10 Beginner Crops

March 16, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

“To grow your own food gives you a sort of power, and it gives people dignity. You know exactly what you’re eating because you grew it. It’s good, it’s nourishing and you did this for yourself, your family, and your community.” ~Karen Washington

Gardening is a great way to connect with nature and food. It’s good for your body and good for your soul. We hope many of you join us on this journey this season. Here are a few of our favorite beginner crops to get started with.

Basil

Basil is one of our favorite herbs for beginners because it’s easy to grow and delicious. Basil can be started indoors in flats for an earlier harvest, or you can direct seed it once the danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed. It’s a great companion plant for tomatoes and you can harvest it over a long period. Pruning your basil plants will encourage them to put on more growth.

Shop all of our basil varieties.

Bush Beans

Bush beans are one of the easiest vegetable crops to grow. You can get a decent harvest even in a tiny garden, and sowing a few every three weeks can keep you in a fresh supply of beans throughout the summer.

Try our Tricolor Bean Mix to get three colors of organic bush snap beans in one packet! The packet includes Provider, Gold Rush, and Royalty Purple Pod.

Visit our Bush Beans Growing Guide for more information or see all our bush beans.

Cherry Tomatoes

Tomatoes are always a favorite in the garden, and cherries are some of the easiest to grow. Cherry tomatoes can be grown in containers or the field. They’re disease resistant, quick to mature, and produce over a long period. You can find cherry tomato varieties in red, pink, yellow, purple, or bi-colored.

Shop all of our cherry tomatoes, or check out our Tomato Growing Guide for more helpful advice.

Cosmos

If you have a small garden, it can be easy to pass over flowers, but we love adding a small patch or two! Flowers help attract beneficial insects, support wildlife, and look beautiful in the garden or as cut flowers.

Cosmos are easy to grow and an excellent choice for beginner flower gardens. They’re a fast-growing annual that will tolerate partial shade, poor soil, and drought once established. If you keep cosmos deadheaded, they produce blooms over a long season. Additionally, some cosmos, C. sulphureus, have edible petals that will add color to summer salads.

Add a few bright spots to your garden with our selection of cosmos.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are another crowd favorite that’s an excellent choice for beginners. They’re generally easy to grow and even just a few plants will produce a large harvest. There are two basic types of cucumbers, slicing and pickling. Pickling cucumbers tend to be shorter and fatter and have been bred to hold up better when pickled. However, both pickling cucumbers and slicers can be eaten fresh or pickled.

You can start cucumbers indoors, but it’s also okay to direct sow them one to two weeks after your last frost. If you’re dealing with a small garden, try growing your cucumbers vertically on a trellis to save space.

For more information, visit our Cucumber Growing Guide or shop all our varieties.

Lettuce

Lettuce is a great cool weather, beginner-friendly crop for spring or fall gardens. We carry a few different types of lettuce, including Romaine, Loose-Leaf, Bibb (Butterhead), and Crisphead and Batavian.

Romaine forms upright elongated heads and is moderately tolerant of heat and shade. Loose-Leaf doesn’t form heads and is forgiving of poor soils, heat tolerant, and probably the easiest to grow. Bibb forms small loose heads and has soft textured leaves. Crisphead is harder to grow well but is a popular choice. It forms tight heads with crisp leaves and needs a long cool season.

You can sow lettuce in flats indoors and transplant it out or direct sow. If you direct sow, it is typically best to sow a bit thickly and thin seedlings as they grow. You can make a salad of baby greens with the lettuce you thin.

For more lettuce-growing advice, visit our Lettuce Growing Guide or check out all our varieties.

Peas

Peas are another fast-maturing cool weather beginner crop. Snap peas, snow peas, and shelling (English) peas are all easy to grow and well-suited to spring’s cool temperatures. Direct sow your peas as soon as the soil can be worked in the spring. Be sure to grow them along a trellis or fence.

For more information, read our Pea Growing Guide or shop all peas.

Radishes

Spring salad radishes are one of the first crops we can harvest each year. Like peas, you can sow them as soon as the soil can be worked. They germinate and grow with incredible speed. Some varieties, like Cherry Belle, are ready to harvest in as little as 24 days!

