Choosing planting

The 7 most profitable vegetables to grow in the kitchen garden

Which vegetable plants offer the best yield in the garden?

Contents

Modified the 1 February 2026 by Pascale 7 min. Difficulty: Débutant

Logically, deciding to create your own kitchen garden on a small patch of land, on a terrace, in a courtyard or even on a balcony, addresses several considerations. We mainly seek to rediscover the real flavour of vegetables and small fruits, while making our own modest contribution to protecting the environment by reducing our carbon footprint and improving biodiversity.

Growing your own kitchen garden also gives you the means to engage in physical activity at low cost, to get outdoors and unwind, and to pass on values to younger generations. But gardening also makes economic sense. Indeed, growing vegetables helps to reduce a family’s food budget. If the savings are proportional to the size of the kitchen garden, gardening is always worthwhile for the wallet. All the more worthwhile if you sow and plant productive vegetables, easy to maintain and with rapid growth. Even though crop success varies considerably from region to region, from climate to climate, in this or that soil, and also depending on each gardener’s growing practices. Not to mention the time required to enrich the soil and work it. To have a profitable kitchen garden, discover seven vegetables to grow in summer with the highest yields.

Difficulty

Tomatoes, the summer's leading fruit-vegetable

If there is one summer vegetable worth growing in the vegetable garden, it’s the tomato, from the large-fruited tomatoes to the cherry and cocktail tomatoes.

But the main argument for growing a few tomato plants remains flavour. In fact, once you have tasted real garden tomatoes, sun-drenched, with firm flesh and perfectly ripe, you can bet you won’t buy shop-bought tomatoes any more—utterly flavourless, full of water, which have ripened under artificial light without ever seeing the sun, in soil that isn’t real soil. A simple garden tomato salad, dressed with a few basil leaves, is a pure culinary delight! Anyway, back to profitability…

In a vegetable garden, growing tomatoes remains fairly accessible and the results are often rewarding. Especially with cherry tomatoes, which are often more expensive in shops and which grow well in the garden, even when grown in pots on a balcony or patio. Thus, tomato yields are estimated between 8 and 15 kg/m² depending on planting density and the varieties chosen. That is around 5 to 15 kg of tomatoes per plant, again depending on the variety. Productivity is therefore on track provided you offer the best cultural conditions: a sunny spot, deeply worked soil enriched with compost or well-rotted manure, adequate space between each plant, and regular watering.

profitable vegetables in the kitchen garden — tomatoes

Tomato yield ranges from 8 to 15 kg/m²

And profitability will be even greater if you sow your tomato seeds from March onwards, keeping them warm indoors, rather than buying plants in pots.

To learn everything about growing tomatoes:

Radish, small but profitable

Certainly, a bunch of radishes in midsummer isn’t very expensive to buy in shops. However, Sowing radishes in vegetable plots is an excellent idea. First, because radishes grow quickly. Some varieties, such as the 18‑day radishes, can be harvested after…18 days. An absolute growth record for this easy-to-grow root vegetable! Next, because radishes are very easy to sow, grow and care for. Finally, radishes can be enjoyed over a long period from April to the first frosts, provided you stagger sowings every two to three weeks. Not to mention one last argument: the diversity of varieties is such that you can sow long radishes, round radishes, colourful radishes, black, long radishes or round radishes, winter radishes, or white Japanese radishes.

Radishes are very productive root vegetables over a long harvest period.

To optimise radish cultivation, simply provide soil that is cool and fertile, well-drained, and a sunny to partly shaded position in the height of summer. But the key to obtaining good yields is watering and thinning. Radishes should be watered regularly, otherwise they may become woody and hollow and attract pests such as flea beetles. To avoid the chore of thinning, there are today radish-sowing ribbons, very handy for beginner gardeners.

And to get even more value from your radish sowings, you can use the radish tops in pesto.

To learn everything about growing radishes :

Salads, the essentials of summer tables

All salads are worth growing in the vegetable garden, but the most productive are certainly lettuces, and in particular the oak-leaf-type cut-and-come-again lettuces. And with lettuce, there’s a wide choice of varieties: lettuces, Batavian lettuces, curly chicory, escarole, lamb’s lettuce, cress, rocket… There’s something for everyone. Whatever the variety, salads yield around 3 to 6 kg per square metre, provided they are given rich, cool and loose soil and a site that is sufficiently sunny.

