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Written by Angus Stewart

Coming into spring, it’s a great time to start planning and preparing a vegetable garden to provide you with delicious fresh food over the coming months.

In this article, we’ll look at which vegetables to plant as the season changes into spring, and we’ll also look at some perennial vegetables you can plant now, which you can harvest continually once they’re established.

A wide range of leafy greens and herbs can be planted at the start of spring in warmer climates, or a bit later in spring for cooler climates. Greens and salad leaves to plant now include:

• Asian greens, like choy sum and gai lan

• Radicchio and chicory

• Herbs, such as basil, dill, chives, parsley and coriander - or try a native herb like sea celery (Apium prostratum), which is an Australian relative of parsley and tastes very similar

• Lettuce

• Rocket

• Kale

You can continue planting all of these greens into the summer months if they are kept shaded, and herbs like basil should be well shaded in summer. Other vegetables to start now and as we get further into spring are:

• Beetroot

• Broccoli

• Carrots

• Celery

• Climbing beans

• Cucumber

• Potatoes

• Pumpkins

• Radishes

• Silverbeet

• Snow peas

• Sweet corn

If you have limited space, choose vegetables to suit that – pumpkins, for instance, need quite a lot of space to ramble, as the vine grows over quite a large area, and will also block sun from other plants.

Perennial vegetables are a great choice for compact spaces, and there are some beautiful native species that you can grow in a small space and harvest as a vegetable or herb. Warrigal greens (Tetragonia tetragonioides) are a wonderful native vegetable, very similar to English spinach and can be used in cooking in the same way. They also have the advantage of being a perennial in warmer climates, so you can harvest from them regularly over a long time without having to plant a new crop, making them very handy for small spaces.

Kale is another wonderful perennial vegetable which can be planted now, and you can continue planting kale over spring and early summer in cooler climates. Chillis and capsicums also make a great perennial vegetable choice, especially for small spaces, and they should be sown in spring and early summer in most climates. Other great vegetables for small spaces are cherry tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, radishes and silverbeet. Tomatoes should be planted a bit later in the season for cooler climates, but all the other vegetables can be sown now as we come into spring, and then a few more times at regular intervals to provide multiple crops over the season.

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