Easy-to-grow vegetables and fruits for a low-maintenance garden

When planning a low-maintenance edible garden, use raised beds and pots (except for growing raspberries). They’ll help you keep your garden’s joy-to-maintenance ratio high.

1. Lettuces
   
   Lettuces are tastier when you grow them instead of buy them from the store. They grow over a long season, so you can get four, five, six crops and then re-seed. They’re beautiful.
2. Strawberries
   I trim a lot of the beds and raised troughs with strawberries because they hang down the side and they’re beautiful. I use day-neutral strawberry plants, so they don’t just crop in June; you can still pick them into September and October.
3. Raspberries
   
   These berries aren’t beautiful but they’re delicious when eaten fresh. I grow them right down the center of a raised bed and keep them trimmed. Along the sides of the rasberries, I grow lavender. That helps keep the raspberry plants upright. The two plants grow at the same time and compete with one another. You can’t imagine how fabulous it is to go out on a September day that’s warm and smell that lavender and pick raspberries and eat them. It’s pretty amazing.
4. Artichokes
   
   They’re gorgeous plants — with that silver tooth foliage — and there are those Italian purple globe artichokes that are fairly small and tidy plants. Use them decoratively and for structure and height in beds and then you also get artichokes to eat.
5. Carrots
   I love to grow carrots because of their beautiful feathery tops. When planting, you can really crowd them in; you just need to give them a nice deep root run. And you can grow them in different colors.
6. Greens
   
   My favorites are chard and kale.
7. Tomatoes
   It’s always a challenge to grow and ripen tomatoes here in the Northwest, but I’m up for it. I grow tomatoes that are determinant — so the plants stay smaller -– and I grow them in pots in the warmest spot in the garden, up against the wall. I want them to get absolutely as much sun as possible.
8. Herbs
   Lemon verbena, perennials like mint, which I grow in a pot because it’s so invasive, as well as parsley and oregano and tarragon and thyme. Oh, and chives! I have a whole little hedge of chives that I cook with all the time.
9. I WON’T be growing broccoli and cauliflower
   They require too much room in the garden and take a long time to mature. Besides, the broccoli and cauliflower you buy from the farmer’s market are delicious!