NothingWilts

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.

start indoors sow / transplant out harvest

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 ·

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The Crops

A cluster of fresh cilantro plants with bright green leaves

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

A cucumber vine on a trellis with a ripening cucumber among the leaves

Cucumber

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

WARM-SEASON · 55 DAYS · FULL SUN

A row of scallions with white bulbs and tall green stalks growing in soil

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

A dense row of young garlic plants with flat blue-green strappy leaves growing in soil

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

Carrot tops with feathery green foliage growing in soil

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

A broccoli plant with tight blue-green florets growing in the garden

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

Feathery dill plants with fine thread-like fronds

Dill

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

COOL-SEASON · 45 DAYS · FULL SUN

A chili pepper plant with clusters of ripening red chilies

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

A cluster of flat-leaf parsley with dark green serrated leaves

Flat-Leaf Parsley

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

COOL-SEASON · 75 DAYS · PART SUN

Ripe cherry tomatoes on the vine

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

Fresh basil plants with bright green leaves

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

An eggplant plant with a ripening purple eggplant

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

A fennel plant with a pale bulb and feathery fronds

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

A bell pepper plant with ripening red and green peppers

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

Loose-leaf lettuce plants growing in a garden bed

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

A cluster of spinach plants with dark green leaves

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