Which seeds should you choose to start a permaculture garden?

In this article 10

Faced with a seed catalog, we buy what appeals to us—and find ourselves in spring with fifteen packets of fruiting vegetables, no flowers, no green manure, and a bed that remains bare for half the year.

A permaculture vegetable garden is not designed like a conventional vegetable garden. It is not simply a matter of choosing what we are going to eat, but of bringing together five families of plants, each fulfilling a function. Here they are, along with the specific list for a first year.

The prerequisite: reproducible

Before anything else. In permaculture, seeds are not an annual consumable but an element of the system: they must be capable of being harvested, resown, adapted, and passed on. An F1 hybrid, bought identically every spring, closes no loops.

See Why choose non-hybrid, reproducible seeds?.

Three other criteria, in order:

Adaptation to your climate — start with widely available varieties, then refine your selection with regional varieties.
Ease of saving seeds — favor self-pollinating plants in the first year: tomatoes, beans, peas, and lettuce.
Hardiness rather than yield — in living soil without inputs, a low-maintenance variety outperforms a demanding one.

Family 1 — the quick providers

The ones that produce quickly and keep motivation up. In a beginner's vegetable garden, this is far from incidental: a first harvest in three weeks changes one's relationship with the garden.

Radishes — 18 to 25 days. Also useful for marking rows of slow-germinating seeds.
Cut-and-come-again lettuce — harvest leaf by leaf for weeks.
Arugula, lamb's lettuce, watercress — short cycles, suitable for staggered sowing throughout the season.
Spinach, chard — productive, hardy, and tolerant of partial shade.

These are also the species to sow in succession: twenty radishes every two weeks rather than a hundred all at once.

Family 2 — the seasonal framework plants

The heart of the vegetable garden, occupying the space all summer.

Tomatoes — two or three varieties of different types: one for salads, one for cooking, and one cherry variety. See Heirloom tomato seeds.
Zucchini and squash — their foliage covers the soil and protects it from evaporation. Two zucchini plants are enough for a family.
Beans — bush or climbing. They fix nitrogen, so they improve the bed while producing a crop.
Carrots, beets — root crops that must be sown directly in place.
Bell peppers, chili peppers — if your site conditions allow it.

Balance the root layers

A vegetable garden made up only of deep-rooted plants, or only of shallow-rooted ones, makes poor use of the available soil volume. Carrots and beets grow downward, lettuce and radishes stay near the surface, while squash and tomatoes occupy the middle layer: it is this combination that fills the bed from top to bottom.

Family 3 — green manures

This is the family you never buy spontaneously, and it is probably the one with the greatest long-term effect. Green manure is not harvested: it works for the soil while no crop occupies the bed.

Phacelia plant pulled up and held by a gardener's hand, its fine, highly branched root system holding dark soil clumps, with a few clods still falling — It is not the foliage that does the work, but what you never see. In six to eight weeks, a phacelia plant has explored the entire topsoil layer—and the soil that remains caught among its fine roots already emerges in clumps.

Phacelia — the all-rounder. Very fast growth, bee-friendly flowering, and above all, it belongs to no plant family cultivated in the vegetable garden: it fits anywhere in a rotation without risk.
White clover — permanent cover that tolerates foot traffic, ideal for paths. Fixes nitrogen.
Mustard — emergency cover in just a few weeks, and an excellent nitrate trap.
Alfalfa, red clover — to restore a tired plot, over one or two full seasons.

Never sow mustard before or after cabbages or radishes

Mustard is a crucifer, just like cabbage, radishes, turnips, and arugula. Sowing it as green manure on a bed that has grown—or will grow—these vegetables means growing the same family twice in the same place—and maintaining clubroot, which persists in the soil for years. On those beds, choose phacelia instead: it belongs to no plant family cultivated in the vegetable garden.

See Sowing green manures and our green manure collection.

Family 4 — functional flowers

They are not decorative: they perform three distinct functions, and a vegetable garden without flowers deprives itself of its best allies.

Feed adult beneficial insects — ladybirds, hoverflies, and lacewings consume aphids only in their larval stage; adults live on nectar and pollen. Without flowers, they do not settle or lay eggs.
Serve as trap plants — nasturtiums attract black aphids away from broad beans and zucchini.
Disrupt olfactory cues — marigolds, calendula, herbs in flower.

