The Top 10 Things You Must Grow in Your Garden

These are my garden favorites.  If you live on the Texas Gulf Coast and have limited space, consider growing these:

#1  Green onions, also known as walking onions.  These will grow all year long, will survive drought, heat, and cold.  I planted mine 6 years ago, and they are still producing.  You will never buy green onions again.

#2  Tomatoes.  Duh.  The difference between a home grown tomato and a grocery store tomato is the difference between an aged Bordeaux and Boone's Farm Wine.  Choose varieties that do well in our area - Celebrity is a good performer, Big Boy and Better Boy get good reviews.  I like Yellow Pear (they look like small yellow pears) for the color and shape on the plate.  I recommend staying away from "heirloom" varieties.  They tend to be poor performers.  A great place to get a grand variety of tomatoes and lots of advice is the Urban Harvest Farmer's Market in midtown on Saturdays.  The key to great tomatoes is great supportive cages.

#3  Arugula  Like tomatoes, the difference in the way this green tastes out of the garden and how it comes in a bag at the store is huge.  Out of the garden it is nutty and spicy.  You can plant the seeds in a row and be harvesting baby greens in mere weeks.  A month later plant another row.  You can have fresh arugula all year.   I don't even bother to thin the plants, and they still thrive.  

#4 Sugar Snap Peas  I have never managed to harvest enough of these to turn into a meal because my kids snap them off in the garden and pop them into their mouths while they are playing outside.  That, to me, is garden magic.

Sugar snap peas on the vine.  

#5 Lettuce mix  I plant this the way I plant the arugula, I sow a row and let them come up, and clip the leaves as I need them.  I plant a variety of leafy lettuces - red, green, chicory, etc.  These get planted in October and have fresh salad all winter long.  

#6 Brocolli Raab  I plant this leafy green because it is so delicious and not easy to find in our local markets.  I love the bitter green flavor sauteed with garlic and a little kosher salt.  Plant in October.

#7  Basil  I have planted basil in the Spring ever since I first started gardening, and it always thrives.  Hubby and I both love it.  The first year I was clearing an area for our garden, and I showed Hubby the 4 ft X 4ft area reserved for basil and Hubby's comment was:  "That's not enough."  It was plenty, and at the end of the summer when the basil was going to seed we invited friends to bring pesto ingredients (we supplied all the basil) and had a pesto party.  We made dozens of jars and sent everyone home with pesto to enjoy and freeze (it freezes well!)  We had garden pesto well into the winter.

#8 Lemon Balm  This, in my opinion, is an underused herb.  Here on the Coast, it will thrive in all seasons and even survived the drought.  In the dead of winter it is still green and growing.  It is in the mint family but with a distinct bright lemon flavor.  I use it in muffins, tea, lemonade, salads, pasta, chicken salad, mojitos, and more.  

#9 Squash  My kids and husband will eat it, I have lots of recipes for it, it grows well here, and you can grate it, put it in a baggie in the freezer and use it in zucchini bread (the kids will never know!)  There are all sorts of interesting varieties - patty pan squashes that are shaped like UFOs, eight balls, which are green and round, calabaza, which get HUGE if you let them grow, although they get too tough to work with.  Plant a variety!

#10 Sweet Peas   I believe in nurturing the body as well as the soul, and for me the scent of Sweet Pea blossoms is intoxicating.  They are so pretty in vases all through the house, filling our home with their aroma, and last a good while as cut flowers.  Plant them early, like October, and they will be sure to reward you with armloads of colorful blooms.

What about you?  What are your garden must-grows?