We recently had some people over and they saw our garden for the first time. Their question — and everyone asks this question when they first see what we do — was “How did you get started on this?” Our garden takes up two and a half properties (ours, a neighbour’s, and a piece of another neighbour’s) with somewhere north of 50 different fruit, vegetables, and herbs, bringing in well over 1,000 pounds of food on an annual basis.

For us, it started as a row of squash and a row of potatoes, and once we had that mastered, it expanded rapidly from there. If you’re new to gardening and urban homesteading and not sure where to start, here are 5 easy crops for beginners, including some that work for extra small spaces like apartment balconies.

While these can all be grown from seed, some of these work better as seedlings bought from a greenhouse or garden store, especially if, like us, you don’t have room or experience in seed starting indoors.

1. Potatoes

This is what started us on this homesteading journey. What I enjoy about potatoes is that when properly taken care of, and that process isn’t too difficult, potatoes are a pretty consistent crop.

We use starter potatoes with eyes — either store-bought or the neglected potatoes in the back of our pantry. If your seed potatoes have a lot of eyes on them, you can cut them into smaller pieces where each piece has 2-3 eyes, and allow the pieces to callous for a few days. If you plant them directly after cutting they may rot in the ground.

To plant, be sure your potato bed has a lot of bulky soil around it. Make a dish in the soil about 4 inches deep. In the middle, dig a hole 8 inches deep, and place the potato or potato piece in the hole so that the eyes are up and the cut side is down. This is called the mother potato, because as it grows, it will rot and the new potatoes will form around it. Cover the hole with dirt, but keep the 4-inch dish in tact, and water daily so this dish is full.

You really have to soak potatoes in the beginning. For the first week, fill the bowl a few times until the water does not sink into the soil in under 1 minute. Once you see green leaves coming up, you can reduce watering to once every 2 days. This allows the potato plant to grow better roots, as the roots will reach out further in search of water, delivering more water to the plant and letting it grow more leaves and flowers. Potatoes plants put their energy into the potato to survive the winter and regrow in spring, so the more leaves and flowers, the bigger and more numerous will be your potato harvest!

We like to put a stake with the potatoes right away, because when the plant grows, we loosely tie the plant to the stake. We’ve found over the years that if we don’t tie them, a windy storm could blow the plant over and then it stops growing and slowly dies — though, that said, the potato is fine and can be harvested. However, if the plant is tied and doesn’t blow over, the plant will keep growing and potatoes will grow larger and more plentiful.

When you see about 2 feet worth of foliage coming up, heap the extra soil over into the 4 inch dish. You can pull other adjacent soil up to form a hill. The hill will ensure maturing potatoes are covered. If they get exposed to the sun, they will turn green, which is toxic for consumption.

One other reason we like to stake our potatoes is, when you pull the potato plants into hills, the stake reminds you where the centre of the plants—and most of the roots—are. This makes it easier for watering.

When you see flowers forming, this means the potatoes are growing underground. When potatoes are done flowering, usually they will fall over and die. One year, however, due to staking the potatoes, we ended up having them flower twice, and the potatoes were huge—a few were nearly 24 ounces!

To harvest, wait until the plant starts to die and turn yellow. Then carefully dig up the potatoes and break off the plant if they’re still joined. Loosely brush off dirt. Let the potatoes sit in a cool, dark, humid place for a few weeks for the skin to harden. Then potatoes can be stored in a cool, dark, dry place for upwards of six months before they start to go soften and sprout. If you’d like to explore other options, you can pressure can potatoes.

If you’re wanting to replant potatoes the following year, collect egg-sized potatoes in a paper bag and keep them in the fridge over winter. In late April, take them out on a tray and keep them moist with a mist spray bottle. The eyes will develop just in time for planting.

2. Squash

Along with potatoes, squash was a key crop in the beginning of our homesteading journey and it’s been a constant in the garden ever since. We now grow acorn, butternut, pumpkin, and spaghetti squash, but in the past we’ve done zucchini and kobocha.

