In my vegetable garden, I want to grow as much food as possible. Planting fast-growing vegetables like arugula, leaf lettuce, radishes, Asian greens, and turnips allows me to do just that by succession planting from early spring through late summer. Who says fast food can’t be healthy? In this article I’ll share my 8 go-to fast-growing vegetables to plant in garden beds and containers. 

Planting fast growing vegetables

Fast-growing vegetables are perfect for spring, summer, and fall succession planting or those that live in areas with a short growing season. Succession planting is simply following one vegetable with another so that you can enjoy a continuous harvest. After early crops like peas and spinach are harvested in the May and June garden, they’re followed up with new sowings of quick growing vegetables like bush beans, baby beets, and summer lettuce.

For succession planting, especially in late summer and autumn, it’s important to figure out if you have enough time left in your growing season to grow and mature a crop for harvest. For this, you need two pieces of information; 1) the days to maturity for your desired crop and 2) how many days you have before your first expected frost. To find the days to maturity, read the description in seed catalogs or on seed packets. For example, ‘Red Sails’ leaf lettuce takes 27 days from seed to harvest for a baby crop, or 55 days for full-sized heads. Once you know the days to maturity, calculate how many days you have left until the first average frost day to check that you still have enough time to grow the crop.

The best part about fast-growing veggies is that you don’t need a long season to grow food. I plant these quick crops throughout spring, summer, and fall in my garden, seeding whenever there is open space in the garden. No garden space? No problem as you can grow speedy vegetables in raised beds, containers, or fabric bags on sunny decks and patios. Be sure to add some compost to the soil between successive crops and an organic vegetable fertilizer to encourage healthy growth.

4 Tips for the fastest-growing vegetables

1. Pick a site with full sun, at least 8 hours of direct light daily.
2. Prep the garden bed before planting with compost and an organic vegetable fertilizer. Or, if growing in containers, fill pots with a blend of potting soil and compost. It’s also a good idea to add fertilizer to container gardens too.
3. Maximize garden space by seeding fast-growing plants between slower growing crops like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. By the time the main crop needs the growing space, the speedy vegetables are ready to pick. 
4. Thin seedlings if they sprout up too densely. Read the seed packets for specific spacing information as overcrowded plants don’t develop well. 

8 fast growing vegetables for gardens and containers

1. Baby kale

We all know we should eat more kale, but there is no easier way to enjoy this nutritional powerhouse than by growing it as a tender, baby green. Seed it thickly in garden beds or cold frames as soon as the soil is workable in early spring. You can also start the seeds of this leafy green indoors and transplant the seedlings into the garden in mid-spring. For the quickest crop, choose smooth-leaved varieties like ‘Red Russian’ (25 days) or ‘Lacinato‘ (AKA dinosaur kale) (30 days), avoiding slower growing, curly kales like ‘Winterbor’ that can take up to two months to reach a harvestable size. Perfect for a fresh salad, soups, sandwiches, and other favorite dishes.

2. Asian greens

Asian greens, like mustard greens, offer a ridiculous range of foliage colors, textures, and even flavors – from mild tasting to slightly spicy to pungent. The bolder colored varieties add pizzazz to your salads and stir-fries with lime green, maroon, or even purple leaves. My favorite Asian greens include tatsoi (21 days), mizuna (30 days, try purple mizuna too), and mustards like ‘Red Giant’ (21 days), ‘Ruby Streaks’ (21 days), and ‘Golden Frills’ (21 days).

3. Arugula

Arugula is the poster child for fast growing vegetables with standard garden arugula ready to pick a mere 21 days from seeding. It’s also my salad green of choice with its lobed foliage that has a peppery flavor. It’s best dressed simply – a drizzle of olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a sprinkle of salt. “Wild” arugula types like ‘Sylvetta’ are also worth growing, but they are much slower. The plants need 50 to 60 days of growth before they are ready to harvest, but are perennial in zones 5 and up.

4. Radishes

With their cheerful colors and globe-shaped or elongated roots, spring radishes are a welcome, and almost instant harvest, in spring and autumn. These root vegetables are among the fastest-growing vegetables! Sow seeds in early spring as soon as the earth is workable and the soil temperature is above 45 degrees F (8 degrees C). That’s usually 3 to 4 weeks before the last frost date. Top picks include ‘Easter Egg’ (30 days), ‘Amethyst’ (30 days), ‘D’Avignon’ (21 days) and ‘Cherry Belle’ (22 days). Even many varieties of daikon radishes, like ‘Red Meat’, aka Watermelon and ‘KN-Bravo’ are quick to grow and ready to harvest 50 days from sowing.

5. Pak Choi (Bok Choy)

Pak choi, a type of Chinese cabbage, is a cold tolerant crop ideal for spring, fall, and winter harvesting. There are many recently introduced cultivars, like ‘Asian Delight’  (37 days) that are very fast to mature and ready to pick 4 weeks from seeding. Use the whole young plants in stir-fries or pick the leaves individually for salads. I love varieties with green leaves like ‘Little Shanghai’ (37 days) and ‘Joi Choi’ (50 days) but there are also some, like ‘Purple Lady’ (45 days) with burgundy-purple leaves.

6. Spinach

No self-respecting salad garden is complete without a planting of cold tolerant spinach that thrive in cooler weather. As the plants grow, harvest the outer leaves often to encourage fresh leaf production, but pull the plants before they bolt. Once the flowering process begins, spinach quickly turns bitter, so don’t wait to harvest. There are many cultivars to grow in pots and beds including ‘Space’ (30 days), a bolt-resistant cultivar with deep green, smooth leaves, ‘Seaside’ (30 days), an outstanding baby spinach variety, and ‘Bloomsdale’ (30 days) which has upright, crinkly leaves for delicious salads.

7. Turnips

Turnips are a cool season vegetable and a farmers market favorite for their creamy white roots that are best pulled when 1 to 1 1/2 inches across. Those roots are crisp and delicious when sliced raw in salads, lightly steamed, or roasted in the oven. And the plants give you a double harvest with the tender green tops. We eat turnip greens raw in a simple salad, cook them like spinach, or add them to smoothies. They are among the finest salad greens you can grow. Top turnips include ‘Hakurei’ (38 days) and ‘Tokyo Cross’ (38 days).

8. Microgreens

Microgreens are nutritious and pricey to buy, but super easy to grow. They are “baby baby” greens that are harvested when they are between 10 and 25 days old. At that stage, most are just a couple of inches tall. Microgreens can include typical salad crops like arugula, lettuce, kale, and spinach, but they may also be the baby shoots of young root crops and herbs – basil, carrots, radishes, and beets, for example. I use a shallow tray to grow microgreens, adding 1 to 2 inches of moistened potting soil and sowing the seeds densely. They need plenty of light to grow quickly, so I place the trays under my grow-lights – in a pinch, a bright window will also do. Scissor harvest when the first set of true leaves has developed.

Other crops that mature in under 8 weeks include leaf lettuce, baby beets (and beet greens!), baby carrots, green onions (AKA scallions), zucchini (AKA summer squash), and bush beans.

Now that we know more about fast-growing vegetables, check out these articles on easy-to-grow salad greens:

• A guide to planting and growing lettuce
• Grow spinach in pots for lots of tender leaves
• Expert tips for growing for Swiss chard
• Step-by-step guide to growing kale