What will you sow in your Makkelijke Moestuin?

Will you sow unusual and special varieties, or are you aiming for a big harvest? In other words: which vegetables produce a lot, and which produce hardly anything?

In my Makkelijke Moestuin, I'm 100% focused on the harvest: as much produce as possible from as little space as possible, preferably as quickly and easily as possible.

Variety and flavour are at least as important to me. After all, why put your energy into something boring or something you don't like?

In Pieterburen, not far from where I live, there's an old ship that used to be a restaurant:

It was my favourite restaurant. Not because of the price - it wasn't exactly cheap - but because of the food. There were always just five dishes. Pure, no fuss, locally sourced and incredibly tasty: Groningen at its best 😋

It's the same with a vegetable garden.

You often get more enjoyment from vegetables that our ancestors already grew than from the exclusive varieties sold by specialist seed companies.

True, but carrots and heads of lettuce from your own garden are already special and can't be compared with what you get from the supermarket. Taste a tomato from your own garden and you'll never want anything else.

The same goes for all vegetables and herbs: fresh from the garden tastes ten times better than produce from a greenhouse or from far away. No exotic vegetable can compete with that.

Experienced vegetable gardeners know this and grow many of the same things year after year. They do experiment, but only a little.

Beginners tend to do the exact opposite.

I did 😊

But my first Makkelijke Moestuin raised bed had barely been set up when my mum started buying unusual seeds. Tubers from the Andes, climbing cucamelons, purple radishes, saucer-shaped courgettes: in no time she had a shoebox full.

"Er, Mum, where are you going to put all that?"
"No problem, Jelle: I'll build another raised bed."
"Or two. Or three."

Before I knew it, there were five large raised beds and the greenhouse was full of seedlings started indoors. The more unusual, the better, because you couldn't buy them here. She left the lettuce and radishes to me.

That first year, we ate mountains of lettuce, mangetout, onions and tomatoes from my raised beds. To everyone's surprise, because I was anything but fanatical. The same couldn't be said for my mum: she kept sowing, potting on and transplanting.

The purple beans were beautiful, but turned just as green as mine when cooked. The red kale overshadowed its neighbours, and we saw hardly anything of the Japanese pak choi and sprouting broccoli. Slugs and caterpillars got to them.

But to be fair, there were some real gems among them. We still sow those today.

Yes, New Zealand spinach, for example. It thrives in summer, when it's too warm for ordinary spinach:

Winter purslane is relatively unknown too, but very tasty and super healthy. It thrives in cold weather.

It even survives severe winters with ease, so you can still harvest fresh greens during the darker months, including for delicious salads.

Dino kale is a type of kale with pointed, crinkled leaves that grow upwards rather than outwards.

This means the plant only needs one square, while ordinary kale soon takes up four.

Most of the vegetables are fairly familiar, although the varieties can be special.

Our climbing zucchini, for example, grows a long stem. You can tie it to a trellis so it grows upwards, taking up much less space than an ordinary courgette that can fill half your raised bed.

And if you're sowing radishes anyway, why not sow the tastiest and biggest ones?

Or how about our carrots with rounded tips?

When they reach the bottom of your raised bed, they simply grow thicker. Other varieties keep growing and turn the corner.

I therefore choose familiar vegetables that suit the Makkelijke Moestuin and our climate, and of course taste delicious too.

They are.

But those vegetables take months before you can harvest the broccoli head or cauliflower.

If you get that far: the plants are magnets for slugs and caterpillars. They also grow huge and don't fit in one square.

In a Makkelijke Moestuin, you want exactly the opposite:

Take head lettuce:

You harvest the first leaves before the head is fully grown and keep going for weeks, until the plant flowers and the leaves turn bitter.

Then remove the plants from your raised bed, use the last leaves in a stir-fry or soup, and sow another vegetable in the square.

Meanwhile, you've already sown new lettuce in another square, so you can keep harvesting. And because you sow lots of different vegetables in one raised bed, the variety is enormous.

That's how you make the best use of your squares and harvest plenty from a single raised bed.

Want a fantastic and varied harvest this year? Choose vegetables that reliably succeed: suitable for raised beds and for the Dutch climate.

We've selected the best varieties for you and put them together in our seed collection:

Altogether, there are dozens of different vegetables and herbs: more than enough to fill several raised beds to bursting.

You'll also find every variety in our app. It guides you step by step, from seed to harvest, so you don't need green fingers or vegetable gardening experience.

You can buy individual packets or save with a bundle.

My mum wanted to add something:

"I completely understand the temptation to try unusual vegetables. I still fall for it occasionally."

"But after many years of experience - and plenty of failed attempts - here's my sincere advice: leave exotic and difficult vegetables to professional growers, especially when you're just starting out. You'll have a much better chance of a good harvest."

Mum: this time, I agree with you 100%. 😉