Do you have a shady garden? I do. While it’s not full shade, the lovely Japanese maple tree in my yard gives us dappled sunshine for most of the day. Combine that with the big cedar tree behind our house, and we have a fair bit of shade.
While we love the location of our house in other ways, the somewhat shady garden has been a challenge. I would love to be able to grow tomatoes and squash. One year, I had success growing a few ripe red tomatoes. Most years, if I get fruit at all, it’s green. I now grow my tomatoes in a neighbor’s yard and enjoy their sunshine.
So yes, unless you’d like green tomatoes, you’re not likely to grow anything that’s heat or sun-loving in your shady garden. However, a bit of shade doesn’t need to turn you off growing food entirely.
What can you grow in the shade? Think green, and you’ll be successful.
1. Traditional Greens
Many traditional greens like lettuce and spinach love a little bit of shade. In fact, they’ll get too hot and stressed and bolt if you have them in the full, hot sun. With a somewhat shady garden, you can grow lettuce, spinach, kale and other traditional garden greens far later than most people, and you may even be able to start them in the heat of the summer, getting good-looking greens while everyone else’s greens are wilting.
2. Asian Greens
Many Asian greens are ideal for cool places. Try an Asian greens mix and see what grows best in your garden. Bok choi is fabulous for stir fries, but my favorite is mizuna. This early season green is pretty, frilly, and loves the shade.
3. Sorrel
I love sorrel. While many people consider it to be a seasoning, I like its lemony flavor as a salad leaf. Try different types of sorrels to see what kind grows best in your area, and add it to salads in small quantities to see if the taste works for you.
4. Shade-Loving Herbs
While some herbs are sun-loving (rosemary and basil, anyone?) other herbs don’t mind a bit of shade. Parsley is fairly sturdy and doesn’t usually mind cool and shady places. The mint family is tough and can grow just about anywhere – just beware, or it will take over just about anywhere as well. My favorite is the traditional peppermint, lovely for teas or for eating fresh. I also love sweet cicely, a black-licorice flavored herb that softens the sourness of rhubarb and looks like a large and lovely fern.
5. Eat Your Groundcover
What are your favorite woodland groundcovers? Are they edible? A couple of years ago, I realized that one of the more prolific groundcovers in my garden is edible. Sweet woodruff might not be a staple, but we now use it in salads. Once you look at your landscaping with edibility in mind, you might be surprised to discover how much of it is edible.
What do you grow in your shady garden?
Photo: (Featured Image): Sorrel. Image Credit: Cheeseslave / CC by 2.0
I read this article with great interest. What a smart way to use this type of shady area. All of the vegetables mentioned do much better in that type of environment and I would imagine you get excellent production. If you do have some areas that get at least 6 hours of full sun, you could try some container gardening to grow some of the sun lovers. Most of those do well in containers. And if that is very limited space think “up” rather than out. You can grow an amazing amount of veggies using containers and trellises. They don’t have to be elaborate, just sturdy. Have grown small watermelons and pumpkins on trellis, which was a fun experiment. It’s been some years ago when my kids were younger, but we had such a good time doing the project. We used old, clean knee highs and trimmed down panty hose to provide slings to support the growing fruit. It looked very strange indeed, but the kids thought it was a hoot. Now they are doing this sort of thing with the grandbabies. Such fun,
Lettuce is a great source for vitamins and minerals and really easy to grow. Start with good soil and Mother Nature will take care of the rest. You know where it came from and what it was grown with. Grow Natural and Grow Organic.