Visit our Radish Growing Guide or shop radishes.

Summer Squash & Zucchini

If you know a gardener, you’ve probably been offered some free summer squash or zucchini before. The productivity of summer squash and zucchini is nearly unmatched. Just a few plants will grow tons of produce; both are outstanding beginner crops.

Summer squash and zucchini can be direct sown after the danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed. For tasty, tender squash, harvest them when they’re small.

Learn more about these crops with our Squash Growing Guide, or shop our summer squash and zucchini.

Zinnias

A standard for cut flower gardens, zinnias are easy to grow, productive, and come in a wide range of colors. These annuals can be sown indoors for extra early blooms of direct sown after your last frost. They’re ideal for cut flowers because the plants will continue to produce when you cut some. Keeping them deadheaded can help extend their season.

Shop all of our zinnias.

Every gardener will experience challenges; it’s part of the joy of growing! These beginner crops can help ensure you have success with vegetables, flowers, and herbs in your first season, even if you don’t think you have a green thumb.

Garden Advice

Getting a Soil Test

March 13, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Soil tests are a simple and accurate way to learn more about your garden soil and determine what amendments it needs. A detailed soil test, a little research, and an understanding of the results can drastically improve your yields and eliminate recurring issues in your garden.

Where to Get Soil Tested?

There are a few ways you can get a soil test. While you may find simple home test kits at your local hardware store, these generally aren’t as accurate or detailed as a professional test.

Typically, you can get your soil tested through your county extension agency or agricultural college. Many extension agencies and state colleges offer residents free or cheap soil testing. They typically include some recommendations if amendments are needed. Private labs also provide these services, but they may not be as affordable for home gardeners as the other options.

How to Find Your County Extension

To find your county extension agency try browsing the listings of Pick Your Own. They list contact information for county extension agencies across the United States.

When to Sample

We recommend having your garden soil tested every one to two years. Orchard areas typically only need to be tested every three years.

Late summer and fall are ideal times to collect soil samples. This time of year will represent how the soil’s nutrient status affects crops. If needed, you can take soil samples in spring, but you should avoid collecting frozen or waterlogged samples as they may not mix well.

Don’t collect soil after adding lime or other amendments. It’s best to wait several months or even longer if the weather is dry until they’ve dispersed into the soil.

Depending on the lab you’re working with, and how busy they are, it may take several weeks to get the results from your sample. It’s best to send them in well before you need the results.

Where to Sample

You want to get a good picture of the soil throughout your garden, not just in one spot. To do this, you’ll create a composite sample to send in, made from samples taken throughout the garden. For small-scale home gardens, five to eight samples are generally adequate.

If your garden appears to have distinct slopes and soil types, be sure to get a sample from each area. Avoid taking samples from sites that don’t represent your garden well. These may include garden edges and unique wet spots.

How to Take a Soil Sample

Take soil samples using a spade or auger and collect them in a clean container. How deep you should sample depends on your garden type. Aim for small uniform cores or thin slices starting at the soil surface.

For traditional backyard gardens, sample to the tillage depth. For no-till gardens, take one sample from the top 1 inch of soil and then take a second sample from the same spot at a depth of one to six inches.

For areas you’d like to establish an orchard, take a surface sample from zero to six inches deep and a subsoil sample from six to twelve inches deep. In established orchards, scrape aside plants and organic matter and take a surface sample.

Once you’ve collected your samples, gently crush them and remove any stones and roots. Then allow your soil sample to air dry. Spread it out on a clean surface in a shady spot and make sure it dries before mailing. Don’t heat your soil to dry it.

Your samples should be at least one cup of soil in a plastic bag. Depending on the agency or lab, they may have you use or provide a specific bag. Follow your extension agency or lab’s instructions for sending your sample. Be sure to include all necessary paperwork and your name and address.

The gardening science can sometimes feel intimidating, but it doesn’t have to! Getting your soil tested is a simple way to learn how to amend and improve your soil correctly. Your soil test and advice from the local extension agency can help you build healthy soil and grow healthier, more productive plants.

