There's a few things I like to grow in the garden every year. I'd like to share a few with you, along with my tips.

Beans

Beans are great. They're easy to germinate, easy to grow and produce consistently throughout the summer. It's best to plant them in a big patch so you can get a good quantity of beans. Harvest as you please, if you let them dry out later in the season you can extract them from the dried seed pods and store them for next season. Remember, you only need a dozen or so seeds for a garden bed, so it's always useful to save some seed.

Radishes

Radishes are certainly one of the fastest crops you can grow. From 30 days to harvest, you can't beat it. I like to plant a radish patch every year but the results are usually mixed. Sometimes you can find a real winner in the bunch, but other times it's not as productive.

Cucumbers

Once the hot season begins, the cucumber thrives. They enjoy full sunlight and grow all over the available ground surface and produce lots of fruits and flowers. My advice is to plant the seeds in mounds with rich soil and watch as it comes up in the summer. We never have a shortage of cucumbers when we grow them.

Raspberries

One of my favorite perennial crops. The whole genus rubus has hundreds of species of berries on canes. These come back every year, are very low maintenance and produce abundantly. The only drawback is that it has some thorns, but that's to be expected.

Blackberries

This thornless variety is my favourite. Not only are the berries gigantic, they are plentiful every year and good even when they're a bit sour. Everyone loves to pick some of these and eat them fresh. They fruit later in the season than the raspberry but the window of time that they're available is longer. Some years we can enjoy very ripe blackberries well into November.

Hope you enjoyed this garden tour. Have a green and plentiful crop this season!