I believe there are other U.K. Growers here who can give some input. What is simple to grow in my zone in the spring may not be simple for you.

When my health took a debilitating dive my wife, who previously could care less, took over my gardening beds. Now there are leeks and kale everywhere. This may suggest they are simple.

Your avocado can go out for the Summer but it will die in a UK winter.

I've just come in from the allotment and today I sowed peas, beetroot and spinach. I already have lettuce and broad beans coming up. The Broad Beans sown in November are putting out flower buds. At this time of year you can be sowing those things if you are roughly below a line between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. Wait a week or so if you are further North.

Later on Runner beans are fairly simple but don't sow until all danger of frost is past. ie sometime in May probably. You could also buy a courgette plant or two. They're pretty easy to grow.

Get a good basic book on vegetable growing or do some research on line because plants are often sold too early to go out in the garden. You need to sow and plant at the appropriate time. Basically nothing is low maintenance in a vegetable garden. But it isn't rocket science if you get yourself a decent beginner's guide. Don't expect perfect crops like you see in lifestyle articles and don't be discouraged. Something will go wrong every year. But something else will do well.

You should have been digging and preparing your patch all Winter. If you haven't get out there now and start or you will have nowhere to sow your seeds.

Number one pest problem is likely to be slugs and snails. Be prepared.

BTW leeks and kale are winter crops which you don't sow yet.

Potatoes are a good choice.

Not necessarily, Peter. Personally I don't grow them any more because blight is very prevalent here and they are a pain to keep disease free. Also I, like a lot of Brits, have limited space and good quality potatoes can be easily and cheaply bought.

I don't think there is any need to keep them disease free. Of course there is always the chance of late blight ruining your crop, we have that problem here in the Northeast of the USA as well. There are blight resistant varieties if it is a concern.

Whether you are interested in growing them of course is a separate and personal issue, I personally think they are lots of fun and garden potatoes taste great.

Zucchini is another good choice. It can have lots of insect pests but it is fast maturing and should give you something even in a worst case.

I agree with others that what may be simple here isn't simple there. I remember talking to someone in the UK about growing rosemary. Here I use rosemary as easy landscape bushes because they require so little care but it seems there it may not be the case.

Besides what is easy, what do you like to eat? I would probably start there.

Since you are already growing lots of leafy greens - spinach included? - then add some green salad onions. maybe some radishes, even a cucumber plant. I don't think anything is really "low maintenance" but I guess that all depends on what you mean by that term. Everything requires some care and attention for successful growth.

Dave

Radishes are very easy and quick to mature in 30-40 days . Just be sure to thin them to the proper spacing of ~2" (4-5 cm). They are a cool weather crop and in the UK climate I would imagine you can grow them all summer.

Peter, I have given up on potatoes because they get blight every year. If they are not regularly sprayed you get nothing. It's not just cosmetic. Possibly the OP has better conditions but I still don't think they're worth recommending to a complete beginner.

I already recommended zucchini under the British name, courgette. It has next to no pests here. No svb for a start. However it would need to be sown indoors and transplanted. That's why I recommended buying plants.

Rosemary is easy here. Cucumbers are for experienced growers. Spinach is tricky but chard is a cinch.

So far the OP hasn't grown anything at all and I suggested a few crops that can be sown right now.

This is a very commonsense source of some basic tips to get you started. Tips for Beginners

How about some other easy to grow veggies you can add to your salad? Lettuce is pretty easy, you're right. You could try some radishes, carrots and green onions too. Green onions will grow from food scraps. It's pretty awesome! Radishes and carrots are pretty easy to start from seed, or if you can find started plants at a nursery that would be even easier. I think those four are a good place to start. And then you couid have a fresh salad from your garden! :)

Carrots are really quite difficult to grow well, especially if one has heavy or stony soil. Radishes too, although they germinate fast are tricky to grow well. They need to grow fast and for that they need warmth and moisture. Moisture we have but the warmth is unreliable and one often ends up with hot stringy radishes. What is easy in one climate is not necessarily so in another.

Bok-Choy should do well.

I find that Fordhook white chard (not the colorful ones) is absurdly simple to grow. It's just as tasty as the bright colors, but much more vigorous for some reason. It churns out big, flawless dark-green leaves that are edible raw when small, and larger leaves (which can be Huge) have a delicious savory-minerally flavor when cooked.

Bok Choy is a martyr to slugs and snails in our climate. Chard is certainly easy here and will self sow if left to flower. I forgot to mention it because I haven't actually sown any for years. It just grows itself.

Its pretty easy to control slugs and snails, I deal with them in my climate too. You guys still drink beer right?

I've battled slugs and snails all my gardening life. In any survey of UK gardeners they are always number one pest bar none. It is absolutely not 'pretty easy' to control them. Beer traps catch a few but they barely touch the huge mass of these creatures and need to be refilled every day. Copper strips, egg shells, grit - none of these strategies works. The only thing which will kill them in numbers and consistently is slug bait.

The OP is a brand new gardener and Bok Choi is not an easy crop for a beginner in our climate. I've had rows of Bok Choi seedlings entirely destroyed overnight.

This haul took about three minutes to find amongst my runner beans.

It seems escargot is the simplest thing to grow in the UK ;-) lol

Not far from the truth!

Ha ha!

Runner beans would be easy to grow, with attention to the slugs and snails....

Linda

haha, I used to collect the snails and just feed them to my chickens.

Wow... now those are snails. We have ginormous slugs here in Tn. (seriously... incredibly huge slugs,) but our snails are minuscule. Are those the type of snails used in escargot?

perhaps the game is better played by growing snails rather than growing veggies.

No, those are a different species from the ones used for escargots. Slightly smaller. But I'm sure they're very tasty. We have lots of different slugs too, some enormous. 5. Inches is common for the big red or black slugs. I've actually heard snails eating on a very quiet evening. It's a kind of rasping scraping noise. The problem is that the climate here is such that there is rarely any period of more than a few days without rain. The moisture required by Gastropods is almost always present.