What veg to grow this year

[FidgetPie]

DH and I are about to plan our veg patch for this year (our 4th year of growing veg). We have a fair sized patch at the end of our garden - with 4 empty 'bays' each about 2m by 1m.

Any suggestions for good veg that don't take too much maintenance gratefully received (we work and have young DD).

Things we have done before that were successful: Potatoes, lettuce, onions, courgettes, carrots, runner & broad beans and Tomatoes (we have a green house).

We don't need fruit as we also have (thanks to previous owner): raspberries, apples and rhubarb.

No strawberries?

How about coming at it from a different angle. What do you like to eat?

Kids love raw peas. They can pick and shell them themselves straight off the pod. I am jealous of the size of your veg patch BTW.

• Beetroot

- Leeks - Sweet potatoes

I found spinach and chard grew well with little help on my part - lots of slugs and snails though. Sadly rejected all round by my DP and kids so won't be growing again this year.
Herbs? Coriander and rocket are easy - sow in batches to prevent a glut. Spring onions were nice too - I bought some small seedlings and grew them on.
Cauliflower were easier than I had expected too. Cute little heads - eat them young or they taste a bit strong.

I love to grow spring onions too - very easy and we love them. Peppers? My dad once grew sweetcorn very successfully in a greenhouse.

How about butternut squash? Havent done them myself but they should be doable.

On my veg list for this year are tomatoes, garlic, beetroot, lettuces, squash, potatoes and aubergines.

We have raspberries and rhubarb but also planning to put in some strawberries. Planted a blackcurrant and redcurrant bush last year but I think it will be too soon for very much from them.

I have had success with courgettes before but not doing them this year as never know what to do with them all.

Mixed lettuces were great - fantastic to have a summer without buying bags of ready-prepared lettuce leaves and then throwing half of them out

We're growing peppers and dwarf beans this year as well as blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, tomatoes, squash and courgettes.

Thanks so much for these suggestions - they are great

Good point Tiggyb about what do we like to eat. DDs favourite food is broccoli, but we didn't get much joy with that in the past - took a long time and a lot of space and we ended up with a tiny amount - not sure if we were doing something wrong (and the amount DD eats of it we'd prob have to grow it exclusively!)

But in terms of the other suggestions and things we like and eat a lot of, I really like the idea of peas, butternut squash, spring onions, chard and peppers so I will test those out in addition to our 'regulars'

Beanandspud - I know what you mean about courgettes - we halved the number of plants last year and still ended up with courgette curry, courgette stir fry etc etc. one of the nicest things we found to with them was cut them into chip style chunks (keeping the skin on) roast (with a bit of olive oil) in a really hot oven (so not for too long to avoid them going mushy) then serve with some grated parmasan and black pepper. Even after courgettes every day for a week it was still appealing!

Thanks again to all of you - i can't wait to get started

Greenhouse I am growing - tomatoes (9 plants), mini cucumbers (3 plants), chillies (4 plants), maybe some peppers, won't be doing aubergines again as they weren't too successful.

Perpetual spinach very little work, plant now, I love mizuna salad leaves you can cut it at least 4 times, carrots so easy (baby ones quicker and more popular with kids).

I grew butternut squash 2 years back. You need a lot of space- think of pumkins etc- the stems trail for up to 9 feet.

You also need to store carefully once picked- mine rotted and were inedible- :(

My low maintenance favourites are peas, sweetcorn, beetroot and physalis. I'm always surprised at how well the physalis does.