The Crops I Stopped Growing After 25 Years of Gardening | Episode 512
Pioneering Today Podcast - Homesteading in a Modern World
Melissa K Norris
4.8 • 974 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What are the best crops for a Pacific Northwest vegetable garden?
In today's episode, I'm sharing the crops and varieties that have truly earned their place in my Pacific Northwest vegetable garden after 26 years of gardening in a cool, short-season climate.
Over the years, I've become much more intentional about what I grow. I want crops that reliably produce, preserve well, and are foods we actually eat throughout the year. Some vegetables continue to thrive season after season, while others simply aren't worth the time, effort, or garden space in our northern climate.
In this episode, I'm walking you through:
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The vegetables I plant every single year
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My favorite tried-and-true varieties
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The crops I've stopped growing and why
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What performs best in cool summer climates
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How I decide what deserves space in my garden
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My rule for experimenting with new varieties
Whether you garden in the Pacific Northwest or another northern growing region, I hope this helps you feel more confident choosing crops that will actually thrive where you live.
Resources & Links:
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🌱 Full blog post: https://melissaknorris.com/512
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🌱 Plated by Season Magazine: https://melissaknorris.com/homestead-foundations/
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🌱 Potato experiment video mentioned in this episode: https://melissaknorris.com/i-left-my-potatoes-in-the-ground-for-5-years-without-replanting/
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Verse of the Week: John 4:10
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, pioneers, welcome back to the Pioneering Today podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | So I often get asked, what are the things that I fall back on and plant every single year? |
| 0:16.0 | And some of the things have stayed the same. |
| 0:20.0 | This is our 26 year growing a garden, and some of those things have stayed the same. This is our 26-year growing a garden, and some of those things have stayed the same. |
| 0:24.8 | Some of them have definitely changed. |
| 0:28.4 | And I think I look more at what are the things that require the least amount of input from me, meaning I don't have to do a ton of things |
| 0:40.2 | in order to have them successfully grow in my climate because as I get older, both time |
| 0:47.0 | and energy become more precious commodities. |
| 0:51.1 | And then the things that we are actually eating and consuming, like the ingredients that I'm |
| 0:56.7 | using to make our meals and we're eating on every single week, if not every single day. |
| 1:06.5 | There's some crops that I just don't plant anymore at all. |
| 1:10.5 | They're just not worth it for the season that I'm in, and they just don't work for us. |
| 1:15.6 | Now, that may or may look different for you, and I think that's the thing that I want to make sure that people are really aware of. |
| 1:24.6 | This is what has worked very consistently for me and in our |
| 1:29.9 | climate and for my family's taste buds. It may look different from you and that's totally okay. |
| 1:36.4 | But it also may help inform some of your planting and growing decisions so that you can make |
| 1:42.0 | some of those adjustments and be really thoughtful and intentional about |
| 1:47.2 | what it is that you have going into your garden. So I'm just going to do a very honest walkthrough |
| 1:55.2 | of what we have going on in the garden. So first step is storage potatoes. Now, many of you probably saw my |
| 2:04.9 | video where I talked about how I did not plant potatoes for five years, but I was harvesting |
| 2:10.0 | potatoes for five years out of the same garden space that had a little mini viral moment. |
| 2:16.0 | So we will link to that in the video description beneath |
... |
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