Vegetables

Can You Grow Vegetables in Shade?

Photo: www.pennlive.com

Question: I have a beautiful garden with only four and a half hours of sunshine a day and that’s calculated by totaling up pretty much every single ray that hits it. What vegetables can I grow there effectively?

Allie122

Answer: I won’t beat around the bush. Deep shade is simply not conducive to vegetable gardening. No regular vegetable will grow well in the shade, but you’re lucky. Your garden sounds more to me like it’s in partial shade rather than full shade and that gives you a chance.

What little sunshine you have is probably still enough to grow most leafy greens. Many of them, like spinach and lettuce don’t actually like the intense heat of full summer sun and will do best, at that season at least, with at least a little cooling shade. 

However, don’t expect to grow prize vegetables. Under partial shade, leafy vegetables will grow more slowly than normal and may not reach their full size. And vegetables that normally form a dense head, like Iceberg lettuce, endive and head cabbage will likely instead produce loose leaves you’ll be able to harvest one by one. But then, aren’t baby leaves just as tasty as full-size ones?

When onions grow in partial shade, you’ll mostly be harvesting the leaves as green onions. Photo: www.town-farming.com

You can also grow root vegetables in partial shade. Again, they’ll grow more slowly and may never reach their full size, but will still be delicious. In the case of garlic and onions, you’ll be able to produce edible leaves (as in green onions), but not really a bulb worth harvesting.

Most fruiting vegetables, on the other hand, require a lot of sunshine to produce a worthwhile crop and I wouldn’t waste space on them if I were you. However, there are exceptions. Peas don’t do so badly in partial shade and, while strawberries aren’t vegetables per se, they are usually grown in vegetable gardens and produce reasonably well in partial shade.

Vegetables That Tolerate Partial Shade

While you can’t exactly call them shade-loving, the following vegetables are tolerant of partial shade. The plants marked with an asterisk (*) are the most shade tolerant of all and can be grown successfully in surprisingly deep shade.

  1. Arugula
  2. Asparagus
  3. Beet (beetroot)
  4. Bok choy
  5. Broccoli
  6. Cabbage
  7. Carrot
  8. Cauliflower
  9. Celery
  10. Chicory
  11. Chinese cabbage
  12. Endive
  13. Garlic (for its leaves only)
  14. Green onion
  15. Kale (kale)
  16. Kohlrabi
  17. Leek
  18. Lettuce
  19. Mache (corn salad)
  20. Mesclun
  21. Mizuna
  22. Mustard
  23. New Zealand spinach
  24. Ostrich fern*
  25. Parsnip
  26. Pea
  27. Potato
  28. Radish
  29. Rhubarb
  30. Rutabaga
  31. Salsify
  32. Sorrel
  33. Spinach
  34. Strawberry
  35. Swiss chard
  36. Turnip
  37. Watercress*

Garden writer and blogger, author of 65 gardening books, lecturer and communicator, the Laidback Gardener, Larry Hodgson, passed away in October 2022. Known for his great generosity, his thoroughness and his sense of humor, he reached several generations of amateur and professional gardeners over his 40-year career. Thanks to his son, Mathieu Hodgson, and a team of contributors, laidbackgardener.blog will continue its mission of demystifying gardening and making it more accessible to all.

4 comments on “Can You Grow Vegetables in Shade?

  1. Great information that I also was wondering about. Thanks for this post.

  2. My garden is next to a space under a deck. It is frustrating to see all that empty space, but not be able to use it for anything.

  3. joel o LeGrand

    Tomatoes also, they only need 6-8 hours of sun a day & in the hot peak summer we get 14 hours of HOT sun. dapper shade is good at that time of year.

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