What to Plant in Your Garden: Seeds, Plant Types, and Companion Planting

So you’ve got your garden type picked out. Now comes the fun part: deciding what to actually grow in it. And this is where a lot of first-time gardeners overthink things.

Chapter 4 of Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza breaks this down into manageable pieces. Start small. Pick easy wins. Build from there.

Start Simple

Pezza’s advice for beginners is to not go wild your first year. Pick a handful of plants that are known to be forgiving. Her easy-to-grow list includes herbs, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, and berries.

Honestly, this is solid advice. There’s nothing more discouraging than planting twenty different things and watching most of them struggle. Start with five or six varieties, learn how they behave, and expand next season.

Understanding Plant Types

Before you start buying seeds, it helps to know the basic categories:

• Annuals complete their whole life cycle in one season. You plant them, they grow, they produce, they die. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, and most vegetables fall here.
• Biannuals take two years. The first year they grow leaves and roots. The second year they flower and produce seeds. Carrots and onions are common examples.
• Perennials come back year after year on their own. Asparagus, rhubarb, and many herbs fall into this group. Plant once, harvest for years.
• Tender perennials are perennials in warm climates but act like annuals in cold ones. They can’t survive frost. Basil is a good example. It’ll come back every year in Florida but it’s a one-season plant in Minnesota.

Heirloom vs Hybrid

This is a topic that gets people worked up, but it’s simpler than the debates make it seem.

Heirloom plants are varieties that have been passed down through generations without crossbreeding. They breed true, meaning you can save their seeds and get the same plant next year. That’s a big deal if you want to be self-sustaining.

Hybrid plants are intentional crosses between two varieties. They’re often bred for specific traits like disease resistance or bigger yields. But their seeds are unpredictable. You might save hybrid tomato seeds and get something completely different next season.

My take? Grow both. Heirlooms for flavor and seed-saving. Hybrids where you need the reliability. There’s no rule that says you have to pick one.

Seeds vs Plugs vs Plants

You have three ways to get plants into your garden:

Seeds are the cheapest option and give you the widest variety. You can find heirloom varieties in seed catalogs that no garden center carries. The tradeoff is time. You’re starting from scratch.

Plugs are young seedlings, usually a few weeks old. They give you a head start without the full cost of mature plants. A nice middle ground.

Plants are the most expensive but they’re ready to go in the ground right away. If you’re late getting started or just want instant gratification, this is the move.

Pezza suggests combining methods for your first garden. Start some things from seed (herbs and lettuce are great for this), buy transplants for the trickier stuff like tomatoes, and fill in gaps with plugs if you find them.

USDA Hardiness Zones

This matters more than people realize. The USDA divides the country into hardiness zones based on average minimum winter temperatures. Your zone tells you what plants can survive in your area and when to plant them.

You can check your zone at the USDA’s website. Just type in your zip code. Everything on seed packets and plant tags references these zones, so knowing yours is pretty much required.

Companion Planting

This is one of the coolest sections in the chapter. Some plants genuinely help each other when planted nearby. Others are terrible neighbors.

Good companions:

• Marigolds are the universal friend. They repel pests and work next to almost everything.
• Tomatoes and onions do well together.
• Beans and corn support each other, literally. Beans fix nitrogen in the soil and corn gives beans something to climb.
• The “Three Sisters” is a famous combination: corn, beans, and squash planted together. The corn provides structure, the beans add nitrogen, and the squash leaves shade the ground to retain moisture and block weeds. Indigenous peoples in the Americas have been doing this for centuries.
• Basil and tomatoes are great partners in the garden and on the plate.

Bad companions:

• Strawberries and cabbage don’t play nice.
• Potatoes and tomatoes are both in the nightshade family and attract the same diseases. Keep them apart.
• Cucumbers and sage should be separated.
• Onions and beans inhibit each other’s growth.

Here’s the thing. Companion planting isn’t magic. But there’s real science behind a lot of it, and paying attention to which plants go where can make a noticeable difference in your harvest.

My Take

The most useful part of this chapter is the permission to start small. It’s easy to get excited at the garden center and come home with way more than you can handle. Pick your favorites, learn them well, and add more next year.

And definitely look up your hardiness zone before you buy anything. It takes thirty seconds and saves you from planting things that were never going to work in your climate.

Book: Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5, Hatherleigh Press, 2013)

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