5 Easy Vegetables to Grow in Summer

When it comes to beginning a veggie garden, my personal preference is to start with items that are easy to grow, so that I can feel confident in what I’m doing enough to keep on going. Having just started our own vegetable garden at #wildlandhouse this year, I wanted to share some recommendations for any first-time gardener, when it comes to things that are easy to grow.

So today, I’m sharing based on my experience, my top 5 favourite summer veggies (& one fruit!) that you can note down to try growing next summer!

Cucumber

I’ve always found cucumber plants to be fast growing and easy to care for. You can start them out as seeds or better, just buy some seedlings from a nursery to get a head start. If you can, plant your cucumber plants somewhere where you can trail them over an arch or trellis, as cucumbers grow like vines. Make sure to give your cucumber plants plenty of sun and water and it will produce prolifically come summer time! For a househould of two (oh I guess three, if you count Toro who does love a cucumber slice now and then), I think 2-3 cucumber plants are plenty.

Cherry tomato

I love growing tomatoes as once they settle, they grow like crazy! My favourite type of tomato to grow are cherry tomatoes as they’re perfect for pastas, salads and growing a smaller tomato over a larger one seems a lot less daunting. Cherry tomatoes also grow in a vine like fashion so do try to plant it somewhere where you can support its upwards growth. They also tend to produce lots of offshoots on all their stems which after my first own growing season of cherry tomatoes, I would recommend pruning off so that you can focus on one main stem per plant, as it definitely would be neater than what I have in the garden now. With cherry tomatoes, you can start them as seeds or pick up a seedling - I’ve done both and both are great options. I think 2-4 cherry tomato plants are a good amount to start off with for two people, however if you want to experiment with different varieties, then maybe 2 of each variety would be a good idea!

Spring onion

Not sure if this is a proper vegetable but spring onion is hands down the easiest thing to do and if you come from an Asian household, there’s a very likely chance you already know plenty about growing this at home! If you’ve never grown spring onion before, then the way I recommend you growing it is neither from seed nor seedling. The next time you buy a bunch of spring onion from the grocery store, you’ll notice that the roots are still attached on each spring onion. Simply cut off the bottom of each spring onion at the spot where the stalk turns from white to green, then plant in soil. Within a couple of days you will see new green shoots sprouting from each spring onion. It’s as simple as that.

Sweet corn

It was my first year growing sweet corn this year and I was surprised at how easy it was to grow it successfully. I started our sweet corn from seeds and then planted them out when the seedlings got big enough. I didn’t do much other than water our plants but they grew really quickly and produced some deliciously sweet corn cobs for us to enjoy. So delicious that unfortunately the resident possums and rats started feasting on them too towards the end of the harvest (oh well!). With corn, make sure you plant a number of plants together in a block-style formation instead of a single row, as this will help with pollination.

Zucchini

Zucchini is another fast growing summer plant which once it’s ready to produce zucchinis, will produce zucchinis at an alarmingly fast rate. I’m talking a new zucchini being ready every few days! With zucchinis, I haven’t personally started one from seed before (though it’d be more than fine to!). Instead, I decided to purchase seedlings as you only need maybe 2 plants max for two people. Make sure you give your zucchini plant plenty of space, up to say a diameter of 1 metre (so 50 cm on each side), as the plant gets big fast. Once it starts producing, I recommend cutting off zucchinis around the same size as what you find at the supermarket for the best taste, however you can of course leave them on for longer. If you do they’ll just keep getting bigger and bigger and the seeds start to kinda get in the way and it tastes less tender (though still tasty too!). If you have too many zucchinis and your neighbours refuse to take anymore off your hands, then a good idea to control the growth is to cut them off when they’re about 5cm in size with their flowers still attached, and look up some recipes with ‘zucchini flowers’! If you’re growing zucchini for the flowers, then you’ll probably need more plants!

Happy gardening!

Whilst these items are easy to grow, veggies are not the type of plants you can just set and forget like my favourite ZZ plant which I keep in my bathroom and never water. They do need constant attention and care, and much more regular watering than houseplants. So yes, despite being easy, some sort of effort will be required! Once you have your first year of plants, you can use start collecting seeds from them if you wish (it is a bit of a process), or simply compost them when the season is over and start again the next year with store bought seeds/seedlings.