list of the best Vegetables for beginning gardeners will help you to choose those with the greatest chance of success.

If you don’t have room for a large vegetable garden in your yard, do what I did last year.  Make a deck garden and grow vegetables in containers. It’s a great way for beginners to get their feet wet with vegetable gardening.

Raised garden beds are also great for getting a larger harvest in a small space. I used recycled wood and cement wall supports to make two easy raised garden beds this year in just a few hours.

There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh vegetables straight from the garden. They can be stir fried, roasted or steamed on the stove top and all taste so much more amazing than store bought vegetables.

Get a Good Harvest with these Best Vegetables for Beginning Gardeners.

Sure, you may love asparagus, but will you want to wait until the second year before you can cut any and even then, only just a few stalks?  You may love fresh corn on the cob, but if there are squirrels in your neighborhood, growing corn will attract them in droves.  Ask me.  I know.  Long story.

My top 10 Vegetables for Beginning Gardeners.

If you are just starting out and want to grow some vegetables that are both reliable and easy to grow, the 10 vegetables in my list are a great place to start.  All of them will grow fairly easily with good results and not too any problems.

So, use my tips, have fun with gardening and enjoy your crop in a few months.

1. Radishes

This is the easiest of all the vegetables to grow and it’s perfect for children.  Most varieties are ready to eat in about 20-25 days or so, so succession planting is easy. 

The biggest problem I have had with radishes is that caterpillars like the leaves, so you have to keep a look out for them.

It is very important to thin radish seedlings to one inch apart to give them room to grow. If you don’t, they will not form round bulbs.

2. Salad Greens

Another fast growing vegetable, all types of salad greens are easy to grow.  They do best in cooler climates, so if you live in the hotter zones, you will do better with them in the spring and fall of the year.

They are a cut and come again crop too, so one planting will keep on producing all season.

3. Tomatoes

Tomato plants grow quickly and bear a lot of fruit quite easily.  For best results with new gardeners, try growing determinate plants (which won’t need as much staking), or cherry tomatoes, which also seem to keep to a fairly compact size and are less resistant to disorders such as tomato bottom rot.

If your tomatoes won’t turn red, there are several things you can do to ripen tomatoes on the vine. Check out my 13 tips for making tomatoes go red.

Yellowing leaves on tomato plants are also sometimes a problem. Find out the reasons for yellow leaves and for curling tomato leaves and get some solutions for both problems.

See my article on the dos and don’ts of Growing Tomatoes.

4. Cucumbers

Cucumbers are a great choice for container gardening.  They will grow up, with support, and as long as you have direct sunlight and water them regularly, you will easily get a bumper crop from them.

Both normal size and baby cucumbers are easy to grow.

Also, find out why cucumbers taste bitter, or  turn yellow in these articles.

5. Carrots

As long as you have good well draining soil, you will have success with carrots. They probably won’t grow as large as the ones that you see in the grocery store, but they are easy to grow and so sweet and delicious.

Kids will love the funny shapes that they sometimes take on too!

6. Bush Beans and Pole Beans

All types of beans are great for beginners. Bush beans are compact, do not need staking and grow very easily with few problems.  I find the green variety easier to grow than the yellow ones (which explains why yellow beans are not as easily found at the grocery store!)

Pole beans are also easy to grow as long as you have some support. See how to make a DIY green bean teepee here.

If you are curious about the differences between pole beans vs bush beans, check out this article. It gives lots of great growing tips for both types of beans.

7. Summer Squash

Zucchini and other forms of summer squash grow so easily that many seasoned gardeners get sick of them by the end of the harvest. 

Be warned…you will end up with enough to feed the neighborhood, but it’s easy to use them with this recipe for stuffed summer squash.

But don’t fret about that. See my 25 recipes for using zucchini here.

Get a step by step tutorial for growing zucchini here.

8. Spring Onions

Another cut and come again vegetable, spring onions are super easy to grow.  I live in zone 7b, and mine have been growing for 3 YEARS from one planting.  I just keep cutting them when I need them and more grow.

Very simple vegetable. Both the bulb and the stems are edible too.

9. Peppers

Both Bell peppers and sweet peppers are very easy to grow.  If mine get floppy, I just add a stake and tie them up with pieces of nylon stockings. 

For the beginner, they are best grown from seedlings rather than seeds, but I have done both successfully.

The seeds just need longer to grow but are still easy.  Leave the green peppers on the vines long enough and they will turn red.

10. Sprouts

Any kind of sprouts are an easy to grow vegetable that is great to add to salads.  They don’t seem to suffer from pests or other problems.

Just scatter the seeds and a very short time later the sprouts will grow and be ready for a tossed salad.

Be sure to check out my post for my raised bed vegetable garden made from concrete blocks. I grew most of these vegetables in the elevated beds in a very small space in my garden.

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