Plant Library

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Better Boy is the workhorse slicing tomato found on nearly every garden-center bench, a vigorous indeterminate hybrid prized for dependable yields of large, round, deep-red fruit that average 10 to 16 ounces, often nearing a pound. The flavor is the classic balanced sweet-tart tomato taste and the flesh is firm enough to slice cleanly for sandwiches and burgers. Its real claim to fame is built-in disease resistance: the VFN designation means it shrugs off verticillium and fusarium wilts and root-knot nematodes, the soilborne problems that cut heirloom plants short. That resistance lets a single plant keep setting fruit from early summer right up to the first hard frost.

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Marketmore 76 is the standard open-pollinated slicing cucumber, bearing uniform, straight, dark-green fruit 8 to 9 inches long with crisp, mild flesh, on disease-resistant vines. A reliable home-garden workhorse since the 1970s, it begins bearing in about 65 to 70 days and keeps producing as long as the fruit is picked.

Albion is the premier day-neutral strawberry in North America, bred at UC Davis and released in 2004 (U.S. plant patent granted in 2006). Day-neutral means it ignores day length and fruits in flushes from late spring right through to fall frost, rather than in one June burst. The berries are large, long-conical, deep red inside and out, exceptionally firm, and among the sweetest and firmest of the day-neutral varieties, which is why Albion dominates both market and home plantings. Albion also carries strong resistance to Verticillium wilt, Phytophthora crown rot, and anthracnose - a rare combination that makes it forgiving for beginners.

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The French marigold is a compact, bushy annual smothered in gold, orange, and mahogany blooms from spring to frost, with pungent, ferny foliage. One of the most famous companion plants in the vegetable garden, it is valued not just for color but for suppressing root-knot nematodes in the soil and drawing hoverflies and other beneficial insects.

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Genovese is the classic Italian sweet basil, the variety prized for pesto, with large, fragrant, deep-green leaves and a rich, sweet, clove-and-anise aroma. A tender warm-season annual, it grows fast in summer heat and keeps producing as long as it is regularly pinched and kept from flowering.

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Green bell peppers are simply sweet bell peppers harvested before they finish ripening, while they are still crisp, mild, and grassy-fresh. This is the classic California Wonder type, a thick-walled, four-lobed, blocky pepper that has been the home-garden standard since the 1920s, with no heat at all. Left on the plant about two more weeks, the same fruit ripens from green to a sweeter red, in roughly 75 days from transplant.

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Blue Lake is a classic American snap bean famous for straight, round, deep-green pods that stay tender and stringless with a sweet, old-fashioned flavor, equally good fresh, canned, or frozen. The original is a vigorous pole bean that climbs to six feet and bears over a long season, ripening its first pods in about 60 to 65 days and producing until frost.

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Nantes is a classic carrot type producing slender, cylindrical, blunt-tipped roots six to seven inches long with smooth skin, a small core, and exceptionally sweet, crisp, mild flesh. Among the most popular home carrots for fresh eating, it matures in about 60 to 75 days and grows best in cool weather, sweetening further after fall frosts.

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Bluecrop is the worlds most widely planted northern highbush blueberry and the benchmark all others are measured against. Released by the USDA and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station in 1952, it forms a vigorous, upright 4 to 6 ft bush that is drought-tolerant, cold-hardy, and consistently productive, with large, light-blue, firm midseason berries of good flavor. It needs roughly 800 to 1,000 winter chill hours, so it suits zones 4 to 7. Bluecrop is partly self-fertile but yields larger berries and heavier crops when planted with a second highbush variety for cross-pollination.

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Cilantro is the fast, cool-season annual whose bright, citrusy leaves are essential to Mexican, Indian, and Asian cooking, while the same plant's dried seeds are the warm spice coriander. The Slow Bolt strain is bred to hold in leaf longer before bolting in heat, extending the harvest of tender foliage that is the toughest part of growing cilantro well.

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Black Beauty is a classic dark-green zucchini, a bush-type summer squash bearing glossy, slender fruit with tender, creamy flesh that is endlessly versatile in the kitchen. The plants are famously prolific, producing more than most families can keep up with from about 50 to 60 days, with fruit ready to pick just days after the blossoms open.

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The jalapeno is the most widely grown hot pepper in North America, a medium-heat chile rated about 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville units with thick crisp walls and a grassy, vegetal bite. Picked green it is the workhorse of salsas, nachos, poppers, and pickling; left to ripen red on the plant it grows sweeter and a touch hotter, and smoke-dried red jalapenos become chipotles. The compact, productive plants suit gardens and containers alike and set heavy loads of fruit over a long warm season, making one or two plants plenty for most households.

