Do you wish you got more food from your garden? I don’t blame you.

Gardening is joyful work, but it’s work nevertheless.

It’s nice to feel that the hours and sweat you’re pouring into your garden are being rewarded with large, colorful and delicious harvests.

Getting more food from your garden is an attainable goal for sure. You just need to understand some of the different characteristics of the vegetables you grow, such as – which vegetables are high yield crops?

A few years ago my sister called me from Philadelphia, where she was learning how to garden, and asked me, “When you plant one onion how many onions do you get?”

Wow! This one question from a newbie gardener completely re-framed how I look at my garden. (My sister’s always good like that!)

I had never quite thought about each vegetable in this way. When you start to examine the garden in this light there are clearly things that are more “worth it” to grow than others.

When you plant a tomato you obviously get a lot of bang for your buck. You plant one seedling, wait three months, and then get to harvest pounds and pounds of tomatoes. That’s a pretty good investment for a $3 seedling.

Definitely a high-yield crop.

On the other hand, when you plant a cabbage seedling you wait 70 days and then harvest one cabbage. That’s it, no more, it’s over. If you want to get anything more out of that space you’ll have to rip out the remaining cabbage carcass and plant something else.

Not really a high-yield crop.

Hmmm, which one sounds like a better investment to you?

Well, from an objective standpoint, we’d both probably agree that a tomato plant will definitely provide you with more food per plant.

But, there are other factors besides just yield.

Whether you think tomatoes are a better choice than cabbage might depend on how much you love cabbage and hate tomatoes. Maybe you eat sauerkraut every day for lunch so you can’t wait to fill your garden with rows and rows of cabbage.

The answer to the question, “Is it worth it to grow?” all depends on your unique perspective.

That’s why it’s important to know a bit more about the harvest categories of vegetable, including which vegetables are high yield and which are low yield, so you can make a strategic decision based on YOUR cooking, grocery shopping and eating habits and what the people in your house like to eat.

Here’s what you need to know!

What exactly to grow in a garden is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make as a gardener. And it can be a daunting one.

There are SO many options and they all look enticing.

But, most of us don’t have the garden space, time or energy to grow everything listed in the seed catalog. 

So, how do you decide what to grow in a garden?

In my gardening classes I try to convince encourage my students to think strategically about their gardens before placing their seed orders. Instead of running out to the nursery on the first nice day of spring and throwing plants and seeds into your cart willy-nilly (I’ve been there!), I encourage you to be more deliberate in your choices this year.

This will definitely lead you to getting better results in your garden. Which makes gardening feel more worth it and way more fun!

In this article I’m sharing two different worksheets from inside my Smart Start Garden Planner to walk you through the process of creating a personalized and strategic list of vegetables to grow this year.

There are thousands of vegetable varieties out there in the gardening world. That makes it easy to get overwhelmed when you sit down to try to decide which of them to grow in your garden.

I’m an experienced gardener with over 20 years of experience and even I start to feel stressed out when I spend too much time flipping through seed catalogues.

Every variety description makes it sound like it’s the best ever…

Superior color and flavor!
Very impressive!
A standout!
Beautiful and flavorful!
The ultimate variety!

The photos are pretty, the descriptions are tempting, and the choices can number into the hundreds for vegetables like tomatoes and peppers.

It’s confusing out there in seed ordering land.

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As gardeners, we’re all dreamers, right?

We take a miniscule seed from a colorful packet and gently place it in the soil. And in that seed is the dream of what’s to come—a bright yellow carrot, a huge tomato plant, or a sprawling squash vine.

Anything is possible in a life filled with a garden!

There’s no other time that feels more ripe with possibility than the beginning of a new year. Often, we find ourselves setting goals and intentions in various areas of our life.

But, often we forget to include our gardens in this planning and dreaming process. So, I’m here to remind you – don’t forget to carve out some time to set your garden goals, too!

In this article, I’m going to walk you through three steps for setting some meaningful and personal intentions for the upcoming gardening season.

Step #1 focuses on reflecting on the previous season before moving on to step #2, which is creating your vision for how you want your garden to fit into your life this year, and then we wrap it up with step #3, which is bringing your vision into focus. 

Let’s get started!