What I'm Growing in My Beginner's Vegetable Garden

Come with me as I take you on a tour of a beginner’s vegetable garden. With just a few years of experience under our belts spread out over many years, we have a small idea at this point of what vegetables grow easily and what vegetables provide more of a challenge.

I aspire to be a gardener, but to be truthful, I’m still very much a beginner.

Not tons of experience, just a lot of passion.

My hope in sharing what I’m growing in my beginner’s vegetable garden is that it will give you a jumping off point if you are aspiring to garden yourself. I want to share with you what is in my garden, the feeling it gives me and why you might want that feeling too.

I absolutely love it when my bare feet and hands are in the soil. Working hard in the warm sunshine. The songs of the birds as my music. Contact and connection with the earth that feeds me and the God who created it all.

Ins’t that how we began as mankind?

In a Garden.

a women in a pink dress and straw hat letting dirt fall out of her hand in a beginner's vegetable garden

To me, gardening is beautiful. Both the feeling I get while doing it and the outcome of working the earth with seed and intention.

Watching a huge plant grow from a tiny seed is utterly astounding. And eating the fruit of your labor is the most satisfying feeling.

Children in the Garden

Bringing my children into this experience gives me profound joy! They are familiar with where their food comes from and how it is grown. They have eaten meals that have come from the garden to the table. They have plucked sweet cherry tomatoes right off the vine and popped them into their mouths with delight!

Mother working in a beginner's vegetable garden while her children play in the backround

I truly love having them around when I’m working in the garden. I love that they are seeing hard manual work and what it produces. The sounds of my children playing while I garden is magic to me. Even more delighful, is when they want to help. It’s the sweetest thing!

As for gardening experience, I only have a few years under my belt. However, I thought it would be fun to share what I’m growing, in case you are ready to jump in and need an easy place to start.

Here’s what I’m growing in my Beginner’s vegetable garden:

Kale

Every year we plant kale and every year it does well. It’s such a hearty plant. With good soil, it flourishes.

We planted kale for the few years we lived in our first house, and then we even continued to grow it in large pots for the three years we lived in an apartment. The kale did so well in pots! If you’re not ready to plant in the ground but want to get started with some vegetable gardening, try growing kale in pots this year to get your feet wet.

Lettuce

I love growing lettuce and it’s perfect for the beginner’s vegetable garden! It comes up fast and you can just harvest as it grows, and more will grow back. I always look for the biggest leaves to harvest on my lettuce plants.

Last year we planted butter lettuce starts that we bought from a local nursery. We got a bit lazy towards the end of the season and never cleared the beds for spring. The lettuce ended up reseeding itself and this year we had tons of lettuce shooting out of the ground in the early spring. It was a very happy accident!

We ended up deciding to plant something else in the bed the lettuce plants were in, and so on an overcast day I dug them up and transplanted them. I documented this on my instagram account and saved it to my gardening highlight reel if you would like to see more of what the process looked like.

a mother with a toddler on her lap and they are both looking at a chicken in a beginner's vegetable garden

Onions

I’m so excited about planting onions this year! This is my first time planting them so we’ll see what comes of it. What intrigued me the most about planting onions is a method I had heard of recently one of my favorite podcasts, Homemaker Chic.

It’s called cluster planting. The idea, specifically with onions, is that you plant your onions in groups of three. They will grow outward just like a beet does, so there’s no need to worry about overcrowding. As they come up you thin them out, and there you have your spring onions. You leave the strongest seedling of the group of three to continue to grow into maturity, and use the rest as spring onions.

For more information on the cluster planting method click here.

Cucumbers

Here’s why I’m so excited to grow cucumbers – pickles! I have been fermenting my own sauerkraut for a while now, and I can’t wait to try pickles! I have two boys that will eat a whole jar in the summer if I let them, but I’m always wishing that those store bought pickles were also getting them some nutrients as would be true if they were eating fermented pickles.

We have had success growing cucumbers in the past, but it’s been a few years. We have learned that trellising them is very important, so I made sure to plant them towards the back of my raised bed so that they can climb outside of the bed, leaving more room for other plants.

The pickle recipe I plan on using comes from Lisa at the blog Farmhouse on Boone. I use her sauerkraut recipe and I love how simple it is! Her pickles will likely be just as simple.

Read more on why fermented foods are so good for your health here.

Check Out My Fermented Sourdough Recipes:

a mother holding her toddler in a beginner's vegetable garden

Bush Beans

I believe we did bush beans once at our very first go at gardening. I remember having a harvest, but I do not remember getting a lot. We shall see. This is the plant I have the least experience with, so perhaps there will be more to say about the bush beans in the summer garden post.

However, from what I understand, they are a very good starter plant for first time veggie growers.

