Garden 1
Tomatoes
Peppers
Carrots
Green beans
Black beans
Red beans
Celery
Cucumbers
Midget melon
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Sweet potatoes
Peas
Luffa gourds- They can get a bit trickier depending on your use for them. I grow Luffa for the sponge like material on the inside. The best way to get this sponge is to let the gourds dry on the vine. Unfortunately, in zone 5, we do not have a long enough growing season to let them dry. I will be planting them in my greenhouse next year to try and give them a longer season. You can harvest the gourd when it’s still green and get the sponge but it is a longer process.
Garden 2
Pumpkins
Watermelon
Cantaloupe
Potatoes
Squash
Zucchini
Sunflowers
Barley
Sugar beets
What about corn?? I grow popcorn, sweet corn, and flint corn. Flint corn is simply corn you grind for flour. The trick with corn is you can’t plant it all in the same patch, they will cross pollinate and ruin all the varieties. I usually plant popcorn in one garden, sweet corn in the other garden, and find a place as far away as possible or on the other side of a tall building to plant the other corn. It doesn’t always work as we live near fields with corn in them as well, but we do our best to keep them from crossing.
There are plenty of other varieties of garden food you can grow as well.
Radishes
Beets
Parsnips
Turnips
Eggplant
Okra
I’m sure I am missing some!!
Why don’t I plant these?? Basically, I either don’t care for eating them or I am too scared to try them. Either way, there aren’t a lot of commonly consumed vegetables that can’t be grown even up here in zone 5. Oftentimes, if it has a longer season, you can start them earlier indoors and get that extra month or two of growth the plant needs before getting them planted out in your garden.