10 Quick Growing Vegetables for a Small Garden

Lots of our favorite garden vegetables and fruits take a long time to develop. Melons can take between 80-90 days to mature after planting them out. Pumpkins take a little longer at 90-120 days — even some mini pumpkin varieties!

This means after planting, you’re usually waiting around until you can make your first harvests.

Watching your seedlings grow and develop is always satisfying. But if you’re anything like me, sometimes you want to start harvesting from the garden as soon as possible!

Seed to plate in a flash

For a fast harvest, these quick-growing vegetables can be grown and picked in as little as 4 weeks! This means you can enjoy harvesting and eating your own homegrown food much earlier. You can even make several harvests of these vegetables too, which is a great way to grow more veg in your small garden.

Quick growing crops for fast harvests

These vegetables are all quick growing, which means you’ll be waiting a shorter amount of time between sowing and harvesting.

For each of these vegetables we’ve listed their time to germinate from seed and also how long it takes for them to mature from seedling to harvest.

• Time to germination: How long it takes for seedlings to appear
• Maturation: Length of time from seedling to harvest

1. Radishes 

The radish is one of the fastest crops to grow from seed to harvest! These rounded, pink, root vegetables are always a tasty and colorful addition to salads. You can usually enjoy their peppery crunch up to 4 weeks after sowing them!

Because of their small size and fast growing time, radishes are great vegetables to interplant with other crops. This also makes them one of the best vegetables to grow with children in containers too.

Time to germination: 7-10 days

Maturation: 25-30 days

2. Spinach 

Full of nutrients, spinach is one of the superfoods of the vegetable garden. It’s also one of the quickest crops to grow, usually ready in 6 weeks from sowing to harvesting!

Time to germination: 7-14 days

Maturation: 35 days for baby leaves, 42 days for larger leaves

3. Pak Choi

A favorite addition to stir fry and other Asian dishes, pak choi has a crisp texture and flavor similar to cabbage and spinach. Like spinach, you can begin harvesting baby leaves very early on — usually at around 5 weeks. But to cut the whole plant for larger stems and leaves, it will usually take around 8+ weeks.

Pak Choi is also one of the highest yielding vegetables that you can grow in a small garden. Because it grows quickly and produces a great harvest!

Time to germination: 6-10 days

Maturation: 30 days for baby leaves, 45-75 days for larger leaves and to harvest the entire plant

4. Lettuce 

Available in a range of colors and textures, lettuce is a must-have in the garden for salads and side dishes. They’re also a very quick plant to grow, usually ready to pick from sowing to harvest in roughly 6 weeks for loose-leaf varieties.

Loose leaf lettuces grow more quickly compared to hearting lettuces, so these are a better option in early spring and late autumn as the cold and lower sunlight levels slow down growth rates.

To enjoy crisp lettuce leaves through spring, summer, and autumn, sow seeds in succession every few weeks. This is a great way to maximize the harvests you can get from a small garden space.

Time to germination: 6-10 days

Maturation: 45-65 days

5. Cress and Microgreens 

Cress and microgreens are the fastest crops you can harvest in a small garden. From seed to harvest, most microgreens are ready in as little as 2 weeks.

You can grow them outdoors, they’ll just need a little protection from harsh sunlight and cold temperatures if grown outside. But they’re usually grown as an indoor vegetable! You can even grow microgreens inside in winter.

If you need a little persuading, here are 5 reasons why you should start growing microgreens on your windowsill!

Time to germination: 2-5 days

Maturation: 14-24 days

6. Beets 

Like radishes, beets are another quick-growing root vegetable. From sowing to harvesting, it will usually take about 8 weeks. Smaller beets can sometimes be interplanted in containers with climbing vegetables, like winter squash or pumpkins.

Time to germination: 8-14 days

Maturation: 50-60 days

7. Kale 

Another highly nutritious leafy green that is ready to harvest in no time at all! You can usually pick kale leaves around 8 weeks after sowing.

Time to germination: 6-10 days

Maturation: 50-60 days

8. Swiss chard 

With their bright red and yellow stalks, swiss chard is a colorful addition to a small vegetable garden. You can usually harvest baby leaves in as little as 5 weeks from sowing. 

Time to germination: 7-14 days

Maturation: 30 days for baby leaves, 60 days for mature leaves

9. Mustard Greens 

With their tasty, peppery flavor, mustard greens work well in lots of recipes — from stir fry to soups. As leafy vegetables, they also grow very quickly. After sowing, you’ll have to wait about 40 days before you can harvest mustard greens.

Time to germination: 6-10 days

Maturation: 30-40 days

10. Arugula

Arugula, also known as rocket, is a hugely popular peppery green for salads. It’s also another quick-growing crop that will be on your plate in as little as 5 weeks after sowing.

Time to germination: 6-10 days

Maturation: 30-40 days

Quick growing crops: top tips

As you may have noticed, most of the quickest-growing crops are mainly leafy greens! This is actually the reason for them being ready to harvest so quickly. As we’re only harvesting the leaf, we don’t need to wait for flowers to bloom or fruits to develop.

As tender leaves, most of these quick-growing crops won’t tolerate harsh sunlight and high summer temperatures. This means they’re very shade tolerant vegetables, so you can grow them in areas where sun-loving crops like melons or cucumbers wouldn’t do so well.

Optimum growing conditions

Although even in the height of summer, with a little protection from harsh summer sunlight, you can grow all of these crops from early spring and often right through into autumn too (depending on your climate). Many of these can even be grown on windowsills in winter too.

Related Read | 9 Indoor Herbs to Grow on a Windowsill This Winter

Because they’re ready to harvest so quickly, they stay small in size which makes them ideal for small garden spaces. You can easily fill a windowbox or container with a variety of these quick-growing crops too. For example, you could create a mixed salad container, with radishes, arugula, and lettuce.