7 Easiest Vegetables to Grow (and 3 to Skip for Now)

The 7 easiest vegetables to grow suit beginners well, and 3 others are better to skip for now until you have a season of experience.

The easiest vegetables sprout fast, tolerate uneven care and pay you back within weeks: radish, salad leaves, bush beans, zucchini, chard, cherry tomatoes and spring onions. Three popular crops (cauliflower, sweet corn and melons) fail more often than they succeed in a first year. This guide gives days to harvest, honest yield and the real weekly effort for each crop, so you can plan a bed you’ll actually keep up.

It sits in the Vegetables & Herbs guides. Choose a site and prepare the soil with How to Start a Vegetable Garden from Scratch, then sow with How to Plant Seeds Step by Step.

The seven easiest vegetables at a glance

Yields are typical ranges for decent soil and sun, not guarantees. Poor light, a cold spring or a missed fortnight of watering can halve them.

What each easy vegetable honestly asks of you

Radish and salad leaves: fast, but they need repeating

Radishes are the best confidence builder and the worst for glut: a whole row matures within a few days of itself. Sow a short row of 1 m every 10 to 14 days in cool weather. Growth slowed by heat, shade or crowding makes them pithy and hot. Thin to 3 to 5 cm early, or you get leaves with no roots.

Leaf lettuce sown 0.5 cm deep and cut 3 cm above the base regrows for three or four cuts. Above about 25°C (77°F) it bolts and turns bitter, so the real effort is timing: sow small amounts every 2 to 3 weeks and shift to partial shade in midsummer.

Chard: the lowest-effort leaf

Chard tolerates light frost, heat and patchy watering better than lettuce. Pick the outer leaves, 5 to 8 cm above the soil, and the centre keeps producing. Two to four plants feed a household. Leaves taste best when 15 to 25 cm long. It’s a biennial, so it eventually bolts in its second spring, which is the time to replace it.

Bush beans: tidy, then demanding at harvest

Beans fix their own nitrogen, so feed lightly, and bush types need no trellis. Seed rots in cold wet soil, so wait until soil is at least 15°C. The effort arrives at harvest: pick every 2 to 3 days, because leaving mature pods signals the plant to stop flowering. A single sowing crops for 3 to 4 weeks, so resow every 3 weeks until about 10 weeks before the first frost for a longer supply.

Zucchini: the glut crop

One or two plants are plenty. Give each 60 to 90 cm. Female flowers have a tiny fruit behind the petals, male flowers sit on a bare stalk. If early fruit shrivels, pollination is probably poor, so transfer pollen with a small brush. Harvest at 15 to 20 cm long: bigger ones are watery and block further fruiting. Powdery mildew in late summer is common and usually doesn’t end the crop.

Cherry tomatoes: the most rewarding, the most work

Cherry types set fruit in cooler and hotter weather than large ones and are less prone to cracking. Buy two or three plants rather than sowing, and plan on staking, regular feeding and consistent watering. The full routine is in How to Grow Tomatoes.

Spring onions: forgiving in poor soil

These tolerate crowded, thin soil and a 15 cm pot. Sow 1 cm deep, 2 to 3 cm apart. Harvest as soon as they are pencil thick, or thin them from the start and eat the thinnings.

Match the vegetable to the soil temperature

Most beginner losses come from sowing the right crop at the wrong time. Soil, not air, is what matters, and a cheap soil thermometer at 5 cm depth settles the question.

Cool crops sown into hot summer soil germinate poorly, and warm crops sown into cold ground sit still or rot. Exact dates depend on region, so check The Seasonal Planting Calendar.

Three vegetables to skip in year one

Troubleshooting first-year vegetables

A first-season vegetable plan for one bed

A single bed 1.2 m by 2.4 m (4 by 8 ft) is enough to learn on, as long as you split it by timing instead of planting everything at once. This layout assumes a last frost in mid spring. Shift the dates to match your own climate using the Seasonal Planting Calendar.

Keep taller crops on the north side so they don’t shade the rest. Water deeply once or twice a week rather than a little each day, and mulch with 5 cm (2 in) of straw or compost once the soil is warm. Techniques for staggering sowings are in Succession Planting.

How much time to expect

A bed this size takes about 30 to 45 minutes a week in season once it’s established, plus an hour for the first dig and planting day. Most of that time is watering, picking and a quick weed. Harvesting often matters: zucchini and beans left on the plant slow further production, and picking small makes both tastier. When you pick, follow the signs in Harvesting and Storing Vegetables, and compost the leftovers using Composting at Home.

Why the easiest vegetables to grow forgive beginners

Radish germinates in days and tolerates cool soil temperature, so you get a harvest in about 4 weeks. Lettuce and spinach grow in partial shade and need only regular water, while courgette and bean crop heavily with little care. Compost improves a new bed and feeds the crop, and mulch holds moisture and reduces weeds.

Direct sowing suits carrot, pea and bean, because their roots resent transplanting. Thinning reduces competition and gives each carrot room to swell to 2 cm. Slug and snail damage lettuce, so a beer trap or copper tape controls them, and netting protects pea and cabbage from birds and caterpillar. Tomato and pepper need warmth and a long season, which means you should skip them until you have a sunny, sheltered spot of 6 hours. Sweetcorn needs a block of at least 16 plants for pollination, so it suits a bigger plot. Frost kills courgette and bean seedlings, so wait until the last frost has passed or protect them with a cloche. Pick three crops you’ll actually eat, such as radish, lettuce and courgette, and your first season will teach you what to add. The RHS and your extension service both suggest starting with a single raised bed, and the vegetable garden starter guide shows how.

Common mistakes

• Sowing everything on one day. Radish, lettuce and beans all peak together and then stop. Sow in small batches every 2 to 3 weeks.
• Planting too early. Warm crops stall or rot in cold soil. Wait for 15°C and no frost.
• Too many zucchini plants. Two plants give more than most households eat. Plant two, no more.
• Missing the harvest window. Beans go stringy, zucchini turns into a marrow and radishes crack. Check beds every 2 days at peak.
• Ignoring watering in dry spells. Leaf crops bolt and fruit splits. Give about 2.5 cm of water a week if it has not rained.
• Starting with the three hard crops. A failed cauliflower teaches little. Master the seven first.

The easiest crops grow well in a simple raised bed, described in Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening.

Next steps

If you have only a balcony, use the pot sizes in Container Vegetable Gardening. Pair beans and chard with good neighbours using Companion Planting, and learn when to pick in Harvesting and Storing Vegetables. Back to the Vegetables & Herbs guides.