You could pickle cauliflower, Lpink! With some of those carrots and dill.

Congrats on the plot. How much room do you have to plant?
That might determine what to grow. I have found it takes a LOT of space to grow enough beans to be 'useful'.

Tomatoes, peppers, onions sound good. But whatever you cook with/eat the most makes sense too. I have to be careful or I end up with tons of space used up on things I don't even know if we like. LOL
I'm trying to stick with tried and true things. I can purchase small amounts of new things to try.

Deanna

Wonderful! More communities ought to provide garden plots. If I were you I'd nix the raspberries--they need to be picked almost daily (not low maintenance) and are perennial, so if you don't get the same plot next year, there go your berries! Same for the rhubarb, except it doesn't have to be cut daily.
You can trellis cukes to save space; succession plant to make the maximum use of your plot, and plant "bush" or "container" tomatoes to save space.
Forget potatoes--cheap at the store and take a LOT of room.
Icheban eggplant is delicious and the easiest to grow.
Be sure to let us know how your garden grows!

How wonderful! I agree to grow the things that you like to eat. The beans you mentioned are usually left to dry on the vine which could be iffy when it comes to harvest. I would instead grow green beans and pole beans and can them or freeze them. You can make a tippee of three long tomato stakes stuck in the ground and tied with twine at the top then plant the pole bean seeds at the base of the poles.

Lettuce and spinach can go in the ground as soon as it is tilled up. Do you have someone to till the garden plot? As for carrots, choose the shortest, stubbiest variety of seeds as you have to have extremely well worked soil to grow long, straight carrots. Rhubarb and raspberries are not for the plot if you can't get the same plot next year. Rhubarb probably has to go in the ground in the fall and may need several years to get established. You'll need to look up some of this things and read up on them.

I would buy parsley plants as they can be difficult to start from seeds. If you buy a few pepper and eggplant plants then you may be less tempted to plant too much.

Read up on the wide row planting for lettuce, spinach, and fall greens. Wide row sowing is much better than a single skinny row of one plant lined up after another. Green onions can be planted very soon!

Have fun!
Teresa

I agree on the rhubarb and the raspberries, they are not for community plots unless you can be sure you'll get the same plot every year for years in succession.

I'm planting fingerling potatoes because I love them and they're expensive here but if my space were limited I wouldn't grow potatoes or onions, they are too cheap and widely available.

Leeks and shallots, those I'd grow, the fingerlings too. If you plant beets and turnips, you'll have greens too and that'll do double duty. You might like to try the Royal Burgundy beans for green beans, they grow purple and turn green when you cook them and they grow wonderfully here.

As for peppers, I grew cayenne here successfully last year so they'd probably do fine for you too, and basil loves the garden.

Good luck and have fun!

Annie

You can keep the garden from year to year, but I dunno, if space is limited, maybe not the raspberries. I have a friend who has a friend who just bought a hobby farm and he might let me plant raspberries out there, and maybe even try my hand at bush cherries.

I decided against potatoes. I love fingerlings but no sense just growing one or two plants. I guess I'm not ready to fuss with potatoes, I can get them pretty cheap around here, its a big potato growing region, or at least it used to be.

I made my order today--three kinds of med. hot peppers, two kinds of roma tomatoes, three kinds of what they called "slicer" toms (I can supplement with some of the more common beefsteak types which I can get at a nursery), tomatillos, green beans (I went with "Blue Lake," it was a sentimental choice), flat italian style green beans, red beets ("Detroit") and yellow beets just to experiment, and two kinds of eggplant (a shorter season and longer season one). Those are the things I ordered seeds for because you can't get interesting varieties around here. I still need to find gherkin cukes, and decide if I want to grow hard squash. I think I'm going to wait on the squash decision until I see the plot.

If I grow salad greens, I think I am going to grow them in pots around the house. Moving my tomatoes and peppers "off site" frees me up some pot space. I will have to keep them close to the house if I don't want the devil bunnies on them.

I didn't think of leeks, those would be fun, as would fennel, which I have heard needs a space all its own. Can you grow leeks from seed?

Here is a link that might be useful: Seeds of Change organic seed company

Lpink, that's really cool. How much room do they give you?

I just started some leeks...they're pretty long-season. I don't know what zone you're in, but we have to start them indoors.

I got involved in our fledgling community garden (went to one meeting and wound up writing grants for them). I'm really interested in your experiences with this. It sounds like you had to apply and were lucky to get it? That's so encouraging....

I ordered more seeds last night from Johnny's Seeds, a company I love, (they specialize in seed for the home gardener). One more tomato (with a name like "Rose" I had to do it), shallots, leeks, fennel, thai basil, and one kind of cuke. I still can't find gherkin cukes, which are squat and round. I tried to grow lemon cukes one year, they did not work for me.

I've never grown anything in the onion family so it will be interesting to experiment with the seeds. I am going to start most of this stuff indoors, esp. the toms, eggplant and peppers.

Yes, you have to sign up for a waiting list in advance and I guess I was lucky to get a plot. We'll see. Be careful what you wish for . . . :)

I'm also doing community gardening for work. Planning a neighborhood garden fest April 17.

Here is a link that might be useful: Johnny's Seeds

Lpink,
Is this the gherkin you're looking for? I can highly recommend Territorial. Their test gardens are just about 40 miles south of me. Awesome place to visit. They have a gherkin that sounds like what you describe (linked below).
Let me know if you want me to see if I can find a package here locally. Not all of their seeds hit a local store, but lots of them do and several different retail choices.

Deanna

Here is a link that might be useful: Territiorial Seed

lpink, leeks have to be started indoors here too, I planted from seeds the last two years and got "baby leeks" about the size of a pencil, LOL. Dixondale sells plants but they sell pretty large amounts.

Annie

Thanks Deanna, yeah, that's the kind of gherkin I meant. I grew them one year with mixed results, it was a tough year for cukes that year. From the description I may try growing them in the planters on the front porch. I tried sweet peas last year and they were a total bust. They got some kind of disease and died before they barely got started. I blame it on bad seed, thank you Martha Stewart.

After moving, I am growing a lot of things in pots in my back yard, and I have a lemon tree and a lime tree in very large wine barrel planters. I'm also growing tomatoes and peppers in large pots, but other than that, I grow mostly herbs. I used to grow artichokes, but they take up a lot of space, and the plants get spindly after a few years. My ex-roommate in Venice grew zucchini, but they get very large if you do not harvest them in time, and they are tough when large.

I think you should grow what you like that you cannot always find reasonably at the market. I grow peppers just because I like to have them around, and I use them a lot. There are mushrooms growing under my lime tree, but I don't know if they are edible or not.

Lars

I have no place for a vegetable garden unless I dig up my front lawn. The back yard is small, narrow, and mostly pool and concrete. What isn't pool or concrete is the dog's spot. But this thread inspires me to at least try some herbs in large pots. I love having fresh herbs to snip at will.