By Matthew Enloe | Cerca Cultivation
Ready to transform your thumb from brown to green? Cerca Cultivation’s Matthew Enloe shares invaluable advice for aspiring gardeners, revealing the absolute easiest vegetables and herbs to cultivate, setting you up for immediate success in your first growing season. Discover expert insights that will demystify plant selection and empower you to start your garden with confidence.
TL;DR – Quick Summary
Unlock your green thumb with these expert tips for new gardeners, focusing on easy-to-grow plants and quick results.
Growing Strategy: For beginners, herbs (cilantro, green onions, mint, oregano, thyme, sage) and leafy greens (lettuces, kales, arugula) are the easiest to grow, as many are related to common weeds and are resilient.
Plant Selection: When selecting vegetables, cabbages and cherry tomatoes are recommended for fall planting due to cooler weather reducing pest issues, while radishes are “bulletproof easy” and offer quick success.
Soil & Nutrition: For rapid results within the first month from a seedling, dill, parsley, and green onions are ideal due to their “cut and come again” nature, allowing for multiple harvests quickly.
Seasonal Planning: Hydroponic growing offers significantly faster results than soil, with plants like cilantro showing substantial growth in just three weeks compared to soil’s longer timeline.
Cultivation Success: Cerca Cultivation’s DIY seed starting kit provides a curated experience for new growers, including 6 beginner-friendly seed packets (romaine, green onion, kale, arugula, basil, radish), 12 expanding plugs, and a multi-purpose, recyclable PET tray with tear-away plant tags.
Pro tip: Prioritize growing plants you frequently eat; this psychological connection increases engagement and ensures you’ll utilize your harvest, making the gardening journey more rewarding and sustainable.
Stephen: So this is the last kind of two questions that we have and they’re both about plant selection for new growers. So first off, which vegetables are easiest to grow for someone who’s never garden before?
Matthew: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. The easiest things to grow are going to be herbs and leafy greens. Lettuces are in the dandelion family. Dandelion is a weed. They’re in the aster family, which also includes dandelions. So relatively, and I hope that no one takes this who’s had challenges with lettuces in the past. Maybe it’s your growing climate. But leafy greens, that’s lettuces, which are in the same family as… dandelion, brassicas, which is your mustards, your kales, arugula, broccoli’s cabbages. All of those are actually, it’s not even a family. It’s a species, the same species brassica that is from the wild mustard plant. They’re just subspecies from the wild mustard, which is also a weed. Those ones are gonna be really easy. And then your common garden herbs are gonna be really easy. That’s cilantro, green onions, cilantro and basil. just, seasonality kind of matters. But green onions, chives, both are a little bit harder to start from seed, but once you get them going, they’re pretty much impossible to kill. Mint, oregano, thyme, sage. Once you get them started, they just don’t like the roots to be too wet. So just don’t overwater those. But yeah, those ones are going to be the easiest ones. But when it comes to veggies, as we’re going into the fall season, cabbages are pretty easy. The weather is cooling down, so there’s less likely of the little cabbage moth butterfly caterpillars. coming and eating everything. They don’t like the cool, they’re not as reproductive during the cooler weather. So cabbages are really easy this time of year and cherry tomatoes are pretty easy. Cherry tomatoes and cucumbers are pretty easy. so what’s easy? That’s one way to sort of look at the question.
those are what comes to mind. Lettuces, leafy greens. common garden herbs, and then for veggies, cabbages and cherry tomatoes, cucumbers. But I would encourage people to go for what they eat a lot of. Because if you eat a lot of it, presumably you like it a lot and you’ll eat it when it comes out and you’ll be more excited for it. So that makes it a little bit easier to keep your attention. So there’s like the psychology of it as well. If I’m trying to grow a plant that I am not gonna eat, but it’s really interesting, but I’m not gonna eat it. I feel like it’s easier to have that be just a novelty of starting, but I’m not caring so much about what comes out the other end that at a certain point I might just forget about it. That can be the case for some of the really specialty peppers. That could be the case for a luffa gourd. A luffa gourd is going to, you gotta wait a long time for it to dry out on the vine, and then you gotta make it into the luffa gourd. They’re really cool and really fun, and you might be excited about them, but they’re, more complex, they take more care and you’re not going to eat them. But like a radish, pretty hard to not be successful with a radish.
