You may want to grow some of your own food, but think you can’t because your growing space is shade-challenged. Think again! Although many gardens, especially in cities, lack the six to eight hours of direct sunlight needed to grow many familiar crops, there are foods that you can cultivate in part sun, part shade, or even full shade.

Part-Sun Edible Plants (2-5 hours of direct sunlight each day)

Most of these are plants that would prefer full sun and are often labeled as full-sun plants. I’ve put them in the part-sun category in case you want to know what you can grow if you only have a few hours of direct sunlight each day. You can’t grow these in full shade, but they will still produce a good crop on just a few hours of sunlight a day. How to know whether the plant you want to grow is in this semi–shade tolerant category? Just remember that with a couple of exceptions (see below), leaf and root vegetables tend to be more tolerant of low-light situations than most fruits. In this case, I’m using the scientific definition of “fruit,” which is “the seed-bearing part of the plant.” If the part of the plant you intend to eat has seeds, it may need a lot of sunlight. What this means is that you can grow lettuce and beets on just a few hours of light a day, but don’t try that eggplant.

• Asparagus*
• Blackberries and raspberries*
• Cherry Tomatoes (while most tomatoes need full sun, cherry tomato varieties tolerate a bit less)
• Chervil
• Chives*
• Currants
• Horseradish*
• Hot peppers*
• Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)
• Leafy greens (kale, bok choy, chard, spinach, lettuce, etc.)*
• Mint
• Parsley*
• Rhubarb*
• Root vegetables*
• Shiso (Perilla)
• Strawberries*

*You’ll get a bigger crop if you grow these in full sun, but they will still produce well with just a few hours of light.

Next we get to the true low-light plants.

If your gardening space doesn’t get direct sunlight, the good news is that there is still plenty of food you can grow. Woodland plants evolved under the shade of trees and actually prefer less light. These include some wonderful foods native to our northeastern forests, including wild ginger and fiddlehead ferns. These woodland plants may be less familiar than supermarket ingredients, but consider that your invitation to get creative in the kitchen.

Part-Shade Edible Plants (Dappled or bright indirect light)

• Elderberry (another shrub that will give you a bigger crop with more light, but fruits quite well with less)
• Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum, a native plant with delicious fruit)
• Ostrich/Fiddlehead ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris)
• Ramps/Wild leeks (Allium tricoccum)
• Spicebush/Appalachian allspice (Lindera benzoin)
• Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum, the flavoring for German May wine. You can make your own by soaking the flowers and leaves of sweet woodruff in Riesling wine overnight)
• Wild ginger (Asarum canadense, a native Northeast woodland groundcover; no relation to the commercially used Indonesian ginger, it has a similar—I think better—flavor.)
• Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)

Full-Shade Edible Plants

There are not too many edibles that will grow in deep shade, but there are a few. Some are plants that most people grow as ornamentals without realizing that they are also edible, such as hostas. (Yes, you can eat them. When they first come up in spring and the leaves are still curled into a funnel shape, the Japanese use them as a green vegetable in soups. They are quite good and will recover from your harvesting with impunity.) Plants for a Future has an extensive database that includes edibles for every light condition, including full shade. If you use their site to research possible plants for your edible landscape, keep in mind that they are in the U.K., which has a milder climate than many areas of the U.S. Here in New York City, I look for plants that are suitable for gardening zone 6 or lower.

There is one food that shows up in every cookbook and that will grow in the dark: mushrooms. These are fungi, not plants, but I include them here because you can grow them in full shade; some types will even grow in a closet. Mushroom-growing kits are available online from Fungi Perfecti and other companies.