Fast growing crops to plant now

Ajouté : 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think gardeners, especially this time of year, are some of the most impatient people.

[00:00:06]And I was thinking about myself like I am feeling so impatient to have things finally growing in my garden again. So, I wanted to do a roundup today of everything that I'm going to be growing that takes 50 days or less to get a harvest from because I'm an impatient gardener. And if you are, too, maybe you need something that's more like instant gratification while we wait for the garden to really fill in this spring.

[00:00:26]And these are some of my favorites to grow. They're just really easy plants that get you a good prolific productive harvest with minimal effort early on in the year while we are feeling like we just need something to harvest and grow out of the garden. I have been waiting, it feels like 6 months. Like I know winter is long, but I feel like it's been 6 months since I've gardened and I need to grow something. So, I'm going to be planting a lot of these things out in the next week or two. Today, I'm just going to rapid-fire through them for you so that you can get some inspiration for your own growing list. But, let me know which ones you'll be growing or which ones you would add to my list. Anything that grows in 50 days or less. And I tried to keep these really variety-specific, right? Because there are certain things where like you're talking about squash, for example, a lot of those do not grow in 50 days or less.

[00:01:14]So, I want to give you specific varieties that you can try that are known to grow pretty rapidly. And we will get into my favorite variety of zucchini to grow it for just that purpose. But, I want to start out with a root crop that I have not really loved to eat in the past. Like this is something where I'm still actively trying to find one that I enjoy. And that's beets. So, beets are one of those things where there's a wide range as well of like days to maturity. So, when we're talking about beets for an early harvest, it's literally in the name.

[00:01:44]We're going to be growing early wonder beets.

[00:01:47]I don't know if I like these, but I do know that they're going to grow in about 50 days and that means I'll have something that I can harvest and try from the garden much sooner than some of the other varieties that I will do want to try this year as well. What's crazy about beets is that beet seeds are actually a dried fruit that contains one to five seeds in it. So, when you plant a single beet seed of any type of beet, not just early wonder, you do need to thin it because otherwise you're going to get like five plants coming up in one place. So, it's really important to stay on top of that when you plant your beet seeds. They're also really high water need. Like they do not do well if you skip watering them. The jury's still out on whether or not I like beets in general, but I keep trying them because I'm convinced there just has to be one out there that I like. Or at the very least I can eat the greens. Like beet greens are delicious and these ones in particular are very good to eat, too.

[00:02:34]This time of year, everyone's growing lettuce. Why wouldn't you grow lettuce?

[00:02:37]Lettuce that you grow yourself tastes so much better than lettuce from the grocery store. But, there's specific types that do best and grow the fastest.

[00:02:46]And I want to get into a couple of those today. Now, the reason that lettuce tastes so much better when you grow it yourself is because on average our produce is traveling like 1,500 miles to reach us. And flavor is driven by nutrition. So, by the time that lettuce reaches you, it's lost a lot of its nutritional value because it's just not as fresh anymore. So, the fresher your lettuce is, the better it's going to taste. Even if you think you're a person that doesn't like lettuce, I highly recommend giving a few different varieties a try starting out with a leaf lettuce. Now, I'm not going to give you a specific seed packet variety recommendation for this because usually leaf lettuce is sold as just like a mesclun mix. And that could be a whole variety of different types of lettuces that you grow as a baby green and harvest it with a like 20 to 30 days.

[00:03:29]So, try a leaf lettuce. See if you like it. Leaf lettuce is not as crunchy as like a head lettuce, though. So, if you do want to grow a really fast-maturing head lettuce that you can harvest in 20 to 68 days, I recommend trying this little gem lettuce. So, this is an heirloom that combines all the best qualities of crunchy romaine with my favorite flavored lettuce, buttercrunch.

