There are many, many things we want to grow and have thought about growing in our garden…so we figured we’d start of list of everything we have and want to have, making notes about where it can be grown, if we’ll need to have space for it in the greenhouse and other growing tips we’ve come across. We’ve also added a lot of links to Farm & Garden, a fabulous website with lots of information about planting, harvesting and growing veggies, herbs and more.

• Beans – vine, will climb up corn plants
  • Pinto beans – we’ve started our crop of pinto beans already and they’re doing pretty well so far. After just a few days we’ve got the first signs of life…which is a very good thing since we love refried beans in our tacos and they are not as easy to come by here in Germany.
  • Green beans, Snow peas? – we’re not 100% sold on whether we’ll be growing green beans or snap peas or what…but we’ll keep browsing the seed aisle for things that really interest us
• Bell peppers – Bell peppers love heat so I guess that means they’ll be taking up space in the greenhouse as well. This isn’t an absolute must but it would be nice to have a couple of plants.
• Celery – celery is sounding like it might do well in somewhat shady conditions or where it can at least get partial sun during the day. I’m also encouraged to see a 2-3 month storage rate if we do it right.
• Cucumbers – we’ll be using trellises or something similar to grow the cucumbers on. Cucumbers grown on trellises tend to produce 2-3 times more cucumbers and they also tend to produce healthier fruits. They also recommend planting lettuces or other greens under the trellis in the shade provided by the growing vines.
• Corn – we love fresh corn so we’ve made a small space outside the main raised beds for the corn. This will give it ample room to grow, allow us to use the space for something else that they would take up and prevents them from shading out something else. Right now we’re growing a jumbo corn (partially just for fun – the ears can get up to 45 cm!) and sweet corn. Most of our corn plants are doing extremely well right now and it won’t be long before our jumbo corn starts busting out of the 1 liter pots we have it in now.
• Eggplant – We might have to do these in the greenhouse since they need warm temps to really do well. They can be staked but need some room so this one could be interesting. But so far we seem to have more than enough space still.
• Lettuce /Radishes – again, we’ve read this is a good pairing to maximize space but we’re not huge radish fans either so we’ll see how this turns out. At the moment we’re just focusing on the lettuce but I’ve read you can also place it at the bottom of corn and beans so that may be an alternative. After our falling out with the slugs and our first batch of lettuce, I think we’ll be waiting a while longer before we start more plants. Unfortunately the seeds were were trying are also not doing so well…
  • Lollo Rossa
  • Lollo Biando
  • Iceberg
  • Lamb’s Lettuce (Feldsalat in German) – It’s very easy to grow from seed too. The flavor is enhanced by frost, like other dark greens such as komatsuna, so it’s best to sow this in late fall/autumn and enjoy them in the early spring.
  • Raddiccio
• Okra –
• Onions –
• Pumpkins –
• Spinach / Carrots – these two can be staggered so we figured we might give it a try. We don’t each much spinach but we could so this will be an interesting trial.
  • Spinach
  • Carrots – there is nothing better than fresh, homegrown carrots. We love having buffalo wing nights so these will be great with our fresh celery 😉
• Squash – we’re still considering whether we want to try some yellow squash or not. Perhaps we’ll give that one until next year and just focus on the zucchini for now.
• Sweet potatoes – this would be a great one for us to be able to grow since we love sweet potatoes and they are not so prevalent here…but we’ll see how it goes and what we end up having space for.
• Tomatoes – we’re growing tons of different types of tomatoes. More is better in our opinion, especially since we want to start having enough for our own marinara sauce among other things.
• Zucchini

• Peanuts – so far these are doing really well and they recommend them to school kids to try growing so it would seem we should have no trouble with them