Squash can be very showy in the garden because it can very large and feature large, brightly coloured flowers. We typically plant our squash in the front yard and weave through the spaces around the fruit bushes, or at the edge of our back garden where there’s a bit of dead space for it to expand into.

We plant squash seeds directly into the ground, but we’ve seen squash seedlings at the garden store, which can be great if you’re starting a little late or if you don’t have the greatest luck with planting seeds. Squash requires a lot of water. Despite what you might think, you only have to water at the base. I used to at least sprinkle the leaves a bit, thinking they needed moisture, but they don’t.

You can save yourself a lot of hassle if you make a sizeable mound of soil, about 1-2 feet across, and then flatten the top into a bowl about 8-12 inches deep. Plant the squash along the outside of this bowl, about 1-2 inches from the top. When watering squash through the year, you just fill this bowl to the top. This way, as the squash sprawls — and it may spread out 20-40 feet, or more, in several directions — you’ll always know where the roots of each squash are.

When it gets toward the end of the season and it’s damper and cooler at night, you might encounter a fungus that looks like white dusty splotches on the leaves. You can try and trim off the infected parts, but it unfortunately spreads rapidly. Sometimes we’ve had healthy squash come off of these vines and sometimes not. Putting some epsom salt in a spray bottle with water and spraying infected leaves may help prevent the fungus from spreading — however, this may be a folk remedy and have no basis in science, so feel free to take or leave that advice.

However, if you use the circular bowl setup, you’ll minimize how much of the plant is wet. The white fungus is a mold and thrives on moisture and cooler temperatures. You can’t avoid the morning dews, or overnight rains, that will give the mold its ideal growing conditions, but at least you can minimize the chances that it will spread.

Squash can be harvested at any time, by cutting them from the vine, leaving a few inches of stem attached to the squash. If you’re starting to get that fungus, it might be good to harvest all the squash on the affected vine and quickly dispose of the vine. We tend to leave our squash on as long as we can so they become bigger, however, this can lead to a less concentrated flavour. Squash stores well in a cool, dark, dry place for several months. We harvest in September and October and usually find they start going mouldy in February. To counter this, we peel, chop, and freeze the squash in January to minimize loss.

Here on the site I have recipes for pumpkin puree and pumpkin butter, if you’re looking for ideas.

3. Garlic

Garlic is one of my favourite crops to grow, mostly because it’s so darn easy.

Garlic can be planted in the fall or the spring. If you’re buying starter garlic from a garden store, look for hardneck garlic for fall planting, but either hardneck or softneck can be used for spring planting. You can also plant garlic from the grocery store—you’re better off planting in the spring in case it’s a variety that can’t withstand the winter, but we’ve always planted in the fall and they’ve always overwintered successfully.

Though you can plant garlic in the spring, it’s best planted in fall, provided the ground is dry and the weather is cool. If planting in the fall, cover the bed with about 1-2 feet of old plant foliage from harvest. We find squash vine and potato plants perfect for this. This covering acts as insulation in the spring. Garlic requires a good soaking to get started, so the winter snow piling up on the foliage will melt, soaking the garlic, while the insulation will protect the budding garlic from weather variations in pre-spring. When the weather has become more consistently warm overnight — usually about mid-May or so — you can pull back the foliage and free the new garlic shoots.

If you have a wet fall, or warm weather that carries on too close to the first snow, then planting in spring is fine. You don’t want to risk that the fall rains and above zero temperatures will sprout the garlic — then have it die over the winter. Just note that you really have to soak the garlic if planted in spring, or it may rot. Spring garlic will mature a few weeks later than fall garlic.

To plant garlic, break a bulb into individual cloves and leave the skins on. Plant vertically with the pointy end up, a couple inches into the ground, with each clove spaced about six inches apart. Water well. Garlic also works well in a pot if you’re in a small place or an apartment with a balcony or even just a sunny window.

