Shade Crops

Some of you have gardens of your own, and when you aren’t foraging you enjoy cultivating your own herbs and vegetables.

One common question I get is what to grow in a shady area, so today we’ll go over some tips and aspects of shade growing to consider!

Degrees of Light

There are varying levels of shaded areas, and you’ll find that not every area is consistent in what will grow there!

Firstly, let’s go over the light levels:

• Full Sun: 6+ hours of sun per day.

• Partial Sun: 5-6 hours of sun per day

• Partial Shade: 4-5 hours of dappled sun per day

• Full Shade: Less than 4 total hours of sunlight per day

With the exception of plants in very warm climates or near the equator, few garden plants really need more than the 6 standard hours of sunlight in total.

With that in mind, you may realize that “shady spot” in the garden might not actually be that shady!

There are a lot of plants that can survive just fine with a few hours of sunlight, but most common garden plants are simply less productive with less sunlight.

What Grows in Shade?

Generally, you can follow these guidelines:

• Fruit, seeds, and nuts prefer full sun

• Leaves, shoots, and roots can tolerate shadier areas

This isn’t universally true, but it can serve as a good way to narrow down what to grow in these areas. A helpful way to further refine it is to consider what climate the plant originally comes from and how much light it would get in the wild.

Consider these common vegetables for slightly shady areas:

• Cabbage

• Kale

• Lettuce

• Chard

• Spinach

• Carrots

• Mints

• Oregano

• Rhubarb

• Beets

• Onions

• Garlic

• Leeks

• Radish

• Peas

• Rosemary

• Parsley

• Chives

Consider these less common vegetables for slightly shady areas:

• Garden Sorrel

• Collard Greens

• Ginseng

• Endive

• Dandelion Greens

• Lovage

• Bok Choy

• Kohlrabi

• Mustard Greens

• Sea Kale

• Good-King-Henry

Time of Daylight

The sun is more or less intense at different times of day to further complicate things. Morning sun tends to be a little less hot and gentler while afternoon sun tends to be hot and bright!

Some plants do better with morning sun and afternoon shade than others and vice versa. This might sound complicated, but the exciting news is that you can experiment and find out what works best!

Strategies

Here are a few main strategies I recommend in order to make it a little easier:

Borrow from Nature: Look at what naturally wants to grow in shade nearby. Is there anything edible or medicinal?

Here are a few common wild plants that generally tolerate shade:

• Purslane

• Nettles

• Jewelweed

• Wood Sorrel

• Cleavers

• Lambsquarters

• Chickweed

• Ramps

• Violets

• Goldenrod

• Spicebush

• Mallow

Shotgunning: Sometimes it’s a whole heck of a lot easier to make a mix of seeds and broadcast it in every shady area to see what grows! Make a list of your preferred shade-tolerant vegetables, mix all of those seeds into a jar and get tossing!

Specialty Zone: Maybe no decent vegetable will grow very well for you in shade. In that case, consider using that area to specialize in specific products that might not necessarily be vegetables. Here are a few ideas:

• Shade Medicine Garden

• Biomass Plot

• Small-scale Fish Farm

• Small Algae Pond (You could double an algae pond as a fishpond and get extra produce!)

• Compost Pile Area

• Fiber Crop Zone (Nettles, milkweeds, dogbane, and other plants are raised and harvested for their fibers to weave and spin with)

• Biochar Zone

• Coppice Zone (Shade-tolerant trees for harvesting branches for weaving or as fuel)

As you can see, there’s a lot of uses for shaded areas you just have to get creative!

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