A Common Life
Welcome to A Common Life where Morgan and Taylor offer month-by-month gardening advice to help your garden thrive. We also share our personal journey in seasonal living, aiming to foster a deeper connection with others, nature, and our Creator. Our hope is to encourage and equip others who are on a similar journey and to provide a space for community around these ideals.
A Common Life
My favorite, easy-to-grow plants for the home garden!
In this episode I talk about my favorite, easy to grow plants for the home garden!
Plants mentioned:
Mint
Lacinato Kale
Lemon Balm
Yarrow (It’s not related to carrots lol)
Comfrey
Fennel
Okra
Find us Elsewhere:
Instagram - @_ACommonLife - Morgan
Community Newsletter - The Common
Twitter (X) - @_ACommonLife
Twitter - @Taylor__Myers
LinkedIn - Taylor Myers
DM us on the Socials or email us at Taylor@acommonlife.co
Music on the podcast was composed by Kevin Dailey. The artist is Garden Friend. The track is the instrumental version of “On a Cloud”
Hey everybody, welcome to a Common Life podcast. In this episode I'm going to be talking about my favorite plants to grow in the home garden and, yeah, I hope you enjoy. And yeah, I hope you enjoy. So the first thing that I think about when someone asks me, hey, what are some easy plants to grow, like something that's just not going to fail, the first plant I think about is mint, because it just grows. It takes over. You don't have to do anything with mint.
Speaker 1:But the truth is I do not like mint. It actually does take over. You can't really kill it. I mean you can, you can spray it and if you pulled it all up it'll stop growing. But I also don't like the taste of it. It's just too strong in teas and I mean, what are you going to do? Are you going to chew on it? I mean I guess you could make some mint ice cream if you wanted to. But generally speaking, it doesn't have a pretty bloom, it's just kind of there and it's kind of like a little novelty. But it is easy to grow and it grows really well. But I would never recommend that necessarily to someone to grow. So just because a plant is easy to grow doesn't necessarily mean you should grow it. But, with that being said, a lot of people like to grow mint. People like mint, they like to grow it. They like it in their gardens. It provides some texture and they grow it. So just because the plants that I'm going to bring up here are easy to grow and I like them, doesn't mean that you'll like them. And some people might say these plants are too aggressive and they take over and some of the things that I like about these plants other people might not like. Things that I like about these plants other people might not like. So just keep all of that in mind when I'm going through these plants. I hope that at the minimum, you get encouraged to know there are some cool plants out there that you can grow. It's not super hard. Okay, let's dive in. So the first plant I want to talk about it will not take over your garden and it is a must in the vegetable garden, and it's kale Specifically.
Speaker 1:I love to grow lacinato kale and it is super easy to grow. I start them always, start them by seed and start them indoors. They grow inside nothing. Super special. I start them always, start them by seed and start them indoors. They grow inside. Nothing super special. I plant them outside. They always seemingly do well. I do a lacinato or a oh gosh, it is the Toscano kale. So if you just Google lacinato, l-a-c-i-n-a-t-o, it'll be in the show notes or Toscano kale, you'll see these beautiful dark green, bluish leaves that I just I feel healthier just by looking at them. Their taste is so good, it's a staple in our garden and they're pretty easy to grow. We love to make kale chips out of them, we love to stir fry with them and we love to chop them up and add them in our salad. Super good for you. Kale, it's a must, must grow for the garden and it's super easy to grow.
Speaker 1:So the next plant I want to tell you about is lemon balm, and it is actually mint's cousin and some people are going to be like what are you talking about? You just said you don't like mint and now you're going to do lemon balm. And lemon balm does not have a pretty flower, but we love lemon balm in our family because it grows voraciously and we grow it all throughout the summer and it forms the base of our herbal teas in the summer. So it's a great, a great plant to make tea out of. It has a nice herbal flavor. It's not too overpowering and we use it all summer and it grows. It's super easy. It comes back. We've had a couple of really cold winters. It keeps coming back and it doesn't really spread, so it's a winner. Lemon balm, you should grow it.
Speaker 1:The other thing that we love to grow is raspberries. Raspberries they will get outside of their area If you're not careful they will spread. And generally the raspberries that I know, they all have little thorns but they're more on the annoying side and less on the hurt side, if that makes sense. But our kids love raspberries I love raspberries and they never make it inside because we're not growing enough to actually harvest enough. We always go out there when they're ripe and we eat them before we step away from the patch. Super fun to eat and grow. A fresh raspberry is hard to beat and also we use their leaves for herbal teas. Morgan loves the raspberry flavor and all the benefits that it comes. I know it's marketed in the grocery stores for women's health, but it's also great for just getting a ton of vitamin C and we use it all summer long.
Speaker 1:So another plant that we love to grow that is super easy is yarrow. It's, I think it's a cousin of carrot. I'm pretty sure I could be totally wrong there. But yarrow, we have it in our herb garden and it comes back every year. It has a really delicate looking leaf, but don't let that fool you, it is super hardy. It blooms a beautiful white flower that does great in arrangements and I don't know. There's just something comforting about it being there in the garden. It doesn't require any attention or care. It comes back every year. It's slowly growing and spreading as you would expect it would, but nothing outrageous. And spreading as you would expect it would, but nothing outrageous. We do use the leaves, sometimes in teas throughout the year, and sometimes we use the flowers as well. But we do cut the flowers and use them in arrangements a lot, and you can also take the leaves and make them into like a poultice or like a wet mash and apply it to skin wounds. That has been something that's been done for centuries.