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Candy is an intermediate-day (day-neutral) hybrid sweet onion that forms big, slightly flattened, light-yellow globes - up to softball size - with sweet, juicy, low-sulfur flesh. Because it is day-neutral rather than long- or short-day, it bulbs well across most of the country, from the far North to the deep South, unlike region-locked sweet onions such as Vidalia (short-day) or Walla Walla (long-day). Like all sweet onions, its high sugar and water content makes it mild and pleasant raw on salads and burgers but means it does not keep long, storing only about two to three months.

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Heritage is the standard everbearing red raspberry, a primocane-fruiting variety that bears a light summer crop on second-year canes and a heavy fall crop on the current season's canes. Vigorous, hardy, and largely self-supporting, it is one of the easiest raspberries for home gardens, with the simplest pruning of any type and sweet, firm, flavorful berries.

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Buttercrunch is a popular butterhead lettuce forming a loose rosette of soft, buttery green leaves around a tender, blanched heart, with a sweet, mild flavor and a crisp center. An award-winning variety prized for tolerating heat better than most butterheads, it is slower to bolt and turn bitter, and it matures in about 55 to 65 days.

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A warm-season annual producing masses of ruffled trumpet flowers in every color from white through lavender, purple, red, pink, yellow, and bicolors. Long-blooming, easy to grow, and one of the best flowers for summer containers, hanging baskets, and garden borders. Also an effective trap crop for aphids and thrips near vegetable beds.

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Curly parsley is the tightly ruffled, deep-green form of the classic biennial herb, milder and more decorative than flat-leaf and the traditional garnish. Grown as an annual for its leaves, it forms dense 8 to 14 inch clumps that take light frost.

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Sugar snap peas are edible-pod peas eaten whole, combining the plump sweetness of a shelling pea with a crisp, stringless pod when young. Climbing vines crop heavily in cool weather, and the sweet, crunchy pods are a favorite for fresh snacking, salads, and quick stir-fries.

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Celebrity is a 1984 All-America Selections winner and one of the most dependable home-garden tomatoes ever bred. The semi-determinate plants grow to a tidy 3 to 4 feet yet keep setting medium-large 7 to 8 oz red fruit all season until frost, combining heavy early yields with rich, well-balanced flavor. Celebrity carries a broad disease-resistance package (verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt races 1 and 2, nematodes, and tobacco mosaic virus), which makes it one of the most forgiving choices for new growers.

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Honeycrisp is a modern favorite famous for its exceptionally crisp, juicy, explosively crunchy texture and balanced sweet-tart flavor. Developed at the University of Minnesota, it is very cold-hardy and stores unusually well for months, ripening in late summer to early fall, and like other apples it requires a different variety nearby for cross-pollination.

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A red bell pepper is simply a green bell left on the plant to fully ripen, turning from green through to deep red as it sweetens and develops its richest flavor and highest vitamin content. Sweet and crisp with no heat, blocky and thick-walled, it is excellent raw, roasted, or sauteed, and takes a few extra weeks on the plant to color up.

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The iconic tall annual sunflower producing massive seed-filled heads 12 to 18 inches across on 8 to 12-foot stalks. Edible seeds are high in protein and healthy fats. Flowers track the sun when young (heliotropism) before becoming fixed east-facing at maturity. One of the most productive and dramatic plants in any garden, attracting goldfinches, bees, and countless beneficial insects.

Boston Pickling is the classic American pickling cucumber, in commercial seed catalogs since 1877. The vigorous vines bear an abundance of 3 to 6 inch fruits with thin bumpy skin, dense crisp flesh, and a small seed cavity, which is what makes them so reliable for crunchy whole-pack pickles. Also excellent fresh.

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Spearmint is the common sweet mint, milder and less sharply cool than peppermint, with a clean, sweet flavor used in teas, sauces, salads, and drinks like mojitos and mint juleps. Like all mints it is a hardy perennial that spreads enthusiastically by runners and returns each spring, supplying fragrant leaves throughout the season.

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Bloomsdale is a classic savoy-leaf heirloom spinach with heavily crinkled, glossy dark-green leaves and a rich, sweet flavor. Slower to bolt than smooth-leaf types, this cold-hardy long-standing variety gives a longer spring and fall harvest and stands up to winter with protection.

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Triple Crown is the most productive thornless blackberry for home growers: large glossy berries with deep balanced sweet-tart flavor, ripening over a 5-week stretch in late summer. The semi-erect canes are vigorous and trained up a trellis for easy picking, and a single mature plant can yield 25 to 35 lb of fruit per season.

