posted in Asklemmy

Which are some good food crops/plants that one can grow without much effort or space?

Likely will vary with location and season.
Wanted to know what folk on Lemmy grow or see.

In the case that there maybe some who know specific info that maybe good for my location: I am from India, Kerala.

enPage

Replying to an earlier post

Potatos, sweet potatos, & yams are generally held as the most efficient for calories per square meter for single-crop plantings. Almost all tubers and root crops tend to be very forgiving and grow easily, although you should find ones adapted to your local climate.

Beans & peas fix their own nitrogen and can grow in poor soils. Very easy to grow, dry, and store, and makes for good cover crops and tillage. Need a good bit of trellising to make them grow vertically if youre limited in space tho.

Tomatos and peppers are garden staples for being easy to grow and high-yield, but are picky brat plants. Good for novice gardeners, because if they need something they’ll throw an tantrum, wilt till you fix it, and then perk back up in the hour.

Replying to @⁨1Malayali@lemmy.ml⁩

Tomatos like acidic, well drained soils. Manure will help, as will coffee grounds & tea leaves, peat moss, pine needles, anyrhing with a good amount of tannins. They want lots of water, but dont want to sit with wet roots either, so woodchips or other heavy mulching in the soil will help.

They also tend to need lots of help with nutrients & fertilizer for fruiting. Eggs & other shells will add a lot of calcium they’ll gobble up.

Dont over-do it with mineral/petroleum fertilizer. Itll shoot up at the start and put out lots of foliage, but too high of potassium (K) level will lock out magnesium uptake and hobble the leaves right as its trying to fruit.

Replying to an earlier post

Have had good results with cherry tomatoes this years and that’s despite me planting mine way too late in the season and on a total whim. I keep mine in a pot outside. I live in Denmark, so it’s a bit of a different climate to yours, but I think tomatoes are pretty easy to grow in many parts of the world :D

They are still green and I don’t know if they will turn red before the temperatures decline into single digits, but considering how much of a yolo decision this was, to just sow them because I felt sorry for myself and wanted to see something grow, it’s pretty remarkable how many tomatoes it ended up producing. They are THIRSTY, though!

Replying to an earlier post

Not just likely to vary with location and season, it absolutely will vary with location and season.

Where I live, there’s one highly productive almost bullet proof plant that immediately comes to mind: Physalis – Ground Cherries.

They don’t seem to suffer from any of the diseases or pests that can decimate tomatoes. They can handle full sun to partial shade. They don’t need fertilizer. They’re drought resistant. Heat resistant. Deer resistant. They reseed on their own each year. And they produce a large volume of fruit over a long period of time, up until the first hard freeze.