Speaker 1:Another plant that is new to us, that we haven't had in our garden a long time, but it is hard to get rid of, but we love it. It's called comfrey and this popular plant, especially with organic gardeners and homesteaders because it sends a root way down into the soil, and what it does is it harvests and mines nutrients deep down into the soil, brings them up to the top of the soil in its leaves and deposits those minerals and nutrients in the upper layer of the soil, where most plants are growing, and so a lot of people use it for its mulching properties. It grows really well, doesn't require a ton of fertility, and so it's going to grow. It's going to put on a ton of luscious green leaves and you can use those leaves in like compost brews or herbal brews for your plants, or you can use them for mulch. It's just a great plant, a companion plant for your herbal gardens, and it's just easy to grow. You don't have to do anything and it's going to come back.
Speaker 1:So now, all right, let me tell you a quick caveat about comfrey. So we had comfrey, comfrey, this comfrey plant that we got. We got to and it was given to us by our friends and we had them in a pot, and I had this pot in a corner of our garden and the comfrey was growing and it kept drying out. It kept drying out and like wilted and I was like, oh gosh, it's gonna die, and then I'd hit it with some water boom, it would perk back up. They did. We did this for months, so much so that the roots grew out of the pot and down into the soil. And when I finally got around to planting the comfrey in its final home and destination, I picked those pots up and ripped the roots from the bottom of the pot that had grown into the ground. I didn't think anything of it. I took them, I planted them in their home final home, and this winter they grew back up and did great after dying back this winter. They look amazing. They're going to get huge, I'm sure, because it's only March and they are big already, green, lush. I'm excited about them. But I'm telling you this because I wanted you to know that where those roots were left in the soil, that they came through the pot, and when I picked the pot up, the roots broke off and some remained in the soil. There's comfrey coming up there now.
Speaker 1:So this plant is not easy to get rid of and if you look up like information on it, some people might not like it. So if you plant it somewhere, you need to want it to be there, uh, cause it's going to be hard to get rid of. You're probably going to have to use a chemical to get rid of it if you don't want it there anymore. Um, so keep that in mind, um, but personally I like it. Check back with me next year, uh, and see. But as of now, all of my friends that have it and grow it recommend it. They love it and I like it too. So far. So the last, actually okay. I have two more Fennel.
Speaker 1:We love fennel at our house for a few different reasons. Personally, I like it because it doesn't require anything from me. It just keeps coming back every year. It stays in its place, it doesn't spread and go crazy. It puts out beautiful, delicate blooms that insects love, and so I constantly see all kinds of different flying insects over there, and that's a good thing. In your herbal garden over there, and that's a good thing in your herbal garden, you want a diversity, a diverse set and community of insects in your garden to help pollinate and to help maintain balance and to encourage pollinators, and it definitely does that. The other thing that it does is it plays host to the swallowtail butterfly and we usually, if it's a good year, sometimes some years we'll miss I don't know if the birds eat them or something goes on with the swallowtail populations, but we have missed a few years, but generally we always get quite a few different swallowtail caterpillars that are hosted by our fennel plants, and that's always fun to show the kids, and sometimes we get a few chrysalises Other years we don't, but it is fun to watch the caterpillars grow and sometimes you do, like I said, get the chance to see chrysalises and then watch butterflies emerge. So fennel plants are fun. The other thing is our four-year-old Wheeler loves fennel, um, and so he's always out there eating on it, and so are the caterpillars. So it is quite amazing that it's lasted this long because, uh, hardly ever is it in full. It's full glory because it's always being eaten.
Speaker 1:Lastly, okra Uh, I can't talk about easy to grow plants that we love without mentioning okra. Okra is a cool plant. It is a unique plant in the garden. There's not a lot of other vegetables in the okra family and it is definitely adapted to the south. It is drought resistant. It doesn't require a lot of fertility or management maintenance. You just plant the okra seeds in the ground when it's warm outside and they're going to grow. And the main thing you have to do is just harvest your bounty, because it is going to put off some amazing fruit and you got to stay on top of it. You want to harvest the pods when they're nice and young and soft, and if you do that, you're going to get a lot. The other thing that is cool to me about okra is the seeds are really easy to save, so these are seeds that you could collect each year and develop your own personal specialized okra seed that is adapted to your garden specifically every year, and if you do that for 20, 30, 40 years, you'll have something really cool and neat to pass down to your kids and grandkids, which to me, I just think is really cool and really neat.
Speaker 1:I love okra. I like eating it raw, I like eating it boiled, of course, fried. We have friends that tell us baking it is amazing, and we have had it baked before. This year we're definitely going to do more of that, so it's also really good for you, too. So okra is something that we grow in our garden every year. It's super easy and it's definitely a favorite, and for now, that's going to be the list of favorite plants easy plants to grow in your home garden.
Speaker 1:If you have a favorite plant to grow that you want to share with the community, to grow that you want to share with the community, definitely do that. You can find Morgan on Instagram at underscore oh wait, it's at a common life underscore. Underscore comes after it's going to be in the show notes. And also, if you haven't already subscribed to our newsletter, the Common, you should definitely do that. Go visit us at a common life dot substack dot com. We have a newsletter with our favorite and easy to grow plants Our favorite easy to grow. We have a newsletter with our favorite easy to grow plants for the home garden and want you to check that out and leave a comment on that newsletter and subscribe to our newsletter. If you haven't already done that, okay, well, until next time, happy gardening, thank you.