5 Best Plants To Grow For Food As A New Gardener
Hey friends! Are you inspired to start gardening in 2025 but don’t know where to start? Never fear! In this blog I am talking about the 5 Best Plants To Grow For Food As A New Gardener. You’ll find on this list the top 5 plants I would be starting in my garden if I was a complete newbie to gardening!
Am I too late? If you’re wanting to plant a flourishing garden and it’s still winter temperatures outside, you are reading this article just in time! Most of these plants need to be planted as young plants or roots after the last frost date. So you do not need to wait until next year to start your dream garden! Additionally, 3 of these crops can actually be planted in the fall. So really, you’re almost never too late to start gardening!
I have been gardening a bit my whole life, although my husband and I didn’t start passionately gardening until we started renting the home we live in now. We’ve lived at our current home the last 6 years. Each year, we have expanded our knowledge, garden, and experimented with planting new varieties of plants for food. These 5 plants have risen to the top of my favorites list for multiple reasons which is why they made it on this list!
The Top 5 Best Plants To Grow For For Food List:
- Asparagus
- Garlic
- Rhubarb
- Strawberries
- Swiss Chard
Why I Chose These Plants:
- Easy To Grow: In my experience, these are the most foolproof plants to grow. As long as you have good soil, really they’re plant-it-and-forget-it plants which is what I love about them! Additionally, most of these plants are planted in root or crown form, which in my experience makes them more hearty than seeds.
- Low Maintenance: Aside from light weeding (which isn’t even always required) all of these plants are extremely low maintenance. From my own garden, these plants have thrived through cool temps, drought, neglect, pests, and chickens scratching around them constantly. These plants are also more resistant to common garden issues like pests and powdery mildew.
- Differing Harvest Times: It can be easy to get overwhelmed with a garden when everything ripens at once! These 5 plants vary in harvesting time which not only allows for a bounty of fresh garden fruits and vegetables spread out from early spring to early winter, but they also avoid the overwhelm that comes with multiple things needing to be harvested at the same time. We plant a huge vegetable garden to avoid buying from the grocery store as much as possible and we have found one of the best ways to do that is to plant crops that are spread as far across the growing season as possible.
- Perennials & Annuals: These 5 plants are a variety of perennial and annual plants.
- Climate Friendly: These plants are generally very hardy and able to grow across multiple different climates. A few are cool-season crops that even grow into the winter months!
- Pest Resistant: all of the plants I am listing are pest resistant crops. Which make them awesome choices for a low-maintenance garden!
Annual VS Perennial Plants:
An Annual plant is a plant that grows from seed, blooms, grows seeds, and dies all in one year. A Perennial is a plant that lives for more than one growing season. I love perennial plants because you plant them once, and can harvest food for years! Although some annual plants did make this list too, because they are just so easy to grow.
1. Asparagus:
Asparagus is the first plant on the 5 Best Plants To Grow For Food As A New Gardener list for a few reasons. Partially because I am listing these plants in alphabetical order, but also because asparagus is truly a remarkable plant! It is one of the best vegetables for an early spring harvest.
Asparagus is an early spring plant that is slow to mature (3 to 5 years) but within that time you’ll have an abundant harvest that can last for the next 15 years! Every spring the new asparagus shoots emerge providing a fresh harvest of food for over a month!
You usually plant asparagus in the early spring (Burpee seeds recommends planting in April) from roots or crowns. We have had a great harvest the last few years with a variety from Burpee Seeds . We have also gotten crowns from other retailers which are steadily growing as well. For best results, the first year, you do not harvest at all. For the second year, you can harvest sparingly, and for the third year you can harvest most of the growing season.
Asparagus:
- Perennial (will grow for 15+ years)
- A great companion plant
- Easy to plant
- Easy to harvest
- Often the first spring plant to produce food
- Easy to maintain – little to no weeding required
- Full of nutrients and versatile to cook with
- Abundant grower
- Great to Freeze
- Pest Resistant
- Low maintenance
2. Garlic:
Garlic is one plant I had held off on trying to plant, and boy have I regretted it!
One of the simplest plants to grow and harvest. One unique feature about garlic that I love, is that you plant it in the fall! Fall is a great time to plant any crop you can because it is usually less busy than spring season planting and also a good time as far as weather is concerned. Since we are in WI, I plant hard-neck garlic varieties because they are most cold-hardy. Often In warmer climates, people grow soft neck garlic because it holds a longer shelf life.
