Adults and children can have fun with these easy growing seeds and plants. I picked the most productive, fast-growing, and reliable ones.
Sunflowers - They are great companions for any rose garden or food plot. They are enormous bases for many insects and food for many critters. They like rich soil and plenty of mulch. They may not grow fast at first, but they explode in development later.
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| I buy plants where I can, because the rabbits and squirrels harvest seed and seedlings for themselves in our yard. Shasta Daisy only needs the flowers pruned now and again. |
Radishes - I have little desire to eat radishes, but the seeds are fun and convenient. They sprout so fast that they are used to mark rows of plants and break up hard soil in the process. They mature in a month but can be left to go to seed. Those seed pods are edible and milder than the roots. Later season buys for radishes will offer a lot of seed for relatively little. The same is true of many other seeds and plants.
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| Borage, like many herbs, grows easily. I like the mints as much as the pollinators do, but I only plant the clumping mints. |
Borage can come in tiny packets or 500 at a time. Shop and compare. They can be sown rather than planted. They love bright sunlight and improve the beneficial insect rating in the yard. The tiny flowers can be eaten directly or added to salads - pink and blue. They flower and seed so fast that new borage will start growing the same summer. Bees love the flower so much they are called Bee Bread.
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| How can anyone dislike dill? |
Dill seeds smell like dill pickles, for good reason. I like large numbers of Giant Dill to sow in the garden. A member of the carrot family, it attracts good insects without poisoning the gardener - an important factor in buying and using a member of that naughty clan.
Peas and Spinach are great for cold weather planting. Bored of shoveling snow? Plant peas and spinach as early as possible and listen to the neighbors marvel at your density. Both crops love the cold - just like lettuce - and hate the heat. I joined the lunatic fringe in planting spinach late in Minnesota, covering the tiny plants with autumn leaves, and uncovering them as soon as the ice began to melt in the Spring. They were lacking any insect damage, crunchy, simply perfect. That was one of the coldest winters ever in New Ulm. Peas can be planted in the very early Spring, as soon as the seeds can be pushed into the ground. They are shallow-rooted, so it is easy to push them into the ground. I read of one fanatic who drilled the holes in the frozen soil, and that worked too.
Vines are a lot of fun, but they normally take time - years to produce. Zucchini vine plants are easy to obtain at Walmart or a gardening center. Plant a few near a chain-link fence - instant vines with produce. Warty gourds are just as fun.
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| The squirrel used the bird swing to reach the sunflower seeds. The birdbaths below are used each day and cleaned. The Butterfly Bushes, Poke, Chaste Tree, Gooseberry, Clethra, and Helianthus have grown up since then. |
