Vegetable gardening in 2026

[luzula]

Do you want to read about our vegetable gardening plans for the year? : D Perhaps it can take your mind off less fun things for a while (of which there are unfortunately many in the world)...

In 2025, we had six beds that were 15 m x 0,75 m. These were respectively: onions, Brassica, potatoes, legumes, squash and corn, and root vegetables (carrots, beets, parsnips). Besides that, we had various small other beds and pallets and a timbered hot bed, as well as a south-facing wall for tomatoes and the like.

Lessons learned: most things went really well! But here's what we'll do differently next year:
- SPACE OUT the various kinds of cabbage in time! We had different kinds, but they all were summer varieties which we planted at the same time, so we were drowning in it at some points and then going without later.
- We grew potatoes in earth just fine, but our experiment in growing them in hay on top of grassland failed, because 1) we did not use enough hay, and 2) we covered the potatoes in hay so that they had to struggle through it, instead of letting them sprout first and then putting hay round the sprouts. Will do it differently next year.
- Be better at using the spaces before/after/physically inbetween crops for either green manure or quick crops like salad or radishes.
- Give the beets and carrots a bit more manure.
- It's been interesting to see how much of our needs 15 m of bed provides. We are pretty well set with onions/leeks and Brassica for the year with one bed each, but for potatoes and dry legumes, for example, it's far from enough. We'll increase those for 2026 and then evaluate again.
- Our potatoes began to rot after putting them in the root cellar. We fixed this by weeding out the rotting ones and putting the rest to dry for two weeks in the cellar with a dehumidifier. This thickens the skin and allows small breaks in the skin to heal, and now they seem fine in the humid root cellar. We'll do that at the outset next year.
- Watering by hand was doable last year. We did get a pump that pumped the water from our well to a tank near the vegetable garden, which was good, but given that housemate will be starting a small market garden this year, watering by hand will NOT be doable. Housemate is applying for a small EU grant to buy, among other things, a drip irrigation system. I definitely won't miss the watering cans! (Though we'll still need to water the fruit tree saplings by hand if it gets dry.)

In 2026, we will have twelve beds instead of six, as well as a 15 m x 4,5 m polytunnel (though only 40% of the polytunnel is for household use). And there's the various small beds etc, of course, which we can reserve for more niche crops and experiments.

Here's the plan:
Beds 1 and 2: Potatoes. We will also grow the equivalent of 1,5-2 more beds in hay. Most of our potatoes last year were saved for planting this year. Varieties: Connect is popular for a reason, the most resistant against leaf blight and a great harvest. This will be our main crop. Amandine is more susceptible, but it's so delicious we have to grow it again. Blå Mandel: complete failure, it's a variety from northern Sweden and not meant for the south apparently. Blaue Annelise: a DELIGHT, this potato is dark blue throughout and keeps its color when cooked. Tasty, too, and vigorous--it sneaked a tendril over to the legume bed and made potatoes there, which I've never seen a potato do. Maria and Carolus were okay, no notes. Perhaps we'll try to get some exciting heirloom variety to try next year, or try a different early variety than Maria. But otherwise I think we're set with potato varieties.

Bed 3: Allium. Same as last year: about 6 m yellow onions, 4 m red onions, 5 m leeks. Only question is whether to buy small bulbs for planting or whether to pre-cultivate the onions from seed and plant out. I lean towards the former for 2026, because the latter is more work, though you can't tell the difference in result. Another possibility is to make our own small bulbs for 2027 from seed. After the onions are harvested: probably green manure (though the leeks will stand through the winter). Besides the main bed: 1) we have put a variety of (hopefully) overwintering bulbs in the polytunnel in November 2025 for early spring onions, 2) we have a small bed of perennial scallops-like onions which we planted in 2025, also for early harvest, 3) we have a 3-4 m bed of garlic, which we planted in November 2026, 4) we'll plant some of the 2025 onions and let them go to seed, to use in 2027. Oh, and also I want to try growing one of those sweet onions that you can eat raw!

Bed 4: Brassica. Learning from 2025, this year we will grow:
- Swedes/rutabagas
- Kale, a LOW variety this time which will not require support. We will also plant the kale later than we did in 2025, and grow some fast crop before it, such as quick-growing turnips.
- Black kale/Tuscan kale. Plant later than in 2025, and grow some fast crop before it, such as spinach or lettuce.
- Brussels sprouts.
- Early Savoy cabbage. After it, probably rapini "broccoli".
- Late Savoy cabbage. Mmm, I love Savoy cabbage. Before the late one, some variety of daikon/rättika.
- Napa cabbage. Before it, kohlrabi.
- Broccoli (Piracicaba) A variety with lots of smaller sprouts, which we grew in 2025 and took seeds from.
- Broccoli (Rasmus). A variety with a tightly gathered head (that is, the ordinary kind).
- Broccoli. A variety that (hopefully) survives winter and gives purple broccoli sprouts in the spring.
- The pointed purple cabbage Kalibos, aiming to have it mature between the two Savoys.
- A longstoring winter cabbage. Some fast crop before it, such as radishes.
Notice that most of the fast crops are also Brassicas, which is good for keeping the Brassicas in one place in the crop rotation.