Planting garlic is so easy. Sow the garlic bulb directly into moist soil sprout-side-up at the end of October / early November and the rest of the growing season it is basically left alone until harvest in early to mid July. For hard neck varieties, you can cut off the bloom shoot (or garlic scape) in the spring to encourage larger bulb growth.
Garlic:
- Easy to plant and harvest
- Easy to preserve (dehydrate and powder or dry and braid)
- Nutritious and medicinal
- Pest deterrent
- Good Companion plant
- Mid to late summer harvest
- Abundant grower: one bulb per clove planted
- Little to no maintenance
3. Rhubarb:
It took me awhile to appreciate rhubarb. Truthfully, I am not a sour person. But, I have come to appreciate rhubarb for its many great qualities and have learned to enjoy its full flavor. Rhubarb is one of the earliest spring plants to harvest, rhubarb has a crisp bite, is tangy, and can be made into a variety of dishes.
Much like asparagus, rhubarb is planted in bare root or crown form. Interestingly, rhubarb can (and actually should be ) split from a mother plant and grown somewhere else. A flourishing plant will thrive for 10 or more years! Rhubarb is a very low fuss crop and doesn’t take very much space. It does fine with dry summers, and actually thrives in well-drained soil. For a head start, plant your rhubarb in the fall and you will have a harvest by spring!
Rhubarb:
- Perennial (will grow for 10+ years)
- Easy to plant (in late fall or early spring) and harvest
- Great to freeze
- Long growing season
- Pest resistant
- Drought resistant
- Full of nutrients (except for the leaves which are toxic to humans)
- Versatile for sweet or savory cooking (I love it in pie or stir-fry!)
- Little to no weeding
- Low maintenance
4. Strawberries:
One of my favorite plants to grow and to eat!
Strawberries are hardy perennials that do well in cooler areas and produce abundantly for up to 3 years. Truthfully, strawberries are a little higher maintenance if you want an abundant harvest every year, but overall they are a very low fuss plant.
Strawberries are planted in bare root form. At the end of the season, they send out shoots which spread roots and grow into more strawberry plants! The strawberry shoots can be cut and planted into soil directly or you can leave them until they grow root ,then thin them out and replant them elsewhere in spring or early fall. The mother crown of the plant, will produce well for up to 3 years. After 3 years, you can uproot and discard the original plant. Since the plant has been growing new shoots every year, you’ll still have producing strawberry plants! The main issue is crowding, the best thing you can do for your strawberry patch is transplant or discard shoots if possible.
Money Maker: I sell hundreds of root starts every spring locally and make some great money doing it!
Short fruiting season: Unless you plant everbearing strawberries which produce fruit multiple times per year, strawberries do have a shorter growing season.
Strawberries:
- Perennial ( and reproduce new plants)
- Easy to plant and harvest
- Pest resistant
- Cold resistant
- Delicious and nutritious
- Harvest early spring (and also summer if you get an everbearing variety)
- Good companion plant
5. Swiss Chard:
I love any dark, leafy green plant. But swiss chard is my favorite! Not only is is beautiful (especially rainbow swiss chard) and it’s so healthy to eat, low maintenance, and easy to grow!
Swiss chard is grown from seed in early spring and harvested from late spring to early winter. It is very cold hardy (I’ve had chard live into late winter here in WI!), and also drought resistant, chard does however love full sun. If you love leafy greens, but not all of the bugs that come with them chard is the right plant for you! It is very pest resistant, even my chickens and ducks leave it alone! Both the leaves and stems are edible, full of vitamins and nutrients, and amazing in soups, stews, and stir fry.
Swiss Chard:
- Easy to plant and grow
- Pest resistant
- Abundant harvest from early summer to early winter
- Drought resistant
- Low maintenance
- Nutritious and versatile to cook with
- Good for small spaces
- Preserve by blanching and freezing to add to soups or dehydrate and grind into super greens powder to add to soups, stews, or smoothies!
Conclusion:
Whether you’re a an experienced plant enthusiast, or new gardeners wanting some foolproof plants to grow in your garden. I hope this list inspires you to try these low fuss crops in your own vegetable garden and enjoy an abundant harvest.
Did one of your favorite plants make this list?
Let me know in the comments down below!
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