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Kentucky Wonder is the classic heritage pole snap bean, grown for well over a century for its 7 to 8 inch flat green pods and rich, old-fashioned bean flavor that is sweet and tender when picked young. The twining vines climb 6 feet or more and keep flowering and bearing right up to frost, so a single planting yields for weeks. Left on the vine, the same pods mature into plump seeds that can be shelled green or dried as the brown Kentucky Wonder dry bean, making it a true dual-purpose heirloom for fresh eating and storage.

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Early Girl is a popular early hybrid valued for ripening its first medium-sized, globe-shaped slicing tomatoes in just 50 to 60 days from transplant, weeks ahead of most varieties. The indeterminate vines keep producing reliable, full-flavored fruit all season, making it a dependable choice for short-season gardens or anyone impatient for the first ripe tomato.

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The Knock Out rose (Rosa 'Radrazz'), introduced in 2000, revolutionized rose growing by being almost foolproof. It is a rounded, bushy shrub rose, typically 3 to 4 ft, that produces flushes of cherry-red, lightly scented single flowers continuously from spring until frost. Crucially, it is self-cleaning (it drops spent blooms and reblooms without deadheading) and was bred for outstanding resistance to black spot and other diseases that plague traditional roses, so it needs no spraying. Cold hardy to about zone 5 and extremely heat- and drought-tolerant once established, it gives the look of a rose garden with a fraction of the fuss.

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English thyme is the common culinary thyme, a low, woody-stemmed Mediterranean perennial with tiny, intensely aromatic gray-green leaves, a foundation herb for stocks, roasts, and slow-cooked dishes. The tough little plants are evergreen in mild climates, draw bees when they bloom, and hold their flavor well through cooking and drying.

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Romaine, or cos lettuce, forms a tall, upright head of sturdy, elongated leaves with crisp ribs and a sweet, robust flavor, the classic lettuce for Caesar salads. More heat- and bolt-tolerant than tender butterheads, it matures in about 70 to 85 days and holds its quality well in the garden and the refrigerator.

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Concord is the classic American blue-black slipskin grape, intensely aromatic and sweet-tart, the grape behind traditional grape juice, jelly, and jam. A vigorous, cold-hardy, disease-tolerant vine, it is self-fruitful and forgiving, ripening its heavy clusters in early to mid fall, and a single well-tended vine can produce for decades.

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The cayenne is a long, slender, thin-walled hot pepper rated about 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units, several times hotter than a jalapeno, that ripens from green to brilliant red. Its thin walls dry easily, making it the classic pepper for grinding into cayenne powder and crushed red pepper flakes, as well as for hot sauces, in about 70 to 75 days.

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Imperator 58 is the classic supermarket carrot: 8 to 10 inches long, slender, tapered, and deep orange, with the uniform shape that made the Imperator type the standard for commercial production. The variety needs loose deep soil to size up properly; in heavy or rocky ground the roots fork and twist.

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A cheerful cool-season annual producing bicolor face-like flowers in purple, yellow, white, and combinations. Cold-hardy enough to bloom through light snow. One of the earliest and latest flowers of the season, bridging autumn and spring. Edible flowers used as garnishes and in salads. Classic for spring containers, window boxes, and early garden color.

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The classic American summer squash — bright yellow with a characteristic curved neck and bumpy skin. Harvest young at 6 to 8 inches for tender, sweet flesh. One of the most productive plants in any vegetable garden; a few plants will feed an entire family through summer.

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Greek oregano is the pungent, white-flowered subspecies that cooks mean by real oregano. Many plants simply labeled oregano are milder ornamental forms, but Greek oregano delivers the sharp, warm, peppery flavor essential to Mediterranean, Greek, and Mexican cooking. It is a low, spreading, woody-based perennial that forms a fragrant mat of small gray-green leaves, topped in summer by white flowers that bees and butterflies swarm. Tough and drought-proof once established, it thrives on heat and a bit of neglect and is one of the easiest, most rewarding culinary herbs to grow.

Red Onion is the sharp, colorful cooking onion with deep purple-red skin and crisp white flesh ringed in purple. Raw, it brings color and bite to salads, salsas, and sandwiches; roasted or caramelized it turns sweet and mellow. Most red onions sold for the North are long-day storage types that bulb when summer days stretch past about 14 hours, while short-day reds are grown in the South, so matching the variety to your latitude is the key to getting full-size bulbs. It is a cool-season crop planted in early spring and harvested in mid to late summer.

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Brown Turkey is a popular, easy-to-grow fig with brownish-purple skin and sweet, richly flavored pink-amber flesh, well suited to home gardens and containers. It is self-fruitful, needing only one plant, and where the season is long it can bear two crops a year: a light early breba crop on last year's wood and a heavier main crop in late summer and fall.

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Calabrese is the classic Italian green broccoli, producing a large blue-green central head followed by a steady supply of smaller side shoots after the main head is cut. A cool-season brassica maturing in about 60 to 90 days, it is the standard home-garden broccoli, valued for the long secondary harvest that can continue for weeks.

