Your county cooperative extension office should have lists or publications, usually free to the public, of what veggies or fruits or berries grow best in your locale as well as provide specifics on how to grow them. That is one of their primary purposes. Otherwise, just grow what you like to eat :-)

I would caution not to overplant. You do not need much for just two people unless you plan on doing a lot of canning or have willing donees to receive your excess. And try to space out your harvest, otherwise you can become overwhelmed with produce. Look into succession planting.

Also, you will likely get much more specific information if you were to post this in the Midwest Gardening and Vegetable Gardening forums.

Wow! Thank you, both. Beesneeds, you clearly know this area very well. What a wealth of helpful info. Maybe I should just stick with pollinator gardening and visit the local markets for produce. That might be a good approach for the first year. I plan to plant a hedge of native shrubs and fruiting trees, anyway. So, I can maximize my initial investment there.

Martha

Thank you Martha. I scoured the area along with several years before settling out on what is good for shopping out vs growing my own. Even when I had bumper crop years it's always worth it to hit the local places for future seed stock and for the stuff I wasn't growing.

I'm going to put a plug in here for Daisy Farms, located in Dowagiac, Michigan. I got my asparagus crowns from them, 200 of them and 198 of them grew. I just ordered strawberry plants and horseradish from them a couple of weeks ago, they will be shipped in mid-May.

I live in Northern/Western Michigan, about 50 miles North of Grand Rapids. I don't seem to have any issues at all with growing a LOT of vegetables, although some tomatoes really dislike our short growing season and I find that hot peppers must be started inside pretty early, I've already got mine started. I've grown various sweet peppers, from Ajvarski to California Wonder to sweet banana, they've all done fine.

I don't buy separate cucumbers for eating fresh or for pickling, I get Miss Pickler or Northern Pickling, whatever my local feed store gets in bulk.

I have trouble with spinach, it bolts too quickly to get much use out of it, it goes from cool to really hot too quickly for spinach to like it, so I plant lettuces, bok choi, leaf amaranth and mizuna instead. Snap peas do well as long as you get them in early enough, although I've had more trouble with chipmunks eating them than I have had growing them. Deer love them too. (sigh)

We eat a lot of dried beans and since I don't want to mess with supports, I go for the bush types. Varieties which have done well for me here are Taylor Horticultural, various types of cranberry beans, mayacoba, kebarika, red kidney type beans and soldier beans. Michigan grows a lot of dried beans and they do well pretty much everywhere in the state, I think.

Green beans I just buy whatever is at the feed store in bulk, from Provider to Blue Lake, they're all the same to me. I do buy Royal Burgundy because I like them and think they stay firmer when canned.

I've had no luck with brussels sprouts, our season just doesn't seem long enough and I get tiny little sprouts about the time things start freezing. Cabbage does really well, though. Broccoli always seems to get "strong", but aspabroc is amazing, I just keep cutting those little florets and they are always sweet and good.

Winter squash is something I always grow, and we just like butternut best. I've still got butternut in storage from last year, so it stores well too, good thing to put into that root cellar! We also like the blue Haikodo and the red Kuri, and various acorn types, including Carnival. Delicata is good, but it likes a long season so it's not consistent.

I have raspberries, a mix of Caroline (my favorite) and Latham, both do well. I don't have blackberries.

The asparagus I got from Daisy Farms and it was Jersey Giant. I'm very pleased with it. The strawberries I ordered was a mixture they have, June bearing, and I don't know how I'll like them because I don't have them yet. I had a lot of trouble with Ozark Beauties, they got everything from fungus to some kind of rot to mildew, no matter what I did I never even got enough berries to eat fresh and I planted them three years ago. They are in a raised bed and I have terrible luck growing anything in raised beds, for some reason. My raised beds are going to be repurposed for early spring greens and lettuce or they may become cold frames with the addition of some old windows, and I'm putting the berries into a different/sunnier spot. If lettuce won't grow in those blasted raised beds I'm tearing them apart and giving up on them entirely, although it does make it much more convenient for the deer to eat everything in them without having to lower their heads too far...

Good luck, don't start too big. I know lots of people who have just given up altogether because they were so excited to start and underestimated the time and work that went into their gardening.

Annie

I have very small veggie gardens and am in a growing zone that's very similar to yours... I also save seed and tend to stick with OP/heirlooms, so thought I'd mention that I absolutely love Muncher cucumbers! For not-too-hot peppers I grow Anaheim, Portugal Long Hot, Hungarian Wax, etc. For sweet peppers I've had good luck with King of the North. If you grow zucchini, I'd recommend Black Beauty -- it's a much smaller bush form plant. Good luck with your new gardens!

Debruyn seeds in Zeeland, MI is about the cheapest place you can order asparagus crowns online. They only have Jersey Knight and Purple Passion though. I have both and like both but Purple Passion is my favorite. They also have a store front. Zeeland is between the lake and Grand Rapids. I've also ordered potatoes from them at a great price.

I've probably tried a dozen different broccoli over the years. Of those Emerald Crown is my favorite. I also really like the Aspabroc that Annie mentioned. I bought the Aspabroc seed at Park seed and sent some to Annie a few years ago for her mother who loves broccoli.

Ajvarski is a really good sweet pepper that Annie turned me on to. Sweet Success is my favorite cucumber for fresh eating.

Jack, I've been to Debruyn Seeds, I love the old fashioned "farm co-op" stores. Dad used to take me to the one here when I was a little girl, and I loved it then too. The old farmers would sit around waiting for their feed to be ground or trucks loaded, and talk about cows or horses or puppies, how the hay was growing, whether the price of corn would stay up. One would always buy a little girl a cold Grape Nehi from that metal cooler with the glass bottles, and there were always a couple of farm dogs to play with. It was my favorite place in the world, next to the library.

And thanks again for that aspabroc, I'm growing some again this year!

Annie

Annie - there is a store here in KC called Planters Seed and Spice that is probably very much like Debruyns and it's my favorite gardening store. It's been around for almost 100 years. It's in the River Market area 1/2 block from the KC Farmer's Market. Only 2 miles from my office!

They have racks and racks of seed from at least a couple dozen seed companies as well as a wall of bulk seed bins. In March they have a dozen or so varieties of seed potatoes and about the same number of Dixondale onion start varieties. They have all of the seed starting supplies you'd ever need and all of the most popular potting mixes including my favorite Promix BX ( I need to run over and buy a bale this week).

They also sell bulk spices.

Here is an article from a few years ago about the store.

Thank you, all. This is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. My SIL lives in Hamilton and recommended Debruyns. I’m definitely going to have to go on some Saturday road trips around West Michigan.

Annie, I’m sorry to hear about your bad luck with strawberries. I’ve had several patches in different yards over the years. They always seem to grow like weeds and produce more than I can keep up with. The only variety I remember was Honeyoye, or something close to that. I prefer the spring fruiting varieties, just to get the season over and move on to cherries and blueberries.

Well, you’ve got my mind swirling. Let’s see how busy my job has gotten by planting time. That will probably shape my plans as much as anything.

Martha