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Garden Advice

10 Beginner Crops

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“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

How to Prepare Garden Beds

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The weather is starting to feel like spring! While we’re not quite there yet, it is an excellent time to start preparing beds. Before long, we’ll be transplanting cold hardy crops like onions, broccoli, cabbages, and cauliflower and direct sowing peas, parsnips, spring greens, and more. Whether starting from scratch or taking care of an existing garden, follow this guide to prepare garden beds for planting season.

Plan and Mark Out the Bed

New Beds

If you’re starting a new bed, it’s a good idea to start with a plan. You’ll need to consider the dimensions before gathering materials for raised beds. For beds in the ground, I like to use wood or old tent stakes and string to create a layout. This can be especially to ensure you leave enough room for pathways between beds.

Existing Beds

When preparing existing beds, it’s a good time to think about what was planted there last year and what will work well there this year. Proper crop rotation is vital to a healthy garden.

Remove the Vegetation

This is the first step major step in preparing a bed for planting. It’s best to remove the vegetation and complete the following steps when the bed is moist but not wet. Working with soggy soil is more difficult and can lead to compaction. 

New Beds

If you have access to a rototiller, simply tilling in the sod is a common choice. You’ll probably want to till early and then again as new growth comes up. This will help with weed issues down the road. 

If you don’t have a rototiller or don’t want to use one, a common choice for larger beds is to solarize the soil. Stretch clear plastic, like the kind for hoop houses, over the garden bed as tightly as possible and weigh it down. After a few weeks, depending on the weather, this will kill the vegetation. It’s tough, but you can also remove sod by hand with a shovel if necessary.

If you’re building a raised bed, hugelkultur mound, or lasagna garden, you can put down a layer of cardboard that will kill the grass.

Existing Beds

This process should be easier in existing beds. If you’ve planted cover crops into your beds, you can use a scythe or mower to kill them or till them into the soil, depending on the cover crop variety. Many gardens use their cover crop residue as mulch and plant directly into it.

If your beds are weedy, you have different options depending on the size of the beds and weed growth. For smaller beds or those with minimal weed growth, you may want to grow through with a stirrup hoe or similar tool and kill the weeds by hand.  You can also solarize the bed like I mentioned for new beds above or lay down cardboard or newspaper to smother the weeds.

Loosen the Soil

If you’ve just tilled your garden, this step may be unnecessary. However, loosening the soil in no-till gardens or existing beds is a good idea. I like to use a broad fork. Broad forking the soil essentially lifts it without turning it over. It doesn’t destroy beneficial bacteria or fungi like tilling, but it creates space for water and air in the soil and a softer bed for roots to grow into. 

Another option is double digging. This process is hard work, but many gardeners swear by it. To double dig, you remove the layer of topsoil and set it aside. Then break up the layer of subsoil and mix it with organic matter. Finally, you replace the layer of topsoil. Though it’s hard work, all you need is a spade, and it creates great fertile, well-draining soil. Fine Gardening has a more in-depth piece on double-digging available here. 

Amend the Soil

Before planting, you’ll also want to amend your soil as needed. I recommend adding 2 to 3 inches of finished compost to new and existing beds before planting. It adds fertility and improves drainage. 

Ideally, you’ll also have had a soil test done and will know whether your soil needs other amendments. If your soil is too acidic, you may need to add lime or amend for specific nutrients.

Set Up Your Watering System

It’s also important to consider how you will keep your garden watered before planting. Drip irrigation is an increasingly popular choice, even for home gardeners, because it’s highly efficient and less labor intensive. If you’re going to set up a watering system, it’s often easiest to do so before planting. Lay out your drip irrigation or sprinklers and set up timers for a low-maintenance watering plan.

Mulching and Keeping Beds Weed Free

It may seem odd to mulch before planting, but it can save you from weeding later. Add 3 to 4 inches of mulch to your beds to prevent weeds from germinating. Transplants can easily be planted through the mulch, or you can rake it aside to direct seed rows and pull it back once plants get established.

Spring will be here soon! Follow this guide to prepare your garden beds for planting. Stay tuned and follow us on social media for a future post on transplanting or check out our older posts covering the basics of when and how to start seedlings indoors. 

Garden Advice, Seed Saving

Beginners Guide to Seed Saving

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Southern Exposure strives to promote everyone’s right to save seed. We know that many backyard gardeners don’t have the time, space, or desire to save all of their own seeds, but we love seeing gardeners try to tend a variety or two. The pandemic further reinforced just how important seed saving is. We saw a surge in sales, especially of staple crops like corn and beans. Seed saving is easier than you think! Follow this beginner’s guide to seed saving to get started saving your favorite varieties.

Selecting Varieties 

If you’re going to save seed, it’s essential to save it from the right plants! Hybrid plants are the first-generation crosses of two different parents. If you try to save seed from these crops, it probably won’t be true to type, meaning that the plants may be different in appearance, flavor, or other characteristics than that hybrid you grew.

Open-pollinated

Open-pollinated varieties are the crops you want for seed saving. These stable varieties have been bred to produce the same crop year after year reliably. You may notice that some open-pollinated seeds are listed as heirlooms. 

Heirloom

The word ‘heirloom’ does not have a strict definition, but it’s generally used to reference open-pollinated varieties that have been passed down from generation to generation. Southern Exposure considers varieties to be heirlooms if they were bred before 1940. 