Matthew: And there’s lots of pretty common culinary cultures that radish is a staple, especially like a daikon. So if you really like daikon radish or you eat a lot of daikon radish, try growing a daikon radish.
Stephen: Yeah, exactly. That makes total sense. And when you guys are putting together your seasonal bundles and things like that, are you guys thinking about seasonality in terms of what’s going to be easiest to grow for your customers and whatnot as well? Like if somebody buys a seasonal bundle from you guys, is it something that is already going to be kind of curated for easy growth for them?
Matthew: Yes. So when someone buys a seasonal bundle, they can expect a good mix of things that are really easy to things that are more unique and might be a little bit more challenging to maybe nudge you a little outside of your comfort zone. I think a good example is our roots and shoots bundle. I have fava, which is really easy, fava bean.
Stephen: okay.
Matthew: which is really easy, so easy, but it’s a little less common, but it’s also delicious. So that’s something that’s easy, a little unfamiliar and very delicious. And then I’ve got something like a purple pole bean, which can be take a little bit more for me. Sometimes my pole beans, like I really got to sort of make sure that they’re not, check on them a little more often.
Stephen: Hmm.
Matthew: I feel like they can, if they’re not putting on that vegetative growth or they’re not trellis, right? It’s a little bit harder, even though it’s maybe a little bit more common to use, because you just use it like a normal green bean, but it’s also purple. So it’s interesting. And then something like, like a radish, there’s radishes in that bundle, which are bulletproof, easy. Yeah, exactly. sounds like a good mixture of things. That makes a lot of sense, the way that you guys curate them. Okay, so I think that we just have one last question and then I have one more question that you actually haven’t seen yet. So the last question is, what herbs should I start if I wanna see quick results in my first month? Or is that even possible? This time of year, anytime of year.
Stephen: And maybe you’re going from seedlings specifically, from one of the seedlings that you guys have. So maybe let’s change that up a little bit. So what herbs should I start with if I want to see quick results my first month? And I’m going to be buying a seedling from Cerca. Okay, okay. If you’re trying to get quick results on a… If you want… Ask me the question again. Okay, so what herbs should I start with if I want to see quick results my first month and I’m buying a seedling from Cerca?
Matthew: Okay, from a seedling from us, the quickest results are going to be dill, parsley, and green onions after a month of growth. The reason why I picked those ones, cilantro too at this time of year, the reason why I picked those ones is because they’re really easy for cut and come again, meaning that you’re going to take a little bit off. Your first harvest is going to be small, but your next harvest is going to be bigger and then more and more and more. So those ones grow quickly to that first harvest. Whereas basil, once you get it up and running and you’re doing cut and come again, that takes like more like six weeks, eight weeks before it’s like big and booming and then you’re getting a ton. So you’re gonna get a ton of basil once it’s going. But for fast results, and you only need a little bit of dill, a little bit goes a long way.
So that’s why it’s gonna feel more productive quicker because you don’t need as much. So I’d say dill, dill would be my response to a month of growth, but a month and it depends on where you’re at because, know, for us in the middle of July on a hydroponic tower, like forget all of that because I could get you a finished whole bunch of parsley in like three weeks.
Stephen: That makes sense.
Matthew: versus like this time of year, things are slowing down, which is kind of good for herbs because it gives them a little bit more time to develop the complex flavors. And then also growing in the soil is completely different from growing in hydroponics. So you’re definitely going to need to be a little bit more patient. But yeah, I’d say dill, parsley, cilantro.
Stephen: Hmm, that’s interesting. more patient growing in soil or more patient growing in hydroponics.
Matthew: way more patient growing in soil. But it’s worth, I think it’s worth the wait sometimes, you know, if you’ve got the space and you’ve got some really good soil, it can be worth the wait.
Stephen: So. But growing hydroponically, within one month, you might be able to see significant growth on certain plants, whereas in soil, that same plant might be much, much smaller. OK.
Matthew: Yes, yes, definitely. I could go grab you a three week old parsley from transplant. So the question was, one month of growth, what should I grow to have a quick results with herbs? in soil, growing in hydroponics, different timelines. Everything changes depending on the time of the year. But I think a good example is our frilled cilantro.
Stephen: Yep.
Matthew: So frilled cilantro, this guy right here starts out about three inches tall. And then after three weeks of growth in the hydroponic tower, we’re looking at this. that’s ready for its first harvest. And you can see that we’ve got, I don’t know if you can see it, we’ve got small younger growth coming down below. So once you harvest off the top and.
