Five vegetables for your garden this year

Vegetables to grow in 2015 include broccoli, cabbage, red onion and sweet potatoes Cabbage In The Garden - A row of cabbage plants growing in a container garden in summer.

NAIROBI: It is healthy to eat vegetables. It is even healthier to eat vegetables from your own kitchen garden. If one of your resolutions this year is to eat healthier foods, a kitchen garden is a good place to start.

There are many easy-to-grow and highly beneficial vegetables you can choose from. Here are my top five:

Sweet potatoes

Filled with antioxidant properties that help rid the body of toxic chemicals associated with diabetes and cancer, sweet potatoes are healing plants. They are also thought to lessen the effects of asthma and arthritis and are a rich source of calcium and iron.

What is more? They are versatile. What doesn’t go with sweet potatoes?

Besides being so sweet and nutritious, their vines are ornamental. It can be grown in a flower bed as a ground cover or in planters or hanging baskets.

You can even grow one in water in your kitchen — suspend the sweet potato on toothpicks in a jar of water and watch it grow.

Broccoli

Broccoli is a member of the cabbage family and looks a bit like a cauliflower that hasn’t quite got itself together.

The flower stalks may be green, purple, or white depending on the variety. Left to mature, the buds, which are what we harvest and eat eventually, produce nice yellow flowers.

Broccoli are believed to reduce the prevalence of certain cancers and are high in folic acid, which is known to prevent child birth complications. They are also a good source of calcium and vitamin C.

Broccoli not only looks good served on the table, the plant can be used for ornamental purposes in containers on the patio or even indoors. You can even grow broccoli as an accent in a flower bed.

Onions

Onions are well-known for many health benefits. They help lower blood sugar levels and have been found to enhance cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of cancer.

Yet they are some of the easiest vegetable to cultivate with very few pest and disease problems to worry about.

Their versatility is just amazing. You can literally serve onions with every meal. Besides their roots, you can harvest and eat the whole plant.

Their hollow leaves are eaten as green onions. In fact, some varieties are especially grown for the leaves. But the majority are grown for both leaves and bulbs. Nothing ever goes to waste.

Carrots

Carrots are some of the most healing vegetables you can ever grow. They are the best source of vitamin A and are famous for improving night vision.

They also help regulate blood sugar. These combined with a hustle-free cultivation makes them many people’s favourite.

Like potatoes, they are versatile and can be incorporated into a good number of recipes for both taste and colour.

And when they are not being eaten, their rosette of finely divided fern-like leaves provide for a beautiful ground cover for your flower beds and even containers.

Cabbages

Cabbages are very nutritious. They are high in calcium, iron, iodine, potassium, sulphur and phosphorus. They are also rich in vitamins A, B1, B2, C, E, K as well as folic acid.

The overall effect is that they improve the body’s defence mechanism.

But cabbages are also very decorative in the flower garden. Purple cabbages and savoys look brilliant in a mixed border or as potted plants.

Flowering cabbages look like enormous variegated blossoms and are perfect for small spaces as accents or as border plants.

 —The writer is a landscape architect