I’ve grown hundreds of different vegetable varieties over the years, but the ones I rely on most are what I call my ‘effortless performers’. People sometimes ask how I enjoy plentiful harvests, despite being a bit lazy! The truth is surprisingly simple: it all starts with smart choices right now.
Among the thousands of vegetable varieties out there, only a tiny handful are so reliable and so easy to grow that they’ve actually won awards. These are the true standouts – the Oscar winners of the gardening world if you will! – and I’ve used them to create the ultimate low-effort, high-reward garden plan that you can try for yourself. This plan uses just four small beds, but promises plenty to pick for months.
Choosing the Best Vegetable Varieties
I just love this planning stage – it’s an opportunity to dream of next season and plant the foundations to success! When I choose varieties for my own garden, I’m looking for a combination of three things:
Reliability: These varieties need to perform well, even in tricky weather. If they stand up well to pests and diseases, then all the better.
Productivity: If it barely fills the harvest trug, it’s not making the list. I want varieties that guarantee hearty harvests!
Taste: It needs to give exceptional flavor, because what’s the point if it doesn’t taste amazing?
Each of the varieties we’ll be looking at today has either won a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit, or is an All-America Selections winner. To make it onto either of these prestigious lists they’ve undergone rigorous trials by horticultural professionals to prove their superior garden performance. So if you want to skip the guesswork and opt for something you just know will do well, these are the ones to go for.
The garden plan we’re putting together today will be available to download as a free sample plan in our Garden Planner, and I’ll share all the details of how to get the plan at the end.
![Lettuce]()
Cut-and-come-again salads offer multiple pickings for little effort
Bed 1: Sensational Salads
Our first bed is all about fast, high-value returns – those crops we’ll be harvesting again and again. And nothing says ‘fast’ better than lettuce, so my first crop is the classic variety ‘Salad Bowl’. This is one of those varieties that just never lets you down. It holds both a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit and an All-America Selection because it keeps producing tender leaves for ages without bolting (going to seed). Keep cutting the leaves, and it’ll keep producing more. In the hungry gap of early spring, a cut-and-come-again lettuce like this is an absolute hero – maximum value for minimum fuss!
Award-winning alternatives: Bronze Beauty, Chartwell, Sandy
In Bed 1 we’ll also plant spinach. The variety I’ve chosen has beautiful pointed leaves and great resistance to diseases such as downy mildew. ‘Mikado’ is a truly stonking hardy green because it is far less likely to bolt than many other varieties, which means you can expect to pick its tender leaves for much, much longer. It’s a delight in everything from stir-fries to salads.
Award-winning alternatives: Giant Noble, Medania, Melody
![Salad onions]()
Salad onions are fast-growing and highly versatile in the kitchen
And we can’t have a salad bed without including some salad onions! My pick is an Award of Garden Merit winner called ‘Ishikura’, which grows long and straight. It’s just the ticket for anything from salads to stir-fries, and copes with cold really well too, making it a great option for sowing nice and early.
Award-winning alternatives: Guardsman, Warrior, White Lisbon
Early salads can be started from the second half of winter in pots or plug trays of all-purpose potting mix. Germinate them indoors at room temperature, before moving them out into a greenhouse or cold frame once the seedlings have poked through. They should be ready to plant five to six weeks later, depending on your climate. If it’s still cold, cover them with row cover fabric to keep the worst of the chill off for the first few weeks till they find their feet.
Hardy salads like this are just fantastic because they’re so forgiving, and they’re just perfect for sowing early in the year.
![Sungold' tomatoes]()
Super-sweet 'Sungold' tomatoes are easy to grow and highly productive
Bed 2: Summer Staples
And now for the real crowd-pleasers! Let’s start with tomatoes, and a sweet flavor-bomb of a cherry tomato called ‘Sungold’. These golden tomatoes have earned a place thanks to their insane sweetness, disease resistance and unstoppable productivity. If I had to grow just one tomato forever… well, let’s not even think about that, but this could well be it!
Award-winning alternatives: Lizzano F1, Purple Zebra, Sakura
Right at the back of this bed, climbing up supports, grow some ‘Cobra’ beans. This climbing snap bean produces glossy, straight pods over a ridiculously long season. It’s productive, pest resistant, and the flavor’s exceptional. This is the bean I always recommend to new growers because it’s just so easy.
Award-winning alternatives: Hunter, Kentucky Blue, Seychelles
Then lastly for this bed, let’s grow a couple of ‘Marketmore’ cucumbers. This award-winning cucumber is famous for producing loads of straight, dark green cucumbers, even in less than perfect weather, so it’s great for growing outdoors. It never develops a bitter taste, unlike some other varieties.
Award-winning alternatives: Diva, Lili, Saladmore Bush F1
![Beet 'Boltardy']()
'Boltardy' is one of the most reliable beets available
Bed 3: Roots ‘n’ All
Our third bed focuses on those reliable backbone crops every gardener leans on: carrots, beets, potatoes and onions.
Carrot ‘Flyaway’ is an Award of Garden Merit champion and widely considered to be one of the most dependable carrots you can grow thanks to its very high resistance to pesky carrot flies, which can burrow into the roots. It’s got a great color, and is sensationally sweet and crunchy, so into the plan it goes.
