Description
With limited time, what are the best vegetables to grow?
The most time efficient vegetable is potato. Perhaps the most worthwhile is tomato.
How to manage space? - no dig saves much time, with beds of 1.2m or 75cm, paths of 40cm.
Weeds are the biggest time-waster. No dig helps massively and any cost of compost / organic matter is offset by higher output, and a reduction in time needed to weed.
Many vegetables grow in half a season so have a plan for a next one tp sow or transplant after each harvest. No dig makes second planting easier and quicker because there is no soil prepartation, no feeding or extra compost needed, and better moisture retention.
Examples include spinach or leeks after potatoes, carrots after lettuce, salad rocket after onions, broccoli or cauliflower after broad beans, Brussels sprouts or kale after carrots. Check out interplanting possibilities.
Brassicas can be difficult because of pest pressure, but overwintered kale, collards, broccoli & cabbage, plus early-spring planted cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kohlrabi are more likely to be successful.
Ease of Growing approx!!
1 potato, 2 lettuce, 3 tomato, 4 collards from August sowing 5 beetroot 6 onion & salad onion 7 chard 8 courgette, 9 broad beans, 10 cucumber, 11 corn, 12 carrots.
Filmed by Carly Dutton-EdwaArds 16th October 2026 at Homeacres no dig garden, Somerset, UK.
Music by Heidi Theaker.
Thumbnail by Carly, and Nicola Smith.
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00:00 Introduction
00:47 Potatoes, and ideas for succession plantings
01:33 Vertical growing - chilli plant
02:43 Tomatoes, some splitting
04:55 Beauty in the garden, and size of Small Garden
06:05 Clearing beds and adding compost mulch
06:18 Fennel and kohlrabi interplanted with cucumbers
07:15 Flea beetles
08:02 Brassicas for overwintering
08:51 Spring-sown kohlrabi and cabbage, followed by leeks - allium leaf miner damage
10:16 Strawberries, from runners
11:32 Followed by chard
12:41 Seed saving
13:02 Land cress which followed lettuce and French beans
14:06 Dahlias
15:29 Broad beans, good time to sow
17:30 Beetroot, Multisown - different varieties
19:03 Compost mulch, benefits
20:51 Fertile soil, few weeds
21:06 Salads which followed peas
21:38 Kale interplant - good to cover
22:09 Outro