Stephen: Wow, that’s huge.
Matthew: It’s gonna look a little bit ugly when you harvest this way for cilantro, but you can just harvest the leaves right off at the top, just as long as you’re leaving some of that new growth right there coming up and not cutting that part off. You just want to cut the more mature stuff on top. Yeah, you can also take more time with it and like pull the tallest ones out and just take what you need. That’ll end clip them lower. That’ll make it look a little bit cleaner and a less ugly. yeah, cilantro, parsley, dill, they’re all in the family called umbilifer. And they do, they’re pretty quick compared to… like stuff that’s in the mint family, the family Lami-eishi, which really likes to go slow and establish, but once you’ve got it, then you’ve got it.
Stephen: That makes sense. Well, I think that’s it. That’s all been really, really helpful. The last question that I have, which wasn’t on the original list from other people, but this is actually just a question for me because I was talking with you about this last week and I think it kind of goes in line with a lot of this kind of new grower, new gardener, where should I start kind of questions. But could you show one of your new gardening kits that you guys just released because and like show all the different things that you have with it because it’s so helpful. I love this whole new kit so much.
Matthew: Okay. Yeah, yeah, let me grab one. Alright, this is the new kit. This is DIY hydropon, DIY, this is our DIY seed starting kit. And it comes with, comes with 12, it comes with an instruction card and it says right there what’s on it. It has six seed packets, six plant labels, plant label tags and 12 expanding plugs. So these are expanding plugs. They’re a little bit different from the bonded medium that we use for the plants that we send. but they are also hydroponic and soil compatible. So you get 12 of those. You get six seed packets. Right now this kit includes romaine, green onion, kale, arugula, basil, and radish. Some really, I would try to go for the most popular, but still beginner friendly varieties and things that. are almost universally loved. And then the tray itself has a tear away top. So there’s a perforation along this hinge here. So you can actually tear this off and it has tear away plant tags, which are maybe a little hard to see, but all of these tags right here, they’re your six plant tags.
Stephen: Mm-hmm. So you just press those out and then use a little sharpie to write what’s on each of them. That’s so cool. And then you can use that bottom tray as the little grow tray, right?
Matthew: Yep, exactly. Yeah, so I mean. Right, right, right. So you just tip. So you’ve got 12, so you can do two rounds of growing. You just, you put these in a bowl, put six of them in a bowl, let them hydrate, and then they’ll puff up to about like two inches, two and a half inches tall. And then you place them back into here, and you’ve already torn away the plant tags. You label what you’re planting, and then they sit in here, and you put them in a well-lit window. and as much light as they can get until they’re ready to transplant. And we’ve got all the instructions on the instruction card right here. But yeah, so this packaging is, we put a lot of thought and design into this packaging to make sure that it’s as little plastic waste as possible, but still protects your plants well. We also designed it to be dual purpose. So these are actually, This is the same packaging that we send our live plants in. They fit just like this in this packaging and also come with the tear away plant tags. Yeah, we don’t want to create more waste, more plastic waste in the world. But we also know that we have to protect these seedlings so that they end up as healthy as they can be when they arrive. So as we were designing this, we had this DIY seedling kit in mind. so that we don’t have to keep on creating different plastic products. have a multi use for this one, for this one plastic component. And it’s also, recyclable, recyclable, P E T that’s the number one in the recycling sign. yeah, recyclable plastic. and, yeah, we’re really, really proud of it.
Stephen: So that’s recyclable plastic still. wow.
Matthew: I think we tried to do our most to design packaging with both the planet in mind as best we can working within our constraints and as little waste and as multi-use that serves our customers as well as possible.
Stephen: Yeah, no, it’s so cool. I love that. I love that little tray and just the fact that the little, even just the little plant tags press out of the center of it and then the tray itself can be used to grow in and all of that because if there’s gonna be plastic there already, it’s so much more useful to be able to say, okay, cool, we’re not gonna print extra plastic tags and put them inside the plastic packaging. We’re going to make it a part of it and also just a cool part of it. It all looks so, it’s so fun to use and just like tear away the little bits and tear away the top lid that has its own labels for all the different seeds and all that stuff too.
