Don't let lack of sun stop you from pursuing your kitchen garden dreams. Here are 9 of our favorite edible plants to grow in shade.
Arugula germinates reliably and fast in both shade and sun.
1. Arugula
A cold season crop, lambs lettuce (also called mâche and corn salad) sown in fall can be picked late in the year or overwintered to become lush the following spring.
2. Lambs Lettuce
Planted in succession in early spring, cold-loving spinach can be harvested until warm weather begins.
3. Spinach
There is a cornucopia of mustard varieties to choose from, and they relish the protection that shade gives them from summer sun.
4. Mustards
A wild salad green with deeply toothed leaves, minutina (Plantago coronopus) is also commonly called erba stella or bucks-horn plantain.
5. Minutina
This warm-weather edible vine evolved in tropical forests and loves to ramble over trellises, tuteurs, and fences.
Nutty daylily tubers, oniony daylily spring shoots, and cucumber-ish day lily buds and flowers are all edible. The invasive plant thrives in semi-shady conditions.
8. Daylilies
Plant garlic cloves in late fall to harvest the bulbs in the summer.