11 Best Plants to Start Growing Your Own Food

Currently, I reside in a small home with a small back yard in the middle of town. I fortunately have a decent sized back yard for living in such an urban setting, however it is still not quite enough to reach my homesteading dreams or my goal to grow all my own produce to feed my whole family. About 3 years ago, I decided that I would find a way to still be able to grow a good portion of my own food and that I would learn how to do so in a small space and share that information with others who are wishing to do the same and, like me, are still stuck in the urban setting- dreaming about an off-grid 20 plus acre farm of their own someday. There are so many things you can do to begin growing your own food even if you live in an apartment or rent a room in someone's home. In this article, I am going to lay out for you what in my opinion are the 11 best starter plants when you begin to grow your own food. I chose these because they are all prolific producers that will not only encourage you to grow your own food more but they will also help lighten your grocery bill. All have also done well in pots for me as well as in the ground which is why I chose them. Among the many hard lessons 2020 taught us, learning that we cannot rely on the grocery stores always being stocked have brought many people to the gardening world. More people than ever now are interested in growing their own food! It is so exciting to see so many people interested in it like never before. These 11 plants that I will list will definitely be a great start even if you choose to only do a couple of them. If you have space to do more, but don't like one of the ones listed, you could always consider growing it and trading it with someone who may be growing something you do like, or bringing it to a food pantry to help a family in need. I will also be doing a separate article for each of these giving some tips and advice that I have found along the way that really helped me to grow and harvest even more from each variety. I will also explain how to grow each in small containers as well, that has worked for me in the past. I also still highly encourage that you also continue your research for tips because there are many highly talented gardeners out there with much more experience and tips than me.

11 Best Starter Plants to Grow Your Own Food

1. Salad greens- harvest as baby greens and being eating salad in as little as 4 weeks after planting the seeds!

2. Tomatoes- Especially cherry tomatoes in the beginning, tomatoes are so versatile and can provide for many different types of meals from salads, to sauces to salsa and they even make for a great snack! I will share recipes in a later article.

3. Basil- great for seasoning and also a great addition to salad, I love to grow the 'Lettuce Leaf Basil' from Baker Creek (rareseeds.com). It tastes like your regular basil but grows in big lettuce style leaves that make adding it to a salad super simple!

4. Sweet Banana Peppers- These peppers are small, but they grow so abundantly that they are great raw with dip or chopped up in salad, or cooked like bell peppers.

5. Radish- These are great because they grow so fast, in about 21 days after planting the seed you will harvest them. They are great for salads and coleslaw but they are really good cooked, you can roast them or stir fry them and they get a great taste. Each seed you plant provides one radish.

6. Sorrel- This is a great green for salads, and if you have never heard of Sorrel, do some research on its amazing health benefits! It can be cooked like spinach or even used as a seasoning. I like using the 'Green De Belleville' variety sold by Baker Creek (rareseeds.com), it has a slight lemon flavor to it and tastes amazing chopped up as a seasoning over roasted potatoes with a little pepper and oil! I also like that its lemon flavor adds flavor to a salad and you can get away without putting dressing for even less calories on your salad!

7. Eggplant- Very prolific, and very large, one or 2 turned into Eggplant Parmesan can feed a family of four and have left overs. I was harvesting 6 to 10 per week off of one plant!

8. Luffa- I added this one on here because it is so productive and if you pick the fruit while it is still young, 4 inches or smaller, it is also known as Chinese Okra, but cooked it tastes like Zucchini. You can let it grow to full size, any where from 12 to 18 inches long, dry it out and have a home grown luffa body scrub! But one vine of this and you will get hundreds of fruit and it provides flowers that pollinators find very attractive.

9. Cucumber- another very productive plant with attractive flowers. Cucumbers are another multi versatile food as well. They make great snacks and great in salads and sandwiches. They're also high in b vitamins as well so they make a great replacement for carb filled sugary energy drinks. They have a high water content when eaten as they are but also are great for juicing.

10. Kohlrabi- This is a root vegetable so you do only get one per seed you plant. However, it is a really easy plant to grow and can be mostly left alone and still provide food. A lot of people like to shred it and make coleslaw, but I really like to cut it up and roast it with butter or oil, salt and pepper, it tastes similar to a potato but much lighter.

11. Peas- Peas are a great option, great for cooking or eating raw. The more you pick the more the plant wants to give you. I like doing the bush varieties but they do only have a determinant amount of fruit they give off so if you are looking for something year round there are varieties for that as well. I like to do the determinant kind because then it gives me a chance to try out different types of peas or beans in its spot since I am limited on space.

These are what worked the best for me when I was first learning. This combination seemed to provide me with the most food and enough food variety that I didn't get bored as easy and wander into the grocery store. While it did not completely stop my need to go into the grocery store, it certainly got me by while we were all on lock-down earlier in 2020. It is a great learning experience as well. You will undoubtedly kill one or two plants,(or all, I have done it) you just have to keep trying until you find what works best for you and for your area. “There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”-Janet Kilburn Phillips.