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Comment by midhhhthrow | Hacker News Reader

If you’re new to gardening, I recommend tomatoes. They’re quite easy to grow as long as your timing is roughly right

I would put herbs on the “new to gardening” list. They are very useful to have fresh and most of them grow like weeds. It’s almost impossible to accidentally kill rosemary, oregano, or thyme.

Bingo!. Cant recommend tomatoes enough. Roses too if You live in a sunny(vale)area. The combination of clay and sunshine just makes those Floribundas bloom. Its a pity I cant find enough patent free rose bushes. Its time to "free the seeds" in the spirit of FOSS. Perhaps sometime in the not too distopian future.

Anytime I see a plant with a label that says "propagation prohibited" I can't help but chuckle. Who's gonna stop me?

A lot of people could, in fact. And most of them are lawyers.

As long as you don't resell it, you will fly under the radar most probably

May I recommend cherry/grape tomatoes instead? In my (granted: limited) experience, they require a bare minimum of work, have a generous harvest window, and -- most importantly -- you can eat them straight off the vine (though sometimes they need a rinse, first).

+100! I have been growing tomatoes for a few years and am slowly improving but the guide here notes they’re “moderately difficult” to grow, which, yes, yes they are. Tomatoes will break your heart.

Cherry tomatoes, however, are easy, produce plentifully, and are great for kids or sprucing up a salad. Sungold are a great variety.

Full tomatoes are of course fantastic and have a great payoff. I love the high acid ones like Green Zebra. I know people honestly like making their own sauce, but, it’s a PITA and Rao’s can be bought, so I don’t recommend paste varieties.

Cherry tomatoes are awesome. Much easier to grow.

My normal tomatoes fruited at cherry tomato size for some reason :( I got a few maybe an inch and a half wide, but since then the rest stop and turn red earlier.

No idea what the problem is, maybe it's fungal. Quite a few leaves were turning yellow/black lower down.

The probably easiest plants to grow for an absolute beginner may be salads like arugula or herbs like bazil and mint. If you have good soil and enough moisture, mint will be very difficult to stop from growing. Once I planted mint into a pot that I placed into the bed to separate it from the other herbs. It broke through the walls of the pot and gave me a great example of exponential growth.

One thing to keep in mind if your growing your greens outdoors is that they quickly get bitter when it is hot out. If you live somewhere that gets very hot in the summer you'll want to stick to the shoulder seasons for greens. Most can survive light frost, so you can start them quite early/late.

And if you’re gonna grow tomatoes, throw some marigolds in there too! They’re a nice companion plant — they look pretty and help with pest control for your tomatoes. (I also like growing basil in that mix.)

Talking about tomatoes, highly recommend watching this episode of Growing a Greener World.

https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/episode-803-epic-tomato...

https://www.craiglehoullier.com/resources-videos-etc

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