Grow The Ingredients

The food tastes better when it starts three feet from the kitchen.

Half the fresh produce in these recipes is easy to grow yourself. Pick your climate zone and the calendar below computes when to start each crop, when to put it out, and when you'll actually be harvesting — then points you at the dinners it feeds.

Windows are computed from representative frost dates for each zone and are a starting point, not gospel — your real last/first frost shifts with elevation and locale. Check your local cooperative extension for exact dates.

Harvesting Now ·

The Crops · Vegetables — earliest start first

Eggplant

Slow to get going and fussy about cold, but a single healthy plant keeps producing all late summer.

WARM-SEASON · 75 DAYS · FULL SUN

Bell Peppers

Slow out of the gate but worth the wait — a single healthy plant keeps setting fruit right through fall.

WARM-SEASON · 75 DAYS · FULL SUN

Tomatoes

The whole reason a summer garden exists. Nothing from a store tastes like a tomato picked ripe off the vine.

WARM-SEASON · 75 DAYS · FULL SUN

Broccoli / Broccolini

A cool-season brassica that turns bitter in heat and sweet in a light frost. Char it and it is anything but boring.

COOL-SEASON · 70 DAYS · FULL SUN

Scallions (Green Onions)

The most forgiving thing in the garden. Cut what you need; they regrow from the base.

COOL-SEASON · 60 DAYS · FULL SUN

Spinach

One of the most cold-hardy greens there is — it'll shrug off a frost that would kill lettuce outright.

COOL-SEASON · 40 DAYS · PART SUN

Cucumber

Trellised, a couple of plants bury you in cucumbers. The backbone of the cooling yogurt salad.

WARM-SEASON · 55 DAYS · FULL SUN

Carrots

Sweetest when they mature in cool weather. The star of the quick pickle that shows up all week.

COOL-SEASON · 70 DAYS · FULL SUN

Lettuce

The fastest payoff in the garden — loose-leaf varieties are ready in about a month and keep giving if you cut instead of pull.

COOL-SEASON · 45 DAYS · PART SUN

Zucchini

A fast, prolific summer squash that rewards regular harvesting with continuous production.

WARM-SEASON · 50 DAYS · FULL SUN

Fennel

Anise-sweet and crisp raw, mellow and caramelized roasted. Give it its own patch — it doesn't play well with neighbors.

COOL-SEASON · 90 DAYS · FULL SUN

Garlic

Plant it in fall, forget it, harvest fat heads next summer. The highest reward-to-effort crop there is.

COOL-SEASON · 240 DAYS · FULL SUN

Green Beans

A fast, prolific summer staple that climbs or bushes, producing tender pods within weeks of flowering.

WARM-SEASON · 55 DAYS · FULL SUN

Corn

Sweet summer corn, best picked and cooked the same day while sugars are highest.

WARM-SEASON · 75 DAYS · FULL SUN

The Crops · Herbs — earliest start first

Oregano

A hardy, low-growing perennial herb with a pungent, earthy flavor that intensifies when dried.

WARM-SEASON · 80 DAYS · FULL SUN

Flat-Leaf Parsley

Not garnish — a green, peppery backbone. The herb that lifts the couscous. Nearly indestructible.

COOL-SEASON · 75 DAYS · PART SUN

Mint

A vigorous, spreading herb prized for cool, sweet flavor in both savory dishes and drinks.

WARM-SEASON · 60 DAYS · PART SUN

Basil

Loves heat, hates cold. One of the few herbs that visibly sulks below 50F — plant it after the soil's genuinely warm.

WARM-SEASON · 60 DAYS · FULL SUN

Cilantro / Coriander

The herb in half these recipes — and if you let it flower, the seed is coriander spice. Two crops from one plant.

COOL-SEASON · 45 DAYS · PART SUN

Dill

Feathery, fast, and self-seeding. Brightens the cucumber-yogurt salad and comes back on its own.

COOL-SEASON · 45 DAYS · FULL SUN

The Crops · Spices — earliest start first

Chili Peppers

Heat-loving and productive. Dry the surplus for your own chili flakes — the ones that finish the broccolini.

WARM-SEASON · 75 DAYS · FULL SUN

Ginger

A slow-growing tropical rhizome grown for its spicy, aromatic root - thrives in warm, humid, partly shaded conditions.

WARM-SEASON · 240 DAYS · PART SUN