12 PERFECT Vegetables To Grow in a Shady Garden Space

🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com Most every garden has that one shady spot, the corner the sun never quite reaches, shaded by the house or the barn or a big old tree, and most folks look at it and think nothing will grow there. They believe a garden must have full blazing sun or it will give them nothing. But that is only half true. It is true the fruiting crops, the tomatoes and peppers and squash, must have full sun. But there is a whole other family of vegetables that not only tolerate shade, some of them actually prefer it, and will grow you a fine crop in a spot too shady for a tomato ever to ripen. So that shady corner is not wasted ground at all. In this video I give you twelve vegetables that grow well in a shady garden, so you can put that neglected corner to good use and grow more food than you thought your place could hold. I am Elias, and I have gardened this Lancaster County ground my whole life, and the wise gardener learns to match the crop to the spot rather than fighting it. We have shady ground here by the treeline and along the north of the buildings, and rather than leave it idle we grow the shade-loving things there, and it feeds us well. The plain rule that makes sense of it all: grow a plant for its LEAVES and it can do with much less sun, for the leaf is the sun-catcher itself. Grow it for its FRUIT and it needs a great deal of sun. So leaves and roots for the shade, fruits for the sun. In this video: ✔️ What "shade" really means — partial, dappled shade (a few hours of sun or filtered light), NOT deep dark shade where nothing grows, and the honest trade of slower, smaller growth ✔️ THE 6 GREENS (the true shade-lovers): leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, Swiss chard, arugula, and mustard greens — and why several of them stay sweeter and last LONGER in shade, bolting less in the summer heat ✔️ THE 3 ROOTS (for the lighter shade): beets (grow them for the greens above all), radishes (quick catch crop), and carrots (give them the most sun you have) ✔️ Peas and bush beans — the cool-weather crops that will bear in partial shade ✔️ The herbs — parsley, chives, cilantro, and mint (with the firm warning to pen the mint in a pot or it will take over) ✔️ Succession sowing for a steady supply, and the cut-and-come-again greens that feed you for months ✔️ How to help a shady bed along: rich soil, wider spacing, and bouncing light off a pale wall or fence Do this and that shady corner you thought was wasted will grow you salad greens and cooking greens all season, a few roots, some peas and beans, and a patch of herbs — a great deal of good food from ground you were ready to give up on. What do you grow in the shady parts of your garden, and what has done well for you there? Tell me in the comments below. And tell me your county and how much shade you are working with, the light dappled kind or the deeper sort, for it makes all the difference in what will grow. I read every one. Next time, I will show you how to make the very most of a shady spot — the working of the soil, the bouncing of what light there is off a light wall or fence, the timing of the plantings to catch the best of the season, all the old tricks for coaxing a good crop out of shady ground. The old gardeners used every scrap of their ground, matching each crop to its place, the sun-lovers to the sun and the shade-lovers to the shade, and wasted nothing, and so they fed their families well off ground a careless eye would call half unusable. There is a quiet wisdom in working with what your land gives you rather than wishing it were otherwise. The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it. #ShadeGarden #ShadeVegetables #Gardening #GrowingVegetables #VegetableGarden #LeafyGreens #Homestead #GrowYourOwnFood #GardenTips #OrganicGardening #SelfReliance #ShadeGardening #Homesteading #EliasYoder