However, salads are sensitive to high heat, which makes them bolt very quickly. So summer sowings should be done in partial shade, and the others in full sun. You can sow lettuce from February to October, but you must choose the variety carefully. And the growth cycle of a lettuce is about 5 to 6 weeks in spring and summer.

Salads require little maintenance: regular watering, mulching to suppress weed competition, and winter protection for late sowings. Likewise, you’ll need to watch for slugs and snails, which are particularly fond of tender leaves.

productive vegetables in the kitchen garden

Lettuce is easy to grow over a long season.

All you need to know about growing salads:

Beans, those vegetables that have universal appeal in the vegetable garden

Beans are not botanically speaking vegetables, but rather legumes. Be that as it may, beans are easy to grow and, provided they benefit from the best growing conditions, they are very profitable. Especially given the price per kilogram of fresh green beans sold in shops. But again, your home-grown beans, harvested at perfect ripeness and that have not spent time in any fridge nor undergone lengthy transport, will have an inimitable flavour. In terms of yield, expect 1–2 kg of beans per plant, i.e. 2–4 kg/m².

And you have a choice of varieties and growing methods: string beans, snap beans, shell beans, dwarf beans or climbing beans… All these varieties are sown from May to mid-August for a harvest that begins about 2 months later, between June and October. Beans enjoy sunny sites and ordinary, light, fertile and well-drained soils. However, soils that are too rich, too damp or too calcareous do not suit them well.

A plant yields about 1–2 kg of beans.

To learn all about growing beans :

Courgettes, the queens of summer in the kitchen garden

From a single plant, you can expect to harvest 3 to 5 kg of courgettes, i.e. around 4 to 7 kg per m². Courgettes are among the most productive summer vegetables in the vegetable garden. With 2 to 3 courgette plants, you can easily provide enough for a family of three for the whole summer. They require very little: sun, fertile, loose, deep and cool soil; regular watering (without wetting the foliage); mulching and that’s all! The only drawback may be powdery mildew, a disease that often affects courgette plants, mainly late in the season. But with a few precautions, it is relatively easy to avoid.

Courgettes are among the most productive vegetables in the vegetable garden

To vary your pleasures, don’t hesitate to sow or plant different varieties. Courgettes come in long green varieties, long yellow varieties and in round varieties. And of course, it’s even more economical to sow your own seeds, since sowing them is very easy.

To learn all about growing courgettes:

Early potatoes

Listing potatoes as a profitable vegetable in the garden may seem surprising to some. Indeed, potatoes are very productive, but they take up a lot of space and stay in the ground for a long time. And that inevitably comes at the expense of other vegetables. So, Cultivating potatoes can be a good idea if you have a large garden of at least 300 m² and you are aiming for self-sufficiency.

However, in a garden with smaller dimensions, the potato proves profitable if grown as early potatoes. These so‑called new potatoes are small in size, have a very thin skin and an exceptionally mild flavour. The gardener’s advantage lies in the time spent in the ground. Indeed, an early potato is harvested about 60 to 90 days after planting. Depending on the region, it is planted from March to May. But as these new potatoes store poorly, they are eaten quickly.

vegetable productivity in the kitchen garden

Early potatoes are more profitable than storage potatoes.

To plant the right quantity of potatoes, know that A young plant yields on average one kilo of tubercles. Some varieties, such as ‘Agata’, can reach 2 kg.

To learn everything about potato cultivation:

Spinach, healthy vegetables

What could be better than a few spinach shoots in a salad? Growing spinach in your vegetable garden is very easy and highly profitable. And you can expect a yield of 500 g to 2.5 kg/m² depending on the time of sowing. Indeed, spinach are leafy vegetables that suffer greatly from high heat, which triggers bolting. Therefore the most profitable are autumn sowings and spring sowings. In these periods, with ideal weather conditions, seed germination occurs after about 15 days and the first harvest can be taken as early as six weeks after sowing, and over a fairly long period.