The 10 Vegetables To Grow That Will Really Feed You!

Do you dream of having a garden that will really feed you?

Natalie and Chloe of Wild Abundance share their top 10 vegetables that are the easiest to grow and produce an abundance of food! You’ll learn more about these foods and why they are perfect for beginner and intermediate gardeners.

If you wish to dive deeper and learn more, check out Wild Abundance’s Online Gardening School

Wild Abundance teaches skills for living with the Earth. It’s a home, a hub, and a dream of a more interconnected and sustainable world. Their campus is located in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina and is a living example of everything they teach. They offer classes both in person and online.

Transcript: The following is a transcription of The 10 Vegetables To Grow That Will Really Feed You!

I am Natalie and I am Chloe. We are with the Wild Abundance Online Gardening School. We are excited to share with you ten of our favorite vegetables to plant that will really feed you.

Winter squash, which includes pumpkin, butternuts and butter cups and all different kinds and shapes and sizes of squash that you can grow to store over the winter, are an incredible staple crop. Not only is the fruit edible, but the seeds are edible and nutritious too. What is more, they sprawl. Most varieties sprawl and cover a ton of ground so you can plant them on the edge of your garden. They will even climb up trees in some cases and they can take up space that you would not otherwise be able to cultivate. Perhaps one of the best things is that they are delicious in sweet and savory dishes.

Beans are a super-rewarding crop to grow, in part because they fix their own nitrogen. So, that means they bring nitrogen into the soil and they can thrive even in poorer soils. There are lots of different kinds of beans to grow, some form dry beans like the ones I am holding in these jars and some form snap beans or fresh bean pods like these ones. There are also cowpeas and garbanzo beans and lots of different kinds that grow well in different kinds of climate. Dry beans store well dried in jars like this and green beans can be pickled, frozen, or canned.

Sweet potatoes can produce a huge amount of nourishing, filling food that stores well after they are cured all through the winter. They also can thrive even in poor soils that are low in nitrogen. They are less susceptible to fungal and viral diseases than white potatoes, which makes them a really great option, especially in warm, wet climates. One thing to keep in mind is that they will not mature if it is very cool, if you do not have a long, hot summer. So, they are better for warmer areas and less good for cool areas. There are so many varieties to choose from and grow in your garden.

Greens are full of nutrients and an awesome thing to grow because they mature relatively quickly. They have become kind of the center of a lot of people’s meals these days instead of just being a side dish. Oftentimes, it will be everything over a bed of lettuce or over a bunch of kale. This is kale, which I love to grow. This is madeley, which is an awesome variety. I also like to grow cabbage. I like to grow chard. Beet greens are awesome, and then a lot of edible weeds are fabulous. Magenta spreen is a type of lambsquarters. Chickweed is awesome. Callaloo and then all sorts of cover crops like winter peas can also be eaten.

Corn is another incredible staple crop. When I am talking about corn as a staple crop, I am talking about field corn or grain corn like I am holding here. Sweet corn is really more of a snack. The amount of food that you can produce with corn in even a small garden is incredible and it stores really well. It is also the only grain that is easy to process on a small scale. You do not need any machines to process it. And when it comes to heirloom or traditional varieties of corn, there is an incredible diversity of colors, flavors, textures, stories, and it is much more nutritious than anything you could buy in the store.

Zucchini and other summer squash are enormously productive. We have had plants that yield well over 20 pounds per plant. That is a lot of food. It is not just boring, yucky food. It is delicious food. I love to fillet these and put them in my barbecue. I like to fillet them and make zucchini casserole. I like to add them to stir fries. They are so incredibly versatile. We do have some pest issues with them here, but it is just amazing how much food they produce even so.

Tomatoes are an amazing thing to grow in your garden. And who does not want to grow tomatoes? They are iconic for the home gardener. And I love to eat them raw with some fresh mozzarella. I love to make sauces and salsas and can them and store them and then break them out and be like, “Yeah, these are from my tomatoes that I grew in my garden.” So, whatever the case is, you can really get a lot of food from one plant. And they are just so delicious. So, I really encourage you to grow tomatoes.

Garlic is a really fun and easy thing to grow. You take one clove, put it in the ground in the fall and then in the late spring you have a whole head of garlic, all with relatively little labor in between. It is not only a food, but it is also a medicine. It is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial, and it makes other foods taste really fabulous.

Potatoes: also known as “the enemy of hunger” by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and he knew what he was talking about. They are an incredibly productive storage crop that even your four-year-old and your grandma will be familiar with and will want to eat. They are also really fun to dig up, so they are a great crop to grow in a community garden or a family garden. They grow in even cool, moist soils, and they are a really good option, especially for northern climates and places where other storage crops like sweet potatoes just will not hack it because there is not enough heat.

Other root crops can really add variety to your meals. Beets, daikon, turnips and parsnips are foods that grow in the cool weather and they can generally be stored really well. Beets and turnips can be stored just in sand or in sawdust. Daikons can be fermented to make fabulous kimchi. These plants are really worth growing. I highly recommend them for your garden.

Thank you so much for joining us for ten vegetables that can really feed you. If you want to learn more about these incredible, nourishing crops, we have a whole online class about it that you can check out, along with a bunch of other cool stuff, at wildabundance.net. Good luck with your garden! Bye!