Strawberries

Is there anything more exciting than growing your own sweet little strawberries? There is absolutely nothing like the deep taste of a ripe strawberry picked straight off the vine.

I’m very much looking forward this year’s harvest because it’s looking like it will be a good one! We already are seeing so many of those beautiful white little strawberry blossoms.

Strawberries are a perennial plant, and will come back each year and spread beautifully on their own. They require some patience when you first begin though because your first year famously produces very little. The years that follow, however, are the cash in on that upfront investment of waiting.

a women in a rose colored dress and straw hat kneeling and planting in a raised bed of her beginner's vegetable garden

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes are perfect for the beginner’s vegetable garden! They have always done well for us, and they are so much fun for the kids! In our home, we teach the children how to know when a tomato is ripe and they are allowed to pick and eat however many they would like at any given time. They love the grown up feeling of it, and I love that they are eating fresh produce straight from the vine!

This year we have decided to grow our cherry tomatoes in pots instead of in the garden beds. Tomato plants grow very large and have taken over more of our garden than we would have liked in the past. We have grown cherry tomatoes in pots before when we lived in our apartment, so we will see how we like growing them in pots again this year.

We planted three cherry tomato seedlings. Even if the plants are smaller plants because of the restriction of the pot, I think we should have plenty to harvest because we will have three plants in total.

a mother and a toddler holding hands in a beginners vegetable garden

Herbs

Herbs’s are such a wonderful addition to the beginner’s vegetable garden! And such a fresh and flavorful addition to the kitchen!

I created a little herb garden in my flower bed. I gathered a few pots to keep the herbs that will spread contained, but planted a few right in the ground, too. I’m so looking forward to having this little section of my yard full of sweet smelling herbs!

a chicken in a garden with purple flowers

Sage

I love using sage with roasted orange vegetables and chicken. This herb is a perennial, so I took my chances and I planted seeds directly in the ground holding out hope that they will grow and then come back year after year.

Thyme

I planted the thyme right in the ground next to the sage. Again, it is a perennial, so with God on my side this thyme will grace us with it’s presence time and time again. (no pun intended! ha!) I love using thyme on roasted chicken and especially in soups!

Clilantro

I’m so ready for all varieties of tacos, with lime juice and fresh cilantro! It’s such a fun summer meal!

Cilantro is one that I planted in a pot. To be perfectly honest with you, I couldn’t remember if it is one that spreads or not, but I planted it in a pot last year and had plenty, so it works for me!

Dill

Dill is another perennial herb. I have not actually planted this one yet this year, but I plan on planting it directly in the ground. I need it for my pickles!

It is absolutely worth noting how divine dill is when paired with goat cheese. I often combine this pairing with eggs in an omelette or a baked egg dish. Dill and goat cheese is delicious spread on crackers, cucumbers, or roasted golden beets. You must try it!

Mint

A mojito is my favorite summer drink, making mint-growing absolutely essential! It is also fun to just chew on. I have memories as a kid of going to my grandparents house and chewing on fresh mint from their garden as we explored the outdoors. I’ve taught my kids to do it, and they love it too. I love having things in the garden that are easy to just pick and eat!

Mint is perennial, but it will overtake a garden, so it is one to plant in pots for control. I used one of my medium size pots since I won’t be needing very much of it.

Basil

I strongly desire to grow basil, but I have yet to plant it. I’m not sure yet whether I will plant it in the ground or in a pot. I always have high hopes and dreams of making pesto, but when growing in a pot I have never yielded a large enough crop for pesto.

So perhaps I’ll try planting basil in the ground this year if I have room. I could have done better job at garden planning, but that might have kept me from starting. I tend to be the type that jumps in without a complete plan and I figure it out as I go.

Rosemary

Here’s another one that I have not yet planted, but desire to plant. If I am able to grab a rosemary seedling somewhere, I will likely just stick it in a pot and call it good. I don’t have much need for a high yield of rosemary, so a pot should do just fine. But it would be so lovely to have fresh rosemary at my fingertips.

a gated beginner's vegetable garden with the entrance gate left open

Summer Update of My Beginner’s Vegetable Garden

I will certainly have to write another post come summer to update you all on how the growing is going! Fill you in on what is growing well and what I may have learned along the way. I think the chickens will look much older by then as well!

The chicken coop will be complete by summer so I will have to include it in my photos. It’s shaping up to be so cute! I can’t wait until I can photograph it!

Thank you so much for joining me on a tour of my beginner’s vegetable garden! I hope you found some inspiration for what to plant in your own garden.

I was thinking I might do a post as well on my flower garden. Is that something you all would be interested in?

Let me know in the comments!

Have a beautiful day friends!