How to Grow a Rapid Response Victory Garden

You’ve just decided that it’s time to grow a vegetable garden, and not just any garden, a rapid response victory garden. This is a garden that will produce an abundance of food in year one and for years to come. Here’s how to begin and a guide to crops that will mature in 30, 60, and 90 days. Includes a video.

It was just after five am and I was lying in bed, scrolling the news, Facebook, Twitter, everything. I’m not usually awake this early, but we live in different times. Seemingly overnight, our way of life has changed, and a lot of us are feeling anxious for ourselves, our loved ones, and the future. Then I came across a call for help: “…I wish someone would write an article about plants one could sow NOW that could produce food in the next 30, 45, 60 days.” I could do that, so I’m up now and answering the call to show you how to grow a victory garden.

I wrote this piece at the beginning of the pandemic, but now years on we still have some of the same issues. Periodic empty shelves, dealing with Zoom, tight budgets, and career dissatisfaction. Others are simply rethinking their way of life. I believe that the old times are over and we need to look forward in many different ways. Maybe it’s time to revive the Victory Garden – to not only plan for the future but to BETTER our future.

I’m leaving the rest of this piece as I wrote it in March 2020 so please keep that in mind. I want to remember that time and think that you should too — in easier times it’s easy to forget just how catastrophic a virus, natural disaster, or other change of circumstances can be. As some say, it’s better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Grow Your Own food

For the moment, supermarkets are not out of food, but I have seen a couple of worrying signs. A health-food shop that I frequent is out of dried foods “for the foreseeable.” I’ve also seen one person reporting that crops are being abandoned in Kenya, though at the time, the country had only a single confirmed case of Coronavirus. It makes me wonder how less-developed places will cope with the virus, and with food production. Could we see imported food quietly disappear from our supermarket shelves? At least for part of this year?

I’m not an alarmist, but I’m sure I’m voicing a thought that many of us share. That’s why starting a vegetable garden now, even if you have zero experience, is something to consider. Even if a cure or vaccine is developed next week, or next month, having those plants in the ground will benefit your health and your table. Growing your own food is good for your physical health, nutrition, and mental clarity. From a psychological perspective, I believe that it will help you feel more secure. It does for me.

There’s a Shortage of Seeds

Before we get to what you can grow, I need to announce something else that is worrying. You’re not alone in wanting to grow your own food for the first time –  online seed companies and seed suppliers have been inundated with orders. So much so, that many have closed because they are overwhelmed or sold out of seeds.

If you’re finding it challenging to source seeds online, you should try to get to a physical shop, if you can do so. I’ve not seen any local garden centers sold out of seeds yet, but that may change in the coming weeks. Hardware stores, and sometimes supermarkets will also have a small selection of seeds. You can also ask friends if they have any seeds or plants to share or organize a virtual seed swap. Seeds and plants can be posted or left on doorsteps if people are self-isolating.

Seeds from the Kitchen Cupboard

Some foods in your cupboard are seeds too. You can sow the beans in soup mixes to grow various types of beans. The same goes for dried chickpeas (garbanzo beans), dried peas, and many grains. Even brown rice will germinate and grow if you live in a climate suitable for it.

Many spices are seeds, and some of them will germinate. Coriander seeds will grow coriander plants, known as cilantro in the Americas. Chili seeds will grow chilies, dill seed will grow dill, and so on. If the spice looks like a seed, try to see if they’ll grow by sprinkling a quarter teaspoon of seeds between two damp paper towels. Keep moist and warm, and check on the seeds daily for up to two weeks. If you see little sprouts, then you’re in luck.

Grow Crops in your Victory Garden

There are probably hundreds of books sharing how to grow vegetables, and I can’t fit it all into just a couple of paragraphs. Just remember that they are living things and will need light, warmth, nutrients, water, shelter, growing supports, and protection from predators and disease. Fruit and vegetables are just like animals – some grow in the tropics, and others live in temperate regions. You can fake those environments by growing crops in greenhouses or hydroponically. Pretty much all the details of gardening fit into these themes.

You should also familiarize yourself with your gardening zone, and which crops grow best in it. I go over zones and the earliest seeds you can sow every year over here. I also invite you to read my pieces on starting a garden, common gardening mistakes, and watch the videos I shared of how I created my allotment vegetable garden and raised bed garden on YouTube (please subscribe too). Some books that I recommend to start a garden are:

• A Woman’s Garden compiles lists of different types of useful plants and growing tips for herbal medicine, natural dyeing, interesting food, and natural soapmaking
• Veg in one Bed, an excellent and detailed starter book for beginners
• Container Gardening Complete, includes information on growing both ornamentals and a lot of edibles in pots and containers
• The Vegetable Gardeners Bible, with specific advice for North American gardeners
• Field Guide to Urban Gardening, basically all the information you need to grow veg in small spaces
• Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook

Grow Food in Container Gardens

For those who don’t have land to garden, you can grow many crops in large planters and containers. These will need daily watering in spring and summer, but you can place them on virtually any patio, porch, or balcony that gets enough sunlight.