Nasturtium stem covered with a dense colony of black aphids, a few cream-colored juveniles among the adults, surrounded by round leaves with radiating veins and an orange flower — A nasturtium covered in black aphids is good news, not a failure: that colony is not on the broad beans. And we do not treat it—it is precisely this larder that keeps ladybirds and hoverflies on the bed.

The most effective: borage (very long flowering period, edible), calendula (self-seeds from one year to the next), nasturtium, cosmos, phacelia. Aim for continuous flowering from March to October rather than an explosion in June.

See our nectar plants and flower seeds.

Family 5 — perennials and herbs

They establish themselves once and produce for years. They offer the best yield-to-effort ratio in the entire vegetable garden, yet they are the last things people buy.

Perennial herbs — thyme, oregano, savory, chives, tarragon, mint (in a pot, it is invasive).
Annual herbs — basil, parsley, coriander, dill.
Perennial vegetables — rhubarb, sorrel, artichoke, perennial leek.

Let the coriander and dill flower

Their flower heads are among the best hoverfly resources in the vegetable garden—and a nectar-fed adult hoverfly is one that lays eggs, producing larvae that consume aphids. Sacrificing two or three plants to flowering yields more than the leaves you lose.

See our herb and medicinal seeds and our perennial plants.

The specific list for 20 m², first year

A balanced composition, deliberately limited. Twelve well-tended species are better than thirty poorly managed ones.

Family	Species	Why
Fast-growing	Radish, cut-and-come-again lettuce, arugula	Harvest in as little as three weeks, succession sowing
Structural crops	2 tomatoes, 1 zucchini, bush bean, carrot	The heart of summer production
Green manures	Phacelia, mustard	Cover empty beds, nourish the soil
Flowers	Borage, calendula, nasturtium	Beneficial insects, trap plant, staggered flowering
Herbs	Basil, parsley, thyme, chives	Zone 1, daily harvest

That makes about fifteen packets. In the second year, you will only need to buy some of them again—the tomatoes, beans, and lettuce will reseed themselves from your own harvests.

Piles of seeds placed side by side on a weathered gray wooden board: large white beans, flat squash seeds, small round radish seeds, and fine, elongated seeds, showing the difference in size from one species to another — From beans to carrot seeds, the difference in volume is on the order of one hundred to one. That is why a packet of carrots covers several seasons while a packet of beans is used up in a single row—and why counting packets tells you very little.

In our store Seed Box — Specially for Beginner Gardeners A reproducible selection to cover the first season · €34.90

Composition mistakes

Too many varieties at once. Fifteen well-tended species are better than forty half-opened packets.
Forgetting green manures. They are what build fertility for the following years, and they cost almost nothing.
Choosing only fruiting vegetables. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants all need full sun, time, and water. A vegetable garden made up solely of these species is fragile and demanding.
Ignoring the season. A catalog is read in January, but an August sowing is nothing like a March sowing. See The month-by-month sowing calendar.
Buying without leaving room for what comes next. Always reserve an empty bed: it will be used for succession sowings and green manures.

Frequently asked questions

How many packets should I buy to get started?

About fifteen for 20 m², spread across the five families. A packet often contains far more seeds than you need for one season, and they remain viable for several years—see How to store your seeds.

Should I buy seedlings or seeds?

Seeds for everything that is sown directly in place and for easy-to-grow species. Seedlings remain a good option in the first year for tomatoes and peppers if you don't have a warm, bright place for sowing. But you lose the possibility of harvesting seeds if the plant is an F1 hybrid.

Which seeds should I choose if my soil is poor?

Start with green manures for a full season, then choose undemanding species: beans, radishes, Swiss chard, and Mediterranean herbs. See Which seeds are suitable for poor, dry soil?.

What if I only have a balcony?

The five families remain relevant even on a balcony: herbs in zone 1, one cherry tomato plant, successive sowings of radishes, nasturtiums for beneficial insects, and a handful of phacelia between two crops. See Balcony vegetable garden.

Can you sow everything in the same year?

Yes, but spread your purchases throughout the season rather than ordering everything in February. You'll buy your autumn seedlings in August, with a year's more experience and a better idea of what works for you.

Key takeaways

The essentials in three lines

Choose by function, not desire: fast-growing plants for motivation, structural plants for production, green manures for the soil, flowers for beneficial insects, and perennials for longevity. And choose varieties that can all be reproduced—it's the only decision that makes all the others cumulative.

To go further

To plan your first year: our vegetable garden seeds, our green manures, our nectar-rich plants, and our starter kits.