Award-winning alternatives: Imperator, Maestro, Purple Haze F1
Beet ‘Boltardy’ is practically legendary among gardeners and, yes, another award winner. It’s slow to bolt – and bolt resistance is a big deal for any root crop. It produces smooth, sweet roots, even in changeable conditions. This is one of my personal ‘every single year’ varieties – it’s a total must.
Award-winning alternatives: Alto, Perfected Detroit, Ruby Queen
![Potato 'Pink Fir Apple']()
'Pink Fir Apple' is a classic salad potato with quirky good looks
It’s worth growing a few different types of potato if you can, but if we’re going to pick just one it’s hard to beat the classic ‘Charlotte’. This award winner is justly a firm favorite for its creamy texture and gorgeous flavor – perfect for salads but just as good simply served up steaming warm with lashings of butter and pepper! Position your potatoes along the side of the bed furthest from the midday and afternoon sun so they won’t shade other, lower-growing crops in this bed.
Award-winning alternatives: Clancy F1, Foremost, Pink Fir Apple
And finally, an essential: onion ‘Sturon’. Reliable and with good resistance to bolting, this one is a super onion for storing too, so if you want bulbs that last well into winter, this is the variety to go for.
Award-winning alternatives: Red Baron, Super Star F1, Valencia
There we have it – a beautiful bed of staples. Simple, productive and dependable.
![Kale 'Black Tuscan']()
Wrinkly kale is a showstopper in the garden as well as the kitchen
Bed 4: Brassicas
Our fourth bed will keep your kitchen stocked for with nutritious cabbage-family crops from summer and on into the colder months, starting with my absolute favorite variety of kale. ‘Black Tuscan’ is a Cavolo Nero type that’s bagged itself an Award of Garden Merit for its exceptionally tasty, cold-resistant, deeply wrinkled leaves. Hardy, productive, and it looks absolutely cracking in the garden to boot – It definitely ranks among the most architecturally stunning vegetables you can grow!
Award-winning alternatives: Prizm F1, Rubybor F1, Yurok F1
Cabbage ‘Greyhound’ is a classic that has held its award for literally decades. ‘Greyhound’ matures early, produces pointed heads, and is extremely reliable in cooler climates. It can be sown from the end of winter right through to summer to harvest its handsome heads from summer and on into autumn.
Award-winning alternatives: Caraflex, Dynamo F1, Stonehead
![Purple sprouting broccoli]()
Although expensive in stores, sprouting broccoli is cheap and easy to grow
Purple sprouting broccoli is one of the highest-value vegetables because they’re so expensive to buy, and it’s one of the finest in my humble opinion! It may take its time to mature – you plant it in summer to pick the following spring – but once it gets going, the harvests are astounding. I’m opting for a sprouting type called ‘Claret’ with stunning purple spears.
Award-winning alternatives: Artwork F1, Mendocino, Skytree F1
So that’s bed four – the cheerful cabbage family! Grow these and your garden will be kept productive far beyond the warmer months.
![Lazy varieties]()
Use these four principles to assure superb harvests for minimal effort
4 Tips to Get the Best Return For Your Gardening Efforts
While all the specific varieties in this plan are important, it’s also the thinking behind the plan that makes it work so well.
1. Spread the harvests: Each bed offers crops that will give harvests at slightly different times, keeping the garden productive from early spring right through winter. Your future self will thank you for this!
2. Prioritize high-value: Crops like purple sprouting broccoli and delicious, flavor-packed cherry tomatoes can be pricey to buy fresh, so growing them yourself feels doubly rewarding!
3. Mix fast and slow: Bed 1, our Salad Bed, gives super-quick returns; Bed 4, the cabbage-family bed, is the long game; and Beds 2 and 3 sit somewhere in between. This ensures you can be harvesting something most weeks of the year.
4. Choose trial tested: Award-winning plants aren’t chosen randomly. They’re tested across different soils, climates and conditions. For gardeners, especially new ones, they’re one of the best tools we have for success.
![Garden Planner]()
You don't even need to make the effort to create a plan - just use this one in our Garden Planner!
One thing we haven’t touched on in much detail is exactly when to plant everything because, honestly, it’s different for everyone, and if you use the Garden Planner, your plan will show you. The Garden Planner uses data from your nearest weather station to calculate reliable sowing, planting, and harvesting dates for each of these crops, tailored to your precise location – no guesswork needed!
If you want to give it a whirl, you can enjoy a totally free, no obligation 7 day trial. You won’t need to share any payment details to try it out, and you can even download or print your plan to keep forever before the trial ends if you want to – though I suspect you may just find it has too many useful features to it to give it up that easily! To find the plan shown in this video, open the Garden Planner, click on New Plan, then click on the Sample Plans tab. Scroll down to select The Lazy Gardener’s Best Vegetables, then check your Plant List to see your personalized growing dates, or feel free to tweak the plan to suit your needs and tastes.
Have fun, and if you have questions, use the Live Chat button in the Garden Planner to talk to our lovely customer support team. They’re all keen gardeners too, so you know you can trust their advice!