Bed 5: Sweet corn (9 m) and sweet potato (6 m). Corn is totally realistic, we grew it this year without problems and it was yummy. You have to pre-cultivate it inside, though. Sweet potato, though, is more of a long shot, but it would be cool to try. It is possible to cultivate in southern Sweden if you pamper it, and we could get the seedlings for free from a research project.

Bed 6: Root vegetables. The bulk of this will be carrots for storage, and also parsnips for storage. We'll also have some summer carrots, a fancy purple carrot just for fun, perhaps try out burdock roots, and have another go at black salsify. But probably not common salsify or parsley root, I wasn't that into them.

Bed 7: Beets etc. Early red beets, red beets for storage, yellow beets, white beets, polka beets. Mmmm, beets. Maybe some sugar beets just to experiment with making syrup? Also chard, which is the same species as beet. And some odd ones out, such as celeriac and fennel.

Bed 8: Squash and cucumber. We had seven summer squash plants in 2025, which honestly was a bit much! We'll go down to five: green zucchini and white patty pan which we had last year, and also I want to try yellow crookneck. As for other Cucurbita pepo, we'll keep the same as last year: some acorn squash (yum!), a cute little winter squash called Rondini, and a naked-seeded pumpkin for delicious seeds to eat, but the flesh was actually also pretty good. Housemate wants to scale up the latter and have a whole bed of them for pumpkin seeds, but...so much excess pumpkin! Maybe we could feed some of it to the neighbor's sheep. Then for C. maxima: in 2025 we only had one variety of that, since we wanted to take seed from it and didn't want to bother with isolating the flowers. We had a Russian variety, Kroshka, which is delicious and matured well, but it did not have a tremendous amount of fruit per plant. Maybe it wanted more manure. This year we'll try out more of them: Buttercup, Guatemalan Blue, and Uchiki Kuri. And we'll give butternuts another try. Now after curing, last year's LOOK like they're mature, with those pale brownish-colored skins, but alas, the seeds aren't done. For cucumbers, we'll have some hardy Swedish heirlooms for pickling.

Bed 9: Peas. I want three different marrow peas: an early low one, a middling one, and a high late one. Marrow peas are delicious and we didn't have much of them last year. Then two kinds of sugar snap peas (yum!), an early low one and a higher later one. Then a blue multipurpose pea, can be eaten as a young pod, as a less sweet marrow pea, or as dry pea. This is a bit more than a third of the bed, and the rest will be dry peas of various kinds, mostly grey peas either firm or mushy. Looking forward to trying different varieties of heirloom grey peas! We tried housemate's Carlin pea recently which we grew last year, and it was delicious.

Bed 10: Beans. We want two different runner beans, one to eat the pods and one with delicious large white beans that we grew last year. Unfortunately this means we can't take seeds unless we isolate them. Then we want a low-growing early wax bean, and two varieties of high-growing later beans, also for eating the whole pod (perhaps a green one and a purple one). The rest will be low-growing beans for drying (which can of course also be eaten fresh if we want): a Borlotto, a brown bean from Öland which did quite well last year, and some other Swedish heirlooms my sister gave me.

Bed 11: Broad beans (=fava beans), pretty much entirely: they are hardy, competitive, don't need support, and since the beans are large, there's less shelling work. And they're delicious! But we'll also have a few experimental meters of two different species of (hopefully) sweet lupine.

Bed 12: Mostly tomatoes, and also some New Zealand spinach. Most of it will be hardy, early, Russian bush tomatoes of the paste type, for canning (varieties: Auria Dwarf, Zolotoy Potok, Raketa, Irishka), but also some Sub-Arctic Plenty for early salad tomatoes.

Hot bed: this is for early spring vegetables such as radishes, salad, spinach, Siberian kale, tatsoi, etc. In the summer, we'll probably use it for bush tomatoes.

Various pallet beds: we planted strawberries in two of these last year. But the others will probably be used to grow seeds for 2027 and onward, some of them for biannual species that we saved from last year: white beets and swede/rutabaga (currently in the root cellar), parsnips which are overwintering in place, parsley if it survives the winter which it very well might not, and also either the Tuscan kale or the Brussels sprouts, if they survive the winter (but not both, because they'd interbreed). Also daikon/rättika, which is an annual, if we like the variety we grow.

Polytunnel: I am stoked for this! : D We'll have four six-meter-long beds for the household, so: bell pepper, aubergine, the less hardy chiles. Then salad cucumber, honey melon, and watermelon. Then one bed of the less hardy (or late) indeterminate tomato varieties. And one bed of various experiments, such as artichoke, ginger, tomatillo, physalis, etc. We'll experiment with what to grow under the tomatoes, too (basil, for sure, and there's an interesting-looking non-vining melon recommended to grow under tomatoes).

The south wall of the barn: last year we grew tomatoes, bell peppers, chiles, aubergines, cucumbers, and melon here (the aubergines in a mini greenhouse; they were not really hardy enough otherwise). This year we'll mostly have hardier/earlier indeterminate tomatoes here, along with some chiles and a round yellow cucumber, and in the small greenhouse another aubergine variety so we can take seeds from both that and the one in the tunnel. Because of course I want a cool purple-and-white striped aubergine along with the normal-looking one.

Well, this has been an abbreviated version of our vegetable gardening plans. Let me know if you want more detail on anything. *g*

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

That was fascinating, soothing and I learned something of vital importance.

Low FODMAP diet issues

Beet & chard are the same plant! I can still eat some beets!

How many meetings did it take to agree on all the details?