It's based on years of experience with what succeeds with little or much effort, or fails no matter what, takes up too much space, invites too many pests, goes to waste because no one will eat it or there's still plenty in the freezer from last year.
Before deciding how to use your backyard garden space, consider which vegetables will "pay back" all your gardening work.
Tomatoes: Tomatoes, the most popular backyard gardener's vegetable, aren't easy to grow, but the extra trouble they take is well worth the return. You can't buy a tomato as good as one ripened in your own back yard.
If your soil is too heavy, though, you'll likely have trouble, including blossom end rot, stunted growth, leaf curl and pest infestations. The key to good tomatoes is good soil, and making good soil may take a few years of organic matter additions.
Green beans: Beans, dried or green, produce a great amount of food value per plant. Because dried beans are so inexpensive at the grocery store, I grow green beans.
Green beans are easy to grow from seed after the soil has warmed (around mid-May for Salt Lake). Beans are especially sensitive to salts. If you've added a lot of manure, or if your irrigation water is high in salts, or if the soil is poorly drained and the salts cannot leach away, beans may only be frustrating for you. Of not, most gardeners will have good success with beans.
Onions: Like carrots, onions grow underground, and need a rock-free, well-drained, deep soil to grow well. Onions are produced in Utah on a commercial scale, so you know the climate is right.
I love having onions out in the garden, ready for pulling and using whenever I might need them. Immature onions can be pulled to use as green onion in salads. The large onions in the grocery store are good, and usually cheap. If price was the only consideration, onions wouldn't be worth growing in the garden. But convenience often wins out over price, so I consider onions worth the effort. Chives and garlic are also easy to grow, and having convenient access to either is priceless.
Rest of the list: I don't grow sweet corn or melons, because they need more space than my relatively small backyard garden provides. Cucurbits (zucchini, squash, cucumber) have too many pests (powdery mildew and squash bugs) for me to keep up with. Broccoli and cauliflower are never available as seedlings early enough, so I plant too late and wind up with funky bouquets instead of vegetables! And as for that beautiful eggplant, no one in my house will eat it anyway.
Presently, my personal list of vegetables "worth growing" includes tomato, peas, beans, short-season cabbage, spinach, onions, chives, garlic, small sweet peppers and hot peppers. Plus, I always grow something new to me, so I might learn about a new taste treat well worth the effort.
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Maggie Wolf is an assistant professor for Utah State University Extension in Salt Lake County. Her area of expertise is horticulture. Contact her at maggiew@ ext.usu.edu or at 801-468-3171.