Matthew: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, there’s, we’ve, we spent so much effort on this. When someone gets our live plants, they get a printout of what plants are in each cell, A, B, C, D, E, or F. And people were having a problem where they would be like flipping back and forth like this, and they’d be like, which plant? A? that’s A. but the, the This is Tearaway so you can look at it while you’re looking at the plants. And on the bottom side, we have ABCD so that you don’t get confused while you’re going to label your plants. Yeah, and we had some.
Stephen: It’s also clear so you literally can look straight through it and see that’s A, that’s B.
Matthew: Yeah, yeah, so we really, really tried to, I mean, the other thing is, is it was just hard to pack everything else for my team, which I’ve got to make sure I shout out my team, Sarah, Cornelio, Sebastian, Ruben, Mike, Annalise, everyone here. This would not work without the team of individuals who works here and keeps this thing running. I couldn’t be more grateful to be working with them, but I… had them in mind, because I used to be on the packing line. I used to be the packing line. So I was thinking, what can be more useful to my employees? What can cut out a step for them having to, because I wanted to include individual plant tags, but that was just an extra step of something that could be mixed up or confusing or frustrating while you’re just trying to get the plants in the package and out the door to the customer. trying to take every single. like with the design of our packaging, trying to keep everyone who’s going to be touching it in mind.
Stephen: That’s so cool. Well, I think that that’s it. That’s all of our questions. I think you’ve answered all of them so helpfully. So is there anything else you want to.
Matthew: I hope so. No, I’m just keep growing everyone. I well, yes. There’s one thing I do want to do on every single podcast. And that’s any guest who I have is.
Stephen: So I think that was my last question. That was the last one that we got for this week. But was there anything else that you wanted to.
Matthew: Yes, yes. There’s one thing that I want to have in every single podcast and I hope I don’t forget it, but I want to ask the guest, what recently have you grown that got you excited? Or if you haven’t grown anything recently, what’s something that you’re excited to grow in the future? It recently can be anytime in the past month, year, 10 years, something that you’ve grown that you got excited about and enjoy.
Stephen: Ugh. I don’t know if I’ve ever grown anything without your help.
Matthew: Okay, but no, that’s not true. You’ve got stuff. We were working on plants last weekend.
Stephen: That’s true. I mean, I was chopping down a bunch of plants because I have a bunch of trees. I’ve cultivated plants that were already there quite a bit. Like I’ve had trees for a long time and I’ve cared for them quite a bit. My favorite plant that I have is in the front yard.
Matthew: We’re going to do it, Jeremy. But that counts.
Stephen: And it’s this tree that I think that the people who previously owned the house made it into a lime slash tangerine hybrid plant. And it grows these lime, tangerine, orange things that are just the most tasty little citruses that I know of.
Matthew: Are you talking about the big lime tree? No, was a… Because you got a lot of citrus.
Stephen: No, well there’s the, no, no, no, there’s the big one that has the tiny little lemon limes. I don’t like those really. But those are okay. But then next, like forward towards the street, there’s this little like orange tangerine lime. pretty sure, but they’re so green.
Matthew: But then they write it Either way, that counts. That counts. It’s your plant. You cared for it.
Stephen: But no, I don’t think that they are because they’ll be fully, fully green. And then if you eat them while they’re fully green, they’re perfectly beautiful orange on the inside and they’re super sweet while they’re still green on the outside.
Matthew: Well, there’s a bunch that are super green on there right now. So you should get eating.
Stephen: If you peeled one right now, it would be super sweet. Which is why don’t think it’s just a purely a tangerine tree. Because usually if they’d be green, they’d be a little bit harder. They taste like they’re almost ripe, while they’re 100 % lime green.
Matthew: Well, I think that that’s a perfect answer to the question. Your wild citrus that we don’t know what it is, but it ripens up all weird and it’s delicious. think that’s a perfect answer. Okay, well, I’m gonna wrap it up. This is, thank you for being on the first episode. Thank you for encouraging me to do this. It’s something that we’ve been talking about for a long time.
Stephen: Alright. Yeah.
Matthew: And to anyone who listened, I hope you got something out of this. Yeah, it’s a little bit of plant talk, cultivator connections. You can find us on Instagram and online. Instagram is @cercacultivation and our website is www.cercacultivation.com. It’s where you can find us and yeah.
Stephen: Yeah, plant talk.
Matthew: Keep growing.
Stephen: All right, sweet. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Bye.
Matthew: Yeah. Thank you.