When growing crops in containers, get a bag of good quality organic peat-free compost and mix it with a similar-sized bag of potting soil — or in a pinch, topsoil. It’s wise to add vermiculite, greensand, kelp, and perlite to help with water retention and nutrients as well but I understand that they may be difficult to find for some people.

Fill the containers up to 1.5-2″ from the top and firm the potting mix down with your hands. Sow your seeds or plant directly into the top. This growing medium will be good for a season of growing and should be emptied out and used as mulch in the garden the next year.

Topsoil, or soil from your garden, should not be used on its own in containers. It’s not nutrient-dense enough, it compacts easily, and dries out quickly. You will not get good harvests from plants growing in actual soil placed inside containers.

1 Month Crops for your Victory Garden

Few crops are ready to eat within one month of sowing. The exceptions are radishes, baby salad greens, and sprouted seeds. With radishes, sow 1/8^th teaspoon seeds weekly for a regular supply. They grow best in spring and autumn and may bolt (become stressed and flower) in the heat of summer.

Most greens need around 45 days to mature, but if it comes down to it, you can eat their small baby leaves after a month. Greens include lettuce, spinach, rocket (arugula), beet leaves, chard, and a few others. If you can eat the leaf of a vegetable when fully grown, you can eat them when they’re baby leaves too. Here are instructions on how to grow baby salad greens.

Sprouting seeds is taking seeds that you would plant, and growing them in a jar with a little moisture. When they’ve grown sprouts with small leaves, you eat them.

2 Month Crops

There’s a lot more choice in vegetables to harvest if you have 45 to 60 days. Most of these include greens, but you’ll also have smaller root vegetables and peas. The trick with some of these crops is to look for varieties advertised as ‘quick-growing’ or ‘quick-maturing’ varieties.

In the world of vegetables, there are types of carrots that take 45 days to mature and others that take all summer to grow. The same can be said for many other types of vegetables.

• Baby carrots (ordinary carrots harvested young)
• Some varieties of broccoli
• Some varieties of cabbage
• Lettuces
• Kale
• Kohlrabi (60-70 days)
• Leafy herbs
• Mustard
• Mizuna
• Okra (60-70 days)
• Peas (60-70 days)
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Spring onions
• Swiss chard
• Turnips
• Quick-growing vegetable varieties

3 Month Crops

Three months is plenty of time for a lot of our favorite vegetables, and the below will usually mature in that time. Any vegetable that grows big roots or fruits need this extra time and includes tomatoes, summer squash, and early potatoes. Many will need an extra month, so sixteen weeks, if your climate is cool or if the variety grows slowly.

• Beans
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Early Potatoes
• Second Early Potatoes
• Eggplant (Aubergines)
• Kohlrabi
• Onions (grown from sets)
• Summer squash, including zucchini (courgettes)
• Tomatoes

Long growing vegetables

If a vegetable isn’t listed, it may well be one that takes a long time to develop. These include main crop potatoes, pumpkins, garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, chilis, sweet potatoes, sunchokes, parsnips, and leeks. Planning is key to growing a year-round vegetable garden. Make sure you give these plants space and time, and they’ll reward you with homegrown harvests through the autumn and winter.

I’d also recommend investing in fruit trees, fruit bushes (here’s an introduction of all the ones I grow), and perennial vegetables. The latter are vegetables that regrow on their own every year and are often some of the first edibles that I harvest in the garden in spring.

More Information on Growing Vegetables

There’s a wealth of information on growing vegetables in the books I’ve recommended above and online. However, beware of any tips or information that seems too good to be true – it probably is. Viral gardening videos that your aunt shares, seeds for blue strawberries, and the like. For good information on growing food, subscribe to food gardeners on YouTube, read well-reviewed books, browse kitchen garden ideas on Lovely Greens, call friends and family members who garden, and plan your Victory Garden from there. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below.

More Grow Your Own Victory Garden Inspiration

• Planting Crops that you can Harvest in Winter
• Thrifty Ways to get Plants for Free
• 10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for Beginners
• Six Ways to Use Sustainable Garden Design in Your Backyard