Top 10 home-grown edibles

Add fresh flavours to your meals with beautiful and easy-to-grow container crops.

Updated:: 2009-10-18 19:57

Published:: 2006-06-19 00:00

By: Kat Tancock

Top eats 1-5

You don't need a big backyard to grow your own fresh produce -- in fact, you don't need a yard at all. Just about anything can be grown in a pot on your deck or porch. For advice on what to plant, we asked pro gardeners Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey, authors of edible-container-gardening bible The Bountiful Container. Here are their top picks -- foods that are easy to grow, pleasing to look at and miles ahead of their grocery-store counterparts in taste.

1. Tomatoes
McGee recommends tomatoes because they're such a popular food item, and "a nice crop of vine-ripened tomatoes brings such joy to gardeners." For standard varieties, use as large a container as you can -- even a garbage can. Or try Tumbler tomatoes, recommended by Stuckey, which are "specially developed for hanging containers, with an extra-strong joint where the branches come off the main stem, so that they don't break off when heavy with fruit." (Try making fresh tomato salsa with what you grow.)

2. Eggplant
Eggplant prefers warmer soil, and is thus well suited for containers -- in fact, McGee finds that it grows better in pots than in the ground. "The plants just pump out the fruits even in a medium-sized pot," she says. "They are very attractive with their contrasting flowers and purple fruits." Stuckey suggests growing Japanese eggplant: "The fruits are very handsome, the perfect size for grilling, and you get a lot of produce from just one plant."

3. Swiss chard
Stuckey chooses Swiss chard "because it doesn't faint in hot weather, is extremely nutritious, and is super good-looking, especially the Bright Lights cultivar." McGee also loves this variety of chard with stems of different bright colours, such as pink and yellow, adding, "the colour and ability of the plants to withstand multiple cuttings makes this a winner."

4. Mesclun and lettuce blends
Salad greens are one of the easiest things to grow in containers. "The salad blends that contain greens other than lettuce (such as mustards, kale, mizuna or other Asian greens) will handle warm weather more easily," says Stuckey, "and most can be harvested in cut-and-come-again fashion, so you get just enough for tonight's salad, and tomorrow there's more." McGee adds that when picking, you should "cut these off about an inch above the soil line and keep harvesting. When they slow down, resow -- most packets have lots of seed and you can keep planting."

5. Basil
Stuckey loves to grow basil "because there are so many wonderful cultivars, it's so delicious, and you get to feel so clever not having to pay a fortune in the market." McGee agrees -- she has a 14-inch-diameter container this year planted with five kinds of basil: Aussie Sweetie, Genovese, Large Green, Sweet Dani Lemon Basil, and Siam Queen Thai Basil, a purple variety. "It's important to start harvesting when plants are young so they don't just go to seed," she notes.

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Popular plants 6-10

6. Peppers
Peppers are ideal for container growing -- not only do they prefer the warmer soil, but they actually produce more fruit when potbound. Stuckey recommends small-fruited peppers, rather than the larger bell peppers you see in the store. "Choose from the dozens of sweet or hot varieties," she says, "all with great container traits: lots of produce from small-space plants, not too fussy, decorative as well as edible."

7. Chives
Stuckey loves chives because "they're versatile, easy, reliable, and the flowers are so darned cute." Other pluses: they're tastiest when fresh-picked, you can pick only what you need (and not have to throw out what you don't use, like when you buy chives at the store), and they'll even come back next year, making them a bargain. (Try adding your fresh chives to chilled tomato soup.)

8. Nasturtiums
Edible flowers are a fantastic addition to your container garden -- just make sure to grow from seed or buy organic as you never know what growers will spray on plants that they haven't necessarily intended to be eaten. "I add flowers to salads," says McGee, "and roll tidbits in leaves, and they jazz up a garden with their wondrous array of colours. They're great as a specimen container, or tuck in a few seeds along the edge of other planters and they'll cascade over the side."

9. Pansies and violas
These are other flowers you can use for garnish, recommended by Stuckey, because "they're edible, pretty, compact, and give us a surge of colour early in the season when we're sick and tired of gloomy weather."

10. Cucumbers
McGee suggests selecting a variety with the characteristics you like, paying attention to the plant's needs: "Unless the description says it's a bush variety," she says, "they produce vines that need to be supported. They can look quite handsome growing on a trellis. Growing your own means you are picking at peak condition and fresh cucumbers, harvested before they develop seeds, are a gardener's treat."

In many ways, container gardening is even easier than growing in the ground. There are less insect pests, almost no weeds, and it's easier to get to the herb patch quickly when you're cooking dinner. One thing McGee adds is that you will need to fertilize and keep up with the watering: "All container plants are dependent on the gardener for nutrients and regular watering," she says, "and we get much better results from well-fed plants." Which means you'll eat better, too.

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