[00:03:53]So, you get these mini little heads with tons of flavor and tons of crispy crunchy texture and they mature really, really fast. So, this is definitely my go-to pick for an early spring very quick harvest if you're looking to grow lettuce this year. The heads are really small. They're about 6 in tall and 4 in wide. So, you want to plant a lot of them. And with lettuce, I like to just surface sow this. You can press it down into the soil a little bit, but I don't like to cover it at all. So, it's really one of those plants where you just the seeds are tiny. You're just going to put it right on the surface, let them sprout, let them grow and within about 2 months you're going to have baby lettuce to eat. You know I hate the dreaded garden gap and my favorite way to avoid the garden gap in the garden is by succession planting. But, when we're talking about succession planting, we need stuff that's going to mature pretty fast. So, even if you're not growing these in the spring, this is one of my favorite things to stick in the ground anytime throughout your growing season that something is coming out and you have one of these gaps in your garden.

[00:04:49]And that's beans, specifically bush beans. So, there's pole beans, which are trailing vining plants, and then there's bush beans, which I prefer to grow for a number of reasons. You can try something like a provider green bean, of course, that's going to do very well and be very prolific. But, in terms of something that's going to produce really fast and also be a little bit different cuz let's be real. Like I want to give you some more unique options to choose from. I recommend trying gold rush beans. These are also really good if you're dealing with a lot of common mosaic virus, NY15, or curly top virus. They're super resistant to those. They're also going to mature in about 54 days. I don't know. I just think it's really fun when you have the option to grow something that's just a different color. Like I love to do purple green beans and yellow green beans and green green beans. But, gold rush is a go-to for me outside of provider green beans. It's just a very reliable, fun plant to try. Cucumbers are another one of those crops where there's a huge variety not only in flavor, size, texture, growing habits, disease resistance, but also days to maturity. So, I do have some that take quite a lot longer. But, if you're looking to get an early cucumber harvest, which is also really just an important consideration when we're talking about those of us with a shorter growing season in general because things like cucumbers and eggplants and tomatoes and peppers, they do tend to have longer growing season requirements.

[00:06:09]So, it's not just a matter of like getting the first harvest. It's sometimes a matter of getting the harvest at all. For that, I like to stick with the party time cucumber hybrid. These are 4-in snacking cucumbers, which is my favorite kind of cucumber. They have really thin skins and you're going to get like four or five fruits from each node every few days. So, they're extremely prolific and they're early to mature in about 50 days. But, it is important when you're growing cucumbers in general to be really mindful of your soil temperature because they are not going to be happy if you plant them out in the ground before your soil temperature reaches about 65°. So, it's better to wait a little bit longer. You'll get your harvest sooner by waiting a little bit longer, which feels counterintuitive, but it's so important with these heat-loving crops. And also to make sure you're staying really on top of even watering because that's where you get those really uneven misshapen fruits if you're not being consistent about watering them evenly. I swear I was never going to grow another brassica in my garden again because I have dealt with so many cabbage white butterflies.

[00:07:08]They drive me nuts. There is one exception to this, though, and it's because I think this specific variety has something about its structurally that deters those cabbage white butterflies. Lacinato kale, also called dino kale, is extremely curly. It has a lot of texture to it. I don't think the cabbage white butterflies like to lay their eggs on this, to be honest, because it does not have that smooth underside of the leaf for them to lay those eggs on. There are so many different kinds of kale you can try growing, though. But, I personally will be trying growing this lacinato again this year because I did notice I had less pest pressure on it and I love kale. Like all the brassicas, I mean, I eat a lot of broccoli and a lot of brussels sprouts, but kale is my number one. So, I want to be able to grow it if I can grow it successfully without having to cover it with row cover because so far that's the only way I've been able to keep those cabbage white butterflies off of my kale and it's just not worth the effort for me. Kale is another one you can start really it's super cold tolerant. It's biennial, so it's going to last you all summer, all fall, all winter and just keep on going into the next spring. If you do want to grow kale outside of like a specific variety, another great hack that you can do is to grow it as a microgreen. So, get like a big pack. They sell like a pound of kale seeds as microgreens and just sprinkle it over an entire bed and harvest those baby leaves so that it doesn't even have a chance to get to a point where a cabbage white butterfly would be interested in it, but you're still getting the benefits. You're getting the flavor of kale at least for a short time. I don't have a good example of this in my stack of seeds to share with you. Right now, all I have for carrots is this dragon type, which does take about 75 days to mature. So, it's a little bit on the longer side.