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Cherry Belle is the classic round, cherry-red salad radish, with crisp white flesh and a mild, clean bite, and one of the very fastest vegetables anyone can grow, going from seed to harvest in roughly three to four weeks. That speed makes it ideal for filling gaps between slower crops, marking rows of slow-germinating carrots, and giving beginners a quick, satisfying first success. It is a cool-season root that does best in the mild weather of spring and fall, and like all radishes it turns sharp and woody if rushed through heat.

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Cosmos is an airy, fast-growing annual with feathery foliage and a long summer-to-frost show of daisy-like blooms in pink, white, and magenta on tall, graceful stems. It thrives on neglect, flowering best in poor soil, and is a powerful magnet for bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects, making it as useful in the vegetable garden as it is pretty in the border or vase.

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Arp Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus 'Arp') is the benchmark cold-hardy rosemary, discovered in 1972 near the town of Arp in east Texas and prized for surviving winter temperatures down to about -10F. That hardiness extends dependable rosemary into zone 6, well beyond the mild-winter range of most varieties. It is an upright, open, vigorous shrub reaching 3 to 5 ft, with slightly longer, lighter gray-green, spruce-scented needles and pale blue flowers in spring. The flavor is full and resinous, excellent for roasts, breads, and grilling, and like all rosemary it is evergreen, drought-tough, and beloved by bees.

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Roma is the classic determinate paste tomato found in markets and gardens everywhere, valued for egg-shaped, meaty, low-moisture fruit with few seeds and thick walls that cook down into rich sauce, paste, and canned tomatoes. Each fruit runs about 2 to 3 ounces, and the compact bushy plants set nearly their whole crop in one concentrated flush rather than spreading it across the season. That habit is the whole point: it gives the cook a large batch of nearly identical fruit ready at the same time for a single big canning or sauce day. The plants are widely adapted and carry good resistance to verticillium and fusarium wilts.

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Crimson Sweet is a classic round, blocky watermelon with a pale green rind striped in dark green and crisp, sweet, deep-red flesh, with fruit typically weighing 15 to 25 pounds. The vigorous vines need a long, hot season, ripening in about 85 to 90 days, and the variety is prized for high sugar content and good disease resistance.

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The banana pepper is a mild, elongated, waxy yellow pepper that ripens through orange to red and grows sweeter as it colors. With little to no heat, from zero to about 500 Scoville units, it is a heavy-bearing favorite for fresh eating, stuffing, and especially pickling for sandwiches and salads.

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Snow peas are flat-podded peas eaten whole, pod and all, while the pods are still thin and the seeds barely formed, prized for their sweet crunch in stir-fries and salads. A frost-hardy cool-season climber, it crops in the cool shoulders of spring and fall and stops producing once summer heat sets in.

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A tough, drought-tolerant North American native perennial producing large pink daisy-like flowers with prominent dark spiky cones from mid-summer through fall. One of the most important late-season pollinator plants and an outstanding cut flower. Also the source of the herbal supplement echinacea. Extremely easy to grow and long-lived.

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Yukon Gold is a popular early-to-midseason potato with smooth, thin yellow skin and moist, buttery, golden flesh that is excellent boiled, mashed, or roasted. It sizes up faster than storage russets, in about 75 to 90 days, holds together well when cooked, and yields uniform, good-keeping tubers.

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Bing is the classic dark sweet cherry, producing large, firm, deep-mahogany fruit with rich, sweet flavor, the benchmark variety for fresh eating. The vigorous trees bear in early summer but need a long winter chill and a compatible second sweet cherry for pollination, since Bing cannot set fruit with its own pollen.

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Garden sage is a hardy, woody-stemmed perennial with soft, silvery-green leaves and a warm, savory, slightly peppery flavor classic in stuffing, sausage, and rich autumn dishes. A Mediterranean shrub that returns for years, it is handsome enough for the ornamental border, with spikes of blue flowers that draw bees.

Provider is a dependable early bush snap bean, one of the most reliable varieties for an early crop because it germinates well in cool soil and bears a heavy, concentrated set of round, meaty green pods in just about 50 days. The compact, self-supporting plants need no trellis and are a favorite for first sowings and successive plantings.

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Iceberg is the classic crisphead lettuce, forming a dense, round head of pale, crunchy, mild leaves, and it is the most heat-tolerant of the lettuces, the Great Lakes strain bred to head reliably in warmer conditions. The most demanding lettuce to grow well, it needs a longer, cool season of about 80 to 90 days to form a tight, full head.

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Sweet 100 is an indeterminate cherry tomato prized for huge yields of one-inch, candy-sweet red fruