If you could only grow one?

What would it be?

I'm not a vegetable gardener!!!!!! but I want to start. My hubby has no desire to even try. If I was to grow just one what would you suggest? We don't have a lot of room, our lot is about 1/4 acre. and it has to be easy so I can change his mind.

If I could only grow one veggie I think it would begreen beans, cause you can freeze em and enjoy them all year long. Second would be tomatoes..on account of BLT's..mmmmmmm

What ever veg you eat the most of!!!

I would have to say tomatoes only because what you grow in your garden is so much better than any you can buy at the store. Even the little vegetable stands here sell baseballs shipped in from Florida most of the summer and when they do have homegrown tomatoes, they're still expensive as all get out.

tomatoes for sure. you can usethem in different ways. oln a sandwich, in salsa, your homemade tomato sauce, make sun dried tomatoes, stuffed tomatoes and i can go on and on.

I say tomatos too.... but tomatos are a FRUIT. *giggle

Tomatoes! Hands down. You just can't BUY a tomato like a homegrown tomato. I like to grow things that just aren't the same store bought. You can even grow them in a container if you want to start small.

My second favorite is green beans. Again, so much better than store bought. During the summer we eat them fresh picked several times a week and never get tired of them. I love to go out to the garden right before dinner time and pick the veggies we are going to eat. It's very satisfying. You will be hooked forever.

What is your favorite veggie?

Del Monte!!!

Never really had fresh veggies! Don't really know how to cook them. The produce section of the store is high $$$. With all the types of veggie seeds I'm seeing now in the store and the problems commerical growers are having with produce. I just thought maybe we should start.

I agree with biscombe. Whatever vegetable is the family favorite would be the best to grow. Any of the ones suggested would be great. But if you all eat a lot of lettuce. Then grow lettuce. That is what I started with. But remember it doesn't grow so well in the hotest part of the summer. It is a spring and fall crop.

My DH loved carrots for his main veggie so when he wanted to know why I wanted to plant a garden, I grew some carrots and cooked them the way he liked. He didn't say a word, just that they were good, until about 5 years later he told me that I had convinced him that home grown veggies were better than store bought. I was surprised he even remembered those carrots. Now, I always plant him a lot of carrots.

As are greenbeans. *wink*

ghia... A lot will depend on how many hours of sunlight, per day, that the area you've designated for veggies, receives. Soil conditions will also affect what you should attempt to grow. You don't want to try carrots (or other root vegetables) if your soil is heavy, and/or full of rocks. They'll probably grow, but you'll probably be less than pleased with the results.

If you'd like to start off small, with much less work, consider containers. A nice pot, with a trellis, makes a great way to grow cucumbers. They're easy to harvest, keep uniform shapes, and stay much cleaner, when grown in such a manner. Tomato and pepper plants do well in containers, too. A strawberry jar makes a fantastic herb garden. For the price of a large pot, and some nice mix to fill it with, you get a garden with a lot less work. This will give you experience with growing veggies, and help determine how much time you're willing to devote, as well as how large of a garden you feel you can manage. (They can get away from you rather quickly, when weeds thrive and weather is as uncooperative as it can possibly be.)

Once you've moved the garden to it's "proper" place, in the ground, you'll then have a nice, large pot (and maybe a trellis), with which to devote to some nice tropicals, HEH. =)

A greenhouse will soon follow. =)

HTH,
Eggs

I agree with the majority! Tomatoes! If you are not experienced at cooking vegetables, tomatoes are all the better choice. You can slice them on BLT sandwiches or any sandwich for that matter, chop them for fresh salsa, stuff them with tuna or chicken salad, put in a salad, slice and broil in oven with parmesan cheese on top, etc. There are soooooo many things you can do with tomatoes without being an experienced cook. Tomatoes are satisfying to grow also because you get so much from each plant.

Do you have 1/4 acre total including your home, or 1/4 acre to plant? If you have 1/4 acre to plant....you could feed us all! LOL! Good luck!

Debra

Renate, the federal government has actually ruled that tomatoes are a vegetable. This came up over an tomato importer - import tax on vegetables vs fruits. So I guess you can consider them whatever you want. LOL

Hold it a minute. Green beans are a FRUIT????

Hart, do you have a link on that? I'd like to sound smart to all my friends. ROFL!

I would also suggest the tomato. Any other vegetables to consider would be those you will enjoy eating the most which also cost the most in the store. For me that is butter lettuce and the english cucumbers also sweet corn (don't have a name for you) but it's the bi-color yellow sweet corn...here it sells in a 4 pack for 3.99 and it is the BEST corn. I can eat it off the cob without cooking, no butter, no salt/pepper and it is divine!

Sorry you have the unpleasant task of getting your DH interested in the veg garden. Perhaps have him do a blindfolded taste test...your garden produce vs store when it's all done and have him rate things. Tell him that if he rates YOUR produce as best more times than the store he has to help with the garden? With an end of season reward for him: a new small tool perhaps?

wouldn't cucumbers be fruit too? wink. peas? okra? wink wink the gummint should learn not to try taxing so much stuff
grow tomatos and at least once, just pick one and take a bite right there in the garden.

American Heritage® Dictionary: Description of fruit

Botanically when you eat the seed pod as you do with snap beans you are eating a fruit. In the same sense a vegetable is edible vegetation such as leaves, stems, and roots. squash, eggplants, cucumbers, melons etc are also botanically fruits.

Fortunately farmers have their own definitions and have not paid much attention to botanists.

If it weren't for the botanists, you wouldn't know which plants to grow/eat! =P

Your statement *really* should have read "...not paid much attention to the 'politicians'.". heh

it's the politicians who haven't paid enough attention to the botanists !! ha

ghia_girl, a 1/4 acre lot is HUGE by California standards! LOL!
So with garden size in mind, does the 1/4 acre include the house on the lot, or is this the amount of space you have to grow veggies?

Supermarket tomatoes are rarely, if ever, worth eating and usually don't taste like real tomatoes, so I join the tomato contingent if you are really only going to grown ONE type of vegetable. But why limit yourself to only one? Green beans are really easy to grow and the home grown ones beat anything at the supermarket. They are deliciouse munched right off the vine. You don't have to cook them unless you want to.

Eggs; Farmers existed for thousands of years before botany was invented. Historically, differentiation existed among orchard, vineyard, and field crops. As for the politicians, they go where the votes are. In the case of tomatoes, farmers were growing them as field crops, marketing them with other vegetables and probably as important, the fruit growers did not want to claim it so they simply went with the farm vote. The other time the politicians got involved was when southern growers started marketing sweet potatoes as Yams.

Our lot includes the house, a two car garage, a single car garage, a drive way that would hold four cars, the rest is dirt. We have heavy clay, not the red type, and most of the grass is bermuda. In the middle of summer there are time you can not dig, because it is so hard. We have a lot of shade with what I call hot spots.(little areas that get 6 hrs of sun)

Last year we tried to veggie garden, made a raise bed 8 ft by 4ft in an area we thought got enough sun. We took on more then we could handle. Hubby and daughter direct sowed whole seed packets of sweet corn, peas, watermelon, bell peppers, squash, carrots, onions, melons, cucumbers, and okra. By July we had no veggie and a wild mess. So the hubby mowed it down, vowing never to do that again.

So I figure I needed to start small and expand as I go. I like the ideal of using containers! Does any had a suggestion on reading material for veggie garden by container.?

There weren't any politicians involved. Here's some details.


Are tomatoes a fruit or a vegetable? Ponder that--and that's exactly what the Supreme Court did beginning on April 24, 1893 when tomatoes were elevated to the highest perch in the land, the United States Supreme Court. It's hard to imagine that tomatoes were the subject of a Supreme Court decision that officially labeled them a vegetable.
Under the Schedule G.-Provisions of the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, there were tariffs placed on tomatoes imported from the West Indies because they were considered a vegetable, and imported vegetables were subject to tariffs. The case originated on February 4, 1887 when the Nix Family sued Edward L. Hedden, tax collector of the port of New York to recover back duties collected on their tomatoes.

Webster's Dictionary was consulted, along with Worcester's Dictionary and the Imperial Dictionary for the definitions of "fruit" and "vegetable." The passages from the dictionaries defined "fruit" as the seed of plants, or that part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy, pulpy products of certain plants, covering and containing the seed. According to the court, "These definitions have no tendency to show that tomatoes are 'fruit" as distinguished from 'vegetables,' in common speech, or within the meaning of the tariff act."