Planning Your Garden

If you’re a small gardener hoping to save a few seeds this fall, you don’t necessarily need to have done any special planning. However, planning a garden for seed saving will improve your success.

Isolation Distances

When preserving varieties, you need to prevent them from crossing. You probably know that an Amish Paste Tomato could cross with a Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter Tomato, but there’s more to it than that. Plants in the same family can also cross. Cabbages for instance, could cross with broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and other crops in the brassica family.

Crops need to be isolated to maintain varieties. Isolation can be achieved by distance or succession planting so that the crops aren’t blooming simultaneously. You can find isolation distances for different crops here.

Seed growers may also achieve isolation by covering blooms with bags and hand pollinating or growing in high tunnels. 

Population Size

Diversity is key! To maintain genetic vigor, you need a large enough population to preserve genetic diversity. Saving seed from a single pepper plant may be fine for a year or two, but it isn’t a good long-term idea.

Learn more about garden planning for seed saving with this fantastic post from SESE seed grower Debbie Piesen of Living Energy Farm.

Garden Planning for Seed Saving

What to Look for When Saving Seed

When you save seed, you’re determining the next generations of that crop’s characteristics to an extent. Generally, if you’re trying to maintain a variety, you want to save seeds from those plants that display the typical characteristics of that variety or are true-to-type. 

However, you may also want to select for certain characteristics. For example, you may want to save seed from tomato plants that displayed the highest resistance to late blight. 

There are several characteristics you can select for, including:

  • Trueness-to-Type
  • Earliness
  • Vigor
  • Cold Hardiness
  • Color
  • Stockiness
  • Drought Tolerance
  • Disease or Pest Resistance
  • Lateness to Bolt
  • Flavor
  • Uniformity or Lack of It
  • Size & Shape
  • Storage Ability
  • Productivity

Consider marking certain plants you know have some of the desired characteristics. That way, you can be sure you’re gathering from the correct plants when it’s time to harvest seed. 

Seed Saving from Annuals

Many of the crops we save seed from are annuals. Their life cycle takes place during a single season. They start as a seed in the spring and produce seed by fall. 

These are excellent choices for beginner seed savers. They include squash, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, peas, basil, and more. 

Harvesting

When harvesting for seed saving, remember that some crops will need to mature beyond what you would typically allow for eating. For example, cucumbers should be fat and yellow, jalapeños should be red, and sweet corn should be dry and hard. 

Fermenting Seed

Some seeds have a gelatinous coating that you’ll need to remove before drying and storage. In the wild, this coating will help preserve the seed and temporarily inhibits germination as it lies on the ground until the following spring. In a garden setting, we want this coating gone before planting. Crops with this coating include:

  • Cucumbers
  • Tomatoes
  • Squash

To remove this coating, place your seeds into a jar or container and cover them with water. The containers need airflow, so don’t put a lid on. However, you can cover them with a cloth or coffee filter and a rubber band to keep out fruit flies. 

 Let this mixture ferment for three days, stirring it once a day. It’s okay if you notice some mold growing on top. After three days, add more water and stir the mixture again. The viable seeds will sink while the pulp and bad seeds will float, and you can pour them off the top. Drain your viable seeds.

Drying Seed

No matter what type of seed you harvest, you want to ensure it’s fully dry before storing it. The seed should be dry and brittle. Larger seeds, like pumpkin seeds, should snap when you bend them, not flex. Smaller seeds should crush under pressure instead of flexing.

After adding your seeds to a container, check it regularly for the first week or two. If you notice any condensation inside the jar or other signs of moisture, remove your seeds and dry them further. 

Biennials

Biennial crops require two growing seasons to reach maturity and produce seed. They need to go through a cold period called vernalization to produce seed. These include beets, Swiss chard, bulb onions, cabbage, collards, Brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli, carrots, turnips, and others.

Many biennial crops can survive temperatures into the 20°Fs. In parts of the south, you can easily overwinter them. However, further north or in the mountains, they may need heavy mulch or season extension like high tunnels or row cover. In the far north, you may need to pull plants once they go dormant and bring them into a cool space like a root cellar before replanting them in spring. Read more about saving seed from biennials here.

Ira Wallace shells Blue Clarage Corn (share seed)Storing Seed

Ideally, it would be best if you stored seed somewhere cool (about 50°F), dark, and dry. You can use seed packets that you’ve made or like those we offer on the website. You can also use mason jars or other containers you have on hand. 

Label everything with the variety and date you stored or last tested your seed.

Testing Seed

You can do a simple germination test at home to ensure your seeds are still good before planting time. Take ten seeds and place them folded into a damp paper towel in a container or bag (to help hold in moisture). Set your container in a warm place. 

The amount of time you’ll need to leave them will, of course, depend on how long whatever type of seed your testing requires to germinate. Be sure to keep the paper towel damp. You may have to sprinkle water on it if it begins to dry out. 

The number of seeds that germinate will give you a rough idea about their germination rate, and you can plant accordingly. If you have a lot of seeds, testing more than ten will give you a more accurate percentage. Even if only half germinate, you still use your seed; just be sure to plant thickly in the case of direct seeding or multiple seeds per cell when starting indoors. 

Saving seed from even a single variety can help you become more self-reliant, expand your knowledge of plants, and deepen your relationship with your land. We firmly believe that seed saving should be available to all. Follow this guide to become a seed steward.