5 Vegetables Perfect for Your Shaded Garden

If you find yourself envious of your neighbor’s garden that gets a ton of sunlight all day while yours seems perpetually shady, we know the feeling. But there’s no reason to be. There’s a nice range of vegetables that don’t require full sun, meaning you can still have a good haul of fresh food from your own garden. While there are some sun-worshiping plants (tomatoes require as much as eight hours of sunlight a day), there are some wonderfully nutritious vegetables that do well in shaded areas, including high-protein vegetables such as spinach and green peas.

Before you randomly begin planting, assess your garden space (an important gardening tip to remember) to determine how much sun it’s getting. You may find your perpetually shady areas are actually in the sun for part of the day. As long as your garden space gets about four to six hours of sun, you should be able to grow spinach, bok choy, and peas. Kale and lettuces can grow with even less direct sunlight.

Besides being a nutrient-dense superfood, kale is a resilient veggie that comes in a range of varieties, from Tuscan and Red Russian to various types of curly kale. It can handle the cold and doesn’t require a ton of sunlight. It can grow with as little as two to three hours of sunlight a day, but the more sun it gets, the larger and lusher it can be (although hot temperatures can turn the leaves bitter). What it does need is well-drained soil rich in compost.

Spinach also packs a lot of nutritional punch and is relatively easy to grow. It’s cold-resistant, grows fast, and only requires around four hours of sun a day. In fact, spinach does best when shaded during the hottest part of the day. With too much sun it can bolt; that is, it begins to quickly flower and can get bitter. When planting in spring in a perfect gardening world, your garden spot would provide full morning sun and shade in the afternoon. Spinach may grow a bit slower in the shade, but it should still produce for you.

Both looseleaf and romaine lettuces do great in shady areas. Eating a salad using lettuce you’ve just picked, rather than picking out the rotten pieces from store-bought bagged lettuce, is a real treat. Looseleaf lettuce grows really fast; as in little more than a month. Romaine takes longer, typically two months. Both require only three to four hours of sunlight a day to thrive. In fact, growing them in shadier spots can help keep them producing longer by preventing them from bolting.

Bok Choy is a type of Chinese cabbage that’s high in nutrients such as calcium, folate, and vitamin B6. This vegetable grows in as little as a month depending on the variety, and it actually prefers a shadier spot in the garden (its leaves are more tender when it’s not growing in full sun). It thrives with three to five hours of sunlight a day. Just be sure to keep it well watered; it’s a thirsty plant.

If you’ve ever eaten peas straight out of the garden, you know how much better they are than anything you can get at the grocery store. They’re also fairly easy to grow and tolerate partial shade (depending on the variety). Choose a vining type, such as snow peas, rather than bush-like peas. They need some kind of support, such as netting. While six hours of sun is optimal, peas can get by on around four hours a day. If growing peas in shadier areas, be sure not to overwater them since it can lead to root rot and other issues.

So, don’t fret if you don’t have the sunniest spot for planting. You can still grow a ton of nutritious vegetables to rival your neighbor’s full-sun garden.