The court decision on May 10, 1893 in Nix vs. Hedden stated, "Botanically, tomatoes are considered a fruit of the vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in common language of people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not like fruits generally, as dessert."

http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=question143.htm&url=http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch8.html

More from the ruling:

The attempt to class tomatoes as fruit is not unlike a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for this court, said: 'We do not see why they should be classified as seeds, any more than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds, in the language of botany or natural history, but not in commerce nor in common parlance. On the other hand in speaking generally of provisions, beans may well be included under the term 'vegetables.' As an article of food on our tables, whether baked or boiled, or forming the basis of soup, they are used as a vegetable, as well when ripe as when green. This is the principal use to which they are put. Beyond the common knowledge which we have on this subject, very little evidence is necessary, or can be produced.

http://www.lawyersweeklyusa.com/nix_hedden.cfm

The size of your raised bed should be an ideal starting place. The wild mess indicates that you did grow vegetable plants(and it sounds like healty ones!). The problem was too many things in too small a space. You can grow allot of differant veggies in one raised bed as long as you do not try to grow a full seed pack of any of them. All veggies need room to grow, bloom and develop their fruit. Corn, watermelon and most other melons take alot of room. Many squash and cucumbers need a trellis for support and so do some varieties of peas. Try again! Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is a wonderful starter book and I think ideal for you!

Lets take our history of tomatoes etc to a new thread and let ghia_girl get the questions she asked answered here ;-)

I would grow whatever hubby likes best...then he might have more interest next year.
chris

I think starting small is a great idea. A good cherry tomato (my favorite is SunGold) will win many folks over... you walk by, pop one in your mouth and say MMMMM. Those and cukes are great, easy pleasers, and both can be grown vertically to save space.

ghia, Wow, like grammy said, you took on too much for the first outing. Last year was my first solo veg garden, that is 16x5 raised bed, and I only grew green onion, tomatoes(3 kinds to test), zucc's, summer squash. I also tried cucc's, okra and melon, but I goofed on those with lack of attention(working to many hours-that's my story...) and they kinda sat there. Didn't die, but didn't do anything either(I did get a melon about the size of a golf ball, and 1 okra pod at a time-LOL). I've read, studied and learned alot in the last year, and have PLANNED a better approach, thus a better(hopefully) and larger (adding 2 4x6 beds) garden. Nothing beats the taste of fresh veggies, raw or cooked. And nothing is healthier, and that said from a serious carnivor! Getting started right is the harder and most important part. Hope you get to enjoy.

ghia, you may find this site helpful:
http://www.mnsi.net/~jhlavac/gardening/organic.htm

If you want to do containers and want something almost fool proof, try an EarthBox.
Otherwise I recommend Square Foot Gardening. This a technique by which you plant a certain number of plants in a given square foot of space. The websites will give you the spacing.
http://www.mnsi.net/~jhlavac/gardening/squarefoot.htm
http://www.organicgarden.org.uk/SqFt/sqftspacings.htm

Unless you have a large garden, you will rarely use all the seeds in your seed packet. It is very common for beginning gardeners to want to use up every seed in their packet, plant too densely, and then not be willing to thin them out. Even if you just grow tomatoes, the square foot method will give you a planting method to get you started. You can then make any changes you feel appropriate with your next crop.

I'm with the majority and cannot recommend home grown tomatoes enough. I no longer have to spend half the grocery budget on designer tomatoes "On the Vine" in an effort to get tomatoes that taste good. Now I spend it all on seeds, soil, fert, cages... LOL

When I first started growing vegetables I started with lettuce and herbs because they are so easy. My garden was tiny and in the front yard which only got morning sun so in summer the plants kept going and going. The pleasure of going out to the garden each night to pick a lettuce for dinner was and still is incredible. It was the start of a real passion. I'm growing a lot of vege's right now in containers - spinach, mesculin mix, peas, potaotes and all I do is use really high quality potting mix then feed them a light fish emulsion once in a while. My garden space is reserved for the tomatoes. I limit the types of vegetables to the ones I know my kids will eat - no swiss chard, no cabbage, no broccoli, no beans, no squash, no cucumber.... if anyone has any tricks to getting them to eat these veg please speak up :-)

