Grow Lots of Food This Year!
If you haven't started your vegetable garden yet, now is a great time!
Here are our top tips on How to Start a Garden:
1. Grow a Variety of Seeds!
Growing different types of vegetables is a great way to harvest over a longer season! While peppers and tomatoes are great for summer growing for fresh eating, pickling, and lots of recipes to use year-round, you can also grow other veggies throughout the seasons. Lettuce, onions, cabbages, radishes, kale, cilantro, parsley, arugula, and spinach all do well in cooler weather. Don't forget to grow peas, beans, eggplants, squash, zucchini and pumpkins, too!
A salsa favorite, Cilantro, shown flowering above, typically flowers in the summer heat, and actually grows best in the cooler weather of spring, fall and even winter in mild climates or with protection. You can also grow it in shadier areas in the summer, although it tends to bolt quickly in hot weather. We like to let it go to flower, pollinators love it, and it produces hundreds of seeds so that you can keep reseeding the pot and keep a non-stop supply going for our Salsa Recipes.
Grow a Variety of Tomatoes
We recommend growing both a mix of Heirloom and Hybrid tomatoes. Grow Heirloom open-pollinated tomato seeds for great flavor and seed saving, and grow Hybrid tomatoes for vigor, yield and better disease resistance. Start seeds indoors now to get them going, and check out some of our Fastest Growing Tomatoes for a faster harvest, too!
We recommend growing both a mix of Heirloom and Hybrid tomatoes. Grow Heirloom open-pollinated tomato seeds for great flavor and seed saving, and grow Hybrid tomatoes for vigor, yield and better disease resistance. Start seeds indoors now to get them going, and check out some of our Fastest Growing Tomatoes for a faster harvest, too!
Grow a Variety of Peppers
Peppers come in such a huge range of flavors and harvest times, it's great to grow a variety including some of the earliest peppers along with hot peppers and sweet peppers so you have an ongoing harvest all summer long. You really can't grow too many peppers as you can easily preserve peppers for year-round use by drying peppers for pepper flakes or using them for pickling or other canning recipes. We have over 100 different kinds of pepper seeds you can grow, so try new varieties every year!
Find out about:
How many pepper plants should you grow per person »
2. Grow Edible Companion Plants
Great Pepper Plant Companions include chives, carrots, radishes, squash, basil, parsley, dill, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, cucumbers, lettuce, eggplant, and onions all do well when grown in close proximity to peppers.
Including lots of flowers, herbs and other vegetables in and around your garden will help increase and prolong your harvest while also creating a pollinator habitat.
Learn more about Attracting beneficial insects to your garden »
3. Make & Use Compost!
Compost is nature's FREE fertilizer! Adding this rich organic material to your soil every year will help your vegetable plants grow larger and more bountiful. Save plastic and money while recycling your household and landscaping waste by making your own compost.
Composting is easier than you think, here are our Top Composting Tips »
Composting is easier than you think, here are our Top Composting Tips »
Learn more about
How To Grow Peppers »