When garlic comes up, if it’s hardneck garlic you should get a flower stem. This is known as a scape. Harvest the scape before the flower opens or else the garlic will stop growing. They can easily be cut or snapped off—and then grilled on the BBQ or chopped and added to roasted veggies. To preserve these you can pickle them, make jam, or even a hot sauce.

When the garlic plant is about 2/3 yellowed, usually in the last few weeks of July, and clearly in the stages of dying, it’s time to harvest. With a shovel or pitchfork, gently loosen the soil. Grasp the garlic plant stem near the base and pull up, loosening the soil more if it doesn’t come out easily.

Chop the plant off the garlic bulb and then let the garlic sit in a cool, dry place with plenty of ventilation to cure for long term storage, then store in a cool, dry, dark place. We’ve had garlic last upwards of a year before it starts to go bad, meaning you can keep enjoying your harvest until the next year’s harvest.

4. Peas

There are two types of peas to consider — peas where you eat the whole pod (like sugar snap peas or snow peas) and peas where you shell the peas and don’t eat the pod. We grow both here in our garden. We enjoy snap peas, so we grow them along our fence and harvest them throughout the summer for snacks. But we also grow shelling peas — while snap peas can be shelled and the peas frozen, the variety we have isn’t good for canning, so we grow Alaskan peas for shelling and canning as they hold up better to the canning process.

Peas work well both in a garden and on an apartment balcony or even in a sunny window. If you’re going with container gardening, ensure your flower pot has some depth to it as the peas will have considerable roots. Peas love to climb, so putting them along a fence or a balcony railing, or even over a bookshelf if growing indoors, will help immensely.

Water regularly and make sure it gets lots of sun. Be sure to pick the peas as they grow, because if the plant produces a lot of fully-mature peas, it may feel like it’s done its work for the season and call it quits and die. But if you pick the peas as they mature, then the plant feels like it has to keep working to put out more peas.

Peas do not like heat in their early stages, so plant them as early as you can so they can get established in the cooler spring weeks. Usually, peas and potatoes are the two crops we have in the ground right away.

Peas are best preserved by either freezing or canning. For both methods, edible pods don’t survive well, so you’re best to shell the peas (technically optional for freezing, but required for canning). For canning peas, this can only be done in a pressure canner and is relatively easy. If you’re looking for something a little different, you can ferment peas in edible pods for a unique and tasty snack.

5. Chives

Chives are a tasty garnish on dishes, and pastel purple blossoms can be used to create unique foods, like a vibrantly pink vinegar or a savoury jelly.

While you can grow chives from seed, we know someone who has attempted this and found it difficult. However, chives are easy to find at your local garden store, so it’s likely best to start with one already growing.

If you plant them outside, chives are a perennial and will return every spring. And once fully established, it requires very little care. For the first year, be sure to water it plenty to help it establish itself in your garden, but after that you can water as needed. When I’m watering the garden, I sometimes don’t bother with the chives because they seem to do very well on their own.

Harvest them as needed, with either scissors or simply breaking chives off. If using the flowers for a project, be sure to wait until they’ve fully opened. Once opened, I find there’s about a one to two week window until the flowers start to fade and fall off.

Chives don’t preserve all that well. Freezing reduces their flavour and dehydrating reduces the flavour even more. Fermentation is possible and it creates something like a chive-flavoured sauerkraut, which can be an interesting garnish on dishes and sandwiches.

The chive blossoms present more options. I make chive blossom vinegar and chive blossom jelly. This year I’ve also thrown some chive blossoms in the freezer to attempt these chive blossom biscuits (though I may rework the recipe to make it a sourdough biscuit).

The best advice? Explore and have fun.

Whatever plants you choose to start with — whether it’s one of these or something different — choose a plant you’ll enjoy eating because then you’ll enjoy the work that goes into helping it grow.

Looking for preserving ideas?

I recently released Preserving Your Urban Harvest, a guide to canning, fermenting, and freezing, including 73 recipes for 21 favourite garden crops. Click here to find out more.