Grandkids eat most things that they plant, water and own. Even chard and spinach!(raw with ranch dressing for dip)

Definitely tomatoes...my personal favorites tend to be the pink and black heirloom varieties, but a bad homegrown tomato is better than a storebought tennis ball any day. :) Did you check out the straw bale link here at vegetables? I grew tomato plants in hay bales last year because I have lousy clay soil and they were HUGE and made TONS of fruit. (Or vegetable, depending on your definition. :) )

If I could grow only one thing it would be tomatoes. For me, nothing beats a freshly picked, sun ripened, home gown tomato. Thankfully, I can grow tomatoes and a whole lot more.

Another good book is The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith. He gives you a lot of details and how to space the plants/seeds, when to plant them, etc.

Since you already have your raised bed, I don't see why not try to use it again. I'd just supervise the seed planting. :)

For your very first attempt, Cherry Tomatoes, a Bush type will be impressive and provide lots of little tomatoes for salads, salsa, etc.

Then a few Pole Greenbean plants climbing up a trellis will provide a few fresh greenbeans.

Once you've tried these, and they're easy, you (and DH) will be hooked.

You can't hardly go wrong with bush type cherry tomatoes. They'll even reseed themselves sometimes and come up again volunteer on their own the next year.

Ghia-girl, I agree with the others on the container idea. Properly prepared and large enough containers will probably give you much better results considering your soil is so so hard. Also, fo things like tomatoes and peppers go with purchasing small started plants. Cukes and squash etc. do well direct seeded. Check out local landscaping co's and nurseries and see if you can get a hold of the large pots trees come in, they make excellent veggie containers and you can usually get them free or at low cost this way. Most landscaping cos. have an excesss of pots particularly from large jobs, they often hit the dumpster if no one takes them.Also remeber to MULCH those pots, even if it is just with newspaper, helps cut down on watering and weeding, making them less maint. and more likely to succeed. The nice thing about containers also is that it opens up the large concrete area you have to growing if you like. Also check out the strawbale threads here in the veggie forum, it may be something you want to consider when you ex[perience success with your containers and get more confidence. Remember though that pots will require more watering than veggies in the ground, think about laying a soaker hose over top of your pots to make it easier.
A also agree with the others that anything your family eats is a good idea and tomatoes are one of the best ways to see the quality of homegrown over storebought. I wouldn't be afraid to try several pots, like I said, if they are properly prepared to begin with the main work afterword is watering and if they are in a group it is no more work to water 5 containers than 1. Good luck and above all have fun! Oh and I almost forgot, consider adding some of the polymer crystals to your pots, these hold lots of water and keep it available for the plants longer, cut down some on water and increase your chance of success. There is a lot of discussions about them here on DG, particularly in the soil and composting forum. A small jar should be all you need for several large pots a little goes a very long way.

This message was edited Feb 22, 2007 10:45 AM

Ghia_girl - your soil sounds just like the 'adobe' ground we have here: only when you add water, ours is more of a cob mud. It's just hardpan that's been assiduously ignored for years! We had fabulous success with straw-bale gardening last year, as noted over in now seven ongoing theads, started here: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/584625/ last year - think of the strawbale as a raised bed you amend and plant right into - and as it decomposes over the year, makes great compost for the future. It's an easy way to begin, and much cheaper than building raised beds and bringing in soil.

If I had other food sources, I'd definitely grow just tomatoes, but if I had to grow just one thing for my own food, it would probably be a multi-purpose bean of some sort. I'd have the green beans as a vegetable and could freeze, can or pickle them for winter, then the dry beans could be baked, made into soups and even pickled or fermented like a natto.

Second to that would be a winter squash like a butternut or buttercup. The flowers can be battered and fried, stuffed and baked or dried and added to soups. The young fruits can be treated like a vegetable and the mature fruit have a variety of uses. The seeds can be eaten as well.

If I could grow just one (per season) it would be lettuce greens (mesculin mix) in winter and tomatoes in summer.
I know that's two, but only one would be growing at a time........ :-)

My neighbors grow a ton of onions. When you think about it, you use them almost every day of the year!

While tomatoes might be a bit more practical, I would grow watermelons....much more fun to watch grow and better tasting to me.