Planning A Vegetable Garden In New England

Garden Vegetables

I just finished building our raised bed vegetable gardens for the coming growing season. So we’ve started trying to plan what vegetables we’ll be growing in the new gardens this summer. My wife and I have a pretty good list going and our 4 yr old son thinks we should grow every vegetable known to man!

Plant Selection

We’ve pretty much settled on the following list of vegetables for our garden:

• Tomatoes – We bought 3 varieties this weekend which we’ll keep in the window in the garage will the threat of frost passes. I try to buy a small grape tomato, an early tomato and a larger steak type variety.
• Green Beans – We eat lots of green beans in this house so these are a must.
• Onions – Sweet onions are a cooking staple for us so we’ll definitely use these when they are ready to harvest.
• Zucchini – We love to grill zucchini and also roast it in the oven. Zucchini is one of the easiest vegetables to grow and just two plants are more than enough for even the hungriest family.
• Cucumbers – As far as I’m concerned you can never have enough cucumbers for great fresh salads.
• Herbs – We’ll probably also grow some basil, cilantro and oregano.

When To Plant Seeds / Seedlings

Here in New England it’s really not safe to plant your vegetables until after Memorial Day. The risk of frost and cold soil temperatures makes it hard to grow your plants much sooner. We typically buy tomato plants that are 6 to 8 inches tall (seedlings) so they already have a good leg up on the growing season.

This spring has been warmer than most so we’ll probably start planting some of our seeds around the second week of May this year. I’ll hold off on the tomato plant seedlings until the end of May just to be safe.