Sometimes you just really want the veggies you grow in your garden to “mean something”. Lettuce and other leafy greens are great, but if you really want your garden produce to mean something to your food supply then you should choose these 5 High Yield Garden Vegetables.
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There are literally hundreds of vegetables that you can grow in your garden, but many of them, though tasty, really don’t have a lot of bulk. So the space you use to grow them really doesn’t produce very much real food value for your family. But some crops really pack a punch, both nutritionally and in sheer bulk. Plant these 5 High Yield Garden Vegetables to provide the most food from your small backyard garden.
5 High Yield Garden Vegetables
Potatoes
Packed with nutrition and calories, potatoes are the best high yield garden vegetables you can plant. If you are really concerned about growing the most food you can for your family then potatoes need to be a big part of your garden! Many experts recommend that up to 30% of your garden space should be dedicated to growing potatoes.
Potatoes do take up a pretty good amount of space in your garden, but they will reward you with a great crop that, if stored properly, can last for 6 months or longer. If you put a little thought into the timing of your planting it is possible to start eating fresh garden potatoes in late spring. Succession plantings can take you through the summer. A late spring planting will be harvested in the fall and those can be placed in storage for the winter.
Tomatoes
Everyone’s favorite backyard garden crop is Tomatoes. Fortunately, tomatoes also make the list of High Yield Garden Vegetables.
Tomato plants can grow quite large and take up a lot of space in your garden. But when grown correctly those big plants will reward you with 100’s of pounds of tomatoes. Depending on the variety you grow, each plant could produce 75 pounds of tomatoes or more. If you are not careful you might find yourself drowning in those yummy garden goodies. Be sure to grow them with a tomato cage
or a trellis to keep the fruit off the ground.
The best thing about tomatoes is they are easily preserved. Tomatoes can be canned, frozen or dried. They can be made into soups, salsa, and sauces. Growing them is quite easy, you can learn more from my hour and a half long course on growing tomatoes on our sister site, The Online Gardening School.
Green Beans
Adding green beans to your family garden will give you another high yield garden vegetable that is easy to care for. The most productive variety of green beans to grow are pole beans. Pole beans require a trellis to grow well, but growing beans on a trellis has the added advantage of saving space in your garden. Any time you can raise a crop that grows up and not out you will have more room for other crops below!!
A 10-foot trellis covered with green beans will yield many pounds of beans which can be preserved by either canning or freezing. A trellis for green beans doesn’t need to be complicated, it can be a simple as some trellis netting
strung between 2 poles.
Squash
Both summer squash and winter squash are a great addition to your garden and both are a high yield garden vegetable! Summer squashes like Zucchini, Patty Pan and Yellow crook neck produce like crazy! Your summer menu will be filled with these goodies. The plants are large but very productive paying you back well for the space they take up. The only disadvantage of summer squashes is they are hard to preserve. They can be frozen or pickled, but those are really your only options for preservation.
Winter squash is an even bigger space commitment, plants like pumpkins, butternut, spaghetti, and acorns squash take up a lot of garden space. But the plants reward you with a heavy harvest of nutrient and calorie dense fruit. And the great thing about winter squashes is they can be stored without any processing at all. Simply store them somewhere with temperatures right around 50 degrees and they will last for several months!
Cucumbers
The last veggie on our list of high yield garden vegetables is cucumbers. Cucumbers provide a lot of harvest from a small space. Like beans, cucumbers should be grown on a trellis. Many years our short 6-foot row of cucumbers grown on this simple trellis will produce between 75 to 100 pounds of produce. That gives us plenty of cukes for fresh eating all summer and fall and also gives us a good supply to pickle and eat over the winter.
Choosing to plant these 5 high yield garden vegetables in your backyard garden will mean hundreds of pounds of fresh garden produce to feed your family all summer and into the winter months.
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These are very sustainable vegetables. I always like eating cucumbers since they are very healthy and it refreshes me whenever I eat some of them. I enjoyed reading the entire article. Kudos!