Top Crops

Time to grow your own fresh and delicious spring vegies.

Spring’s warming weather is the perfect opportunity to grow a tasty new range of seasonal vegies. When you’ve got home-grown ingredients on hand, you’ll have a healthier diet and save money at the supermarket. Plus, there are no food miles or packaging —gardening with benefits! Here are top five crops to grow.

Before you start

Before sowing or planting in your vegie patch or pots, enrich soil with compost or organic soil improver, or use a premium potting mix. This will give your plants a great start.

Tomatoes

From bite-sized cherry tomatoes to large and hearty beefsteak varieties, there’s a tomato to suit every taste and garden space. Tomato seed can be sown direct where you want the plants to grow or you can raise seedlings in trays or punnets until they're ready for planting. Alternatively, buy seedlings or semi-mature plants from your local garden centre. Only plant out tomatoes once the chance of frost has passed. Keep your tomato plants well-watered and fed (look for specialised tomato fertilisers) and pick the fruit when they’re at their sweetest and sun-ripened best. Watch for caterpillars and protect from fruit fly.

Zucchini

A versatile kitchen staple, zucchini is a fast-growing and productive vegie that will have you enjoying home-grown in a matter of weeks. Zucchini’s big seeds are easy to handle and sow directly into a sunny vegie patch. The bright yellow flowers need to be pollinated by bees (or you can try hand pollinating). Most varieties of zucchinis should be picked when they’re about 15cm long, while they’re still tender. Don’t turn your back on developing fruit, as they can become huge (and much tougher) seemingly overnight.

Herbs & leafy greens

Lettuces, rocket, spring onions, silverbeet and basil can be planted in spring, in pots or in the vegie patch. They’re all easy to grow from seed or seedlings, sown or planted directly into soil or potting mix. The key to promoting fast and tender growth is plenty of moisture and regular feeding. Monitor for pests like aphids, caterpillars and snails. Start picking individual leaves or stems from when the plants are still quite young.

Cucumber

Grown as a climbing plant, cucumbers are a real space saver. Sow seed or plant seedlings next to a 1.5m tall trellis or tripod in a sunny position. Gently tie young plants to the support until tendrils develop and they climb themselves. Keep the plants well-watered (to avoid bitterfruit) and feed each week with a liquid plant food to encourage healthy growth and lots of cukes. Varieties like ‘Lebanese’ should be picked when the fruitis around 10cm long.

Beans

Beans need warm soil to germinate, so are an ideal spring vegie. Beans do best when grown from seed, sown direct where you want the plants to grow, in pots or the vegie patch. Climbing beans will need a wire frame or trellis to grow up, dwarf beans can grow without support. Taking around 10 weeks from sowing to harvest, pick beans regularly to promote a longer season.