[00:08:45]However, there is a few different types of carrots that I want to try that are on the shorter side that you could try growing now. And those are Paris, Little Finger, and Nelson carrot varieties. All of those should mature around 50 days. I like to chaos my carrots. Meg taught me this method. We've all experienced this.

[00:09:03]Carrots are extremely hard to germinate because they're really fine, tiny little seeds. They sit right on the surface of the soil and they need to stay consistently damp in order to sprout correctly. So, I've tried all sorts of things. I've put burlap over them. I've put cardboard over them. And then Meg was like, "Just don't do anything. Just throw them everywhere and what comes up comes up." Because if you think about it, this is how they're spreading in the wild, right? They're essentially like a wildflower where they're spread by the wind. They sit on the surface of the soil and it's a numbers game of like what is going to come up and what isn't.

[00:09:30]And that has completely eliminated the stress of growing carrots for me. Maybe 50% of them don't come up. I don't know cuz I'm just putting them everywhere and when I find a carrot, it's a pleasant surprise. Definitely try out some of those varieties. If you've grown any of those three already, will you let me know though because I need to decide which one I want to try in my own garden. Okay, I promised you a squash variety. So, we're going to talk about a zucchini that you can grow. The thing with zucchini and summer squash in general, if you've ever grown them, you already know. First, you don't have any and then you have way too many. So, I will always tell you to just plant one or two. Don't go overboard. These are big plants. And if you're going to grow a variety that you want to be fast-growing, I recommend growing something like this dark star zucchini.

[00:10:10]It's going to be one of your faster maturing options. It's just a great classic zucchini that's also resistant to a whole host of things if that's a concern for you. I have found better luck planting out my squash plants after the first round of squash vine borers has hatched in mid- June. That doesn't really play into our impatient gardener's timeline, but it is the right way to do it if you're trying to avoid that particular pest, which is a huge concern at least in my garden.

[00:10:35]If you can wait, it's worth waiting.

[00:10:37]You'll still get that harvest pretty fast once you get them in the ground. If you can't wait, I mean, best of luck to you. I've tried everything to prevent them and nothing has worked. And that's a great summer crop option, but I do have three rapid-fire options for you that are cool season-specific that you can plant right now in spring or wait and plant again in the fall. And these are going to come up really, really fast for you. First of all, we have radishes.

[00:10:59]This is probably the fastest-growing crop of any that you can grow in your garden, but there's so many different types that you can choose from. There's cherry, there's crimson, there's Easter egg, and then my personal favorite, which is French breakfast radish, because these are a little bit less spicy. I just think they're kind of elegant. Like they're really beautiful plant in your garden, and they grow really fast. It's actually the first thing that I fed to my baby as his first food, because if you roast them, it completely eliminates that spiciness.

[00:11:25]So, if you really don't like the spice, roast or steam them, and they will come out just beautifully sweet and delicious. Okay, two more cool season crops. We have spinach. I'm specifically recommending abundant blue shale spinach for you this time around. Plant this really, really early, earlier than you even think. It loves the cold weather and it will do best in the cold. Another one that that is true for is arugula, which I used to hate. I now only know that I like one specific variety. It's another one where it's just got more mild flavor, although you can also try just growing any arugula as a baby green, and it will be more mild if that's a concern for you as well. Astro specifically is the one that I prefer because it's fast-growing, has that more mild flavor. It's one of those beautiful early season plants that you can get in the ground to have some really impactful, beautiful flavor in your salads. That is everything that I have for you today. I'll link my favorite place to get seeds down in the description for you. But, let me know down in the comments what you would recommend for a fast crop for us impatient gardeners. And just let me know you're an impatient gardener, too, because I cannot wait any longer to get this stuff in the ground. Make sure you hit like and subscribe so you don't miss future videos like this one. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.