Garden Advice

Basics: Transplanting

March 3, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

The weather is getting warmer! In zone 7a, we’re transplanting out bulb onions, and we’ll soon begin to transplant out cold hardy crops like brassicas. After you’ve grown healthy seedlings, how well your crops transplant will determine how quickly they adapt to the field, how healthy they are, and how soon they produce. Here’s how to transplant seedlings for a bountiful season.

Hardening Off

When we start seedlings indoors, we carefully control the conditions. Seedlings are grown under artificial lights and kept warm and moist. These conditions are ideal for starting seeds but are very different from the conditions seedlings will face in the field. As we get close to transplanting, we need to prepare our seedlings for field conditions in a process called hardening off.

Hardening off seedlings means slowly adjusting them to the light, moisture, temperature, and wind they’ll be exposed to. Generally, the longer you allow plants to harden off, the better.

Hardening off seedlings means slowly adjusting them to the light, moisture, temperature, and wind they’ll be exposed to. Generally, the longer you allow plants to harden off, the better. At least a couple weeks before transplanting, we begin hardening plants off by moving them outdoors for a couple of hours per day, starting in a sheltered, shady location. We carry them back indoors at night. Gradually, we increase this time over the two weeks, exposing them to more wind, sun, and varying temperatures. If you do this too quickly, the sun and wind can burn the tender seedlings.

If it’s cold in your area, you can also use cold frames, greenhouses, and hoop houses to begin hardening off your seedlings earlier. While they’re still protected from wind and buffered from the temperature extremes, they will get more light exposure.

It’s also a good idea to adjust seedlings to the watering they will experience in the field. Rather than keeping the seedlings constantly moist, it’s a good idea to let them dry out some before watering.

Choose Your Day Carefully

Even after adequately hardening off, transplanting is difficult on tender seedlings. We pull them from their pots, disturb their roots, and plunk them into the soil outdoors, where they’re exposed to natural conditions. You can minimize their stress by choosing an appropriate day to transplant.

Ideal transplanting days are cool and overcast. Not having to cope with strong sun can help avoid wilt and encourage seedlings to adapt quickly and begin growing. If your schedule doesn’t allow for a perfect day, try to transplant in the evening.

Loosen & Improve the Soils

We already covered preparing your beds in another basics post. Even with a previously prepared bed, I like to dig a slightly larger transplant hole than needed and loosen the soil. I also like to add a bit of fertility to the soil. Mixing a bit of compost or fertilizer into the bottom of the transplant hole can help give plants a boost. Stir it into the soil well to avoid burning the plant’s roots.

Transplanting Tips

Once you’ve hardened off your seedlings, prepared your soil, and have a good day, it’s time to plant! You want to plant most plants at about the same level as they were in the pot, meaning that the soil is at the same level on the stem.

However, you should plant some plants like tomatoes and leeks should deeper. Tomatoes can be buried up to their first leaves, and they will produce roots along the buried portion of their stem. Planting leeks deeply allows you to produce leeks with thick, blanched stems. If a crop is new to you, it’s a good idea to do some research to see what your plants like.

If your plants are root bound, gently loosen the roots a bit to encourage them to spread into the surrounding soil. If you’re using peat pots or a similar compostable pot, you may want to tear them a bit to help allow the roots through. If any part of the peat pot sticks above the planting

Water Seedlings Well

Thoroughly soak your seedlings after transplanting, particularly if the soil is dry. Keep up with watering consistently, especially while the seedlings adapt. If you’re watering by hand, try to avoid splashing soil onto the plants, particularly tomatoes and other crops susceptible to blight. Drip irrigation is ideal.

Mulch

Mulching around your seedlings can improve productivity and minimize labor. Mulching with old leaves, wood chips, straw, or other materials can help prevent weeds, retain moisture, and add organic matter. It also can help keep soil from splashing up onto the leaves. Soil splashing onto leaves is one of the ways soil-borne fungal diseases will infect plants.

As we head into March in Virginia, it’s time to start transplanting. You can ensure healthy crops and a bountiful harvest when you take the proper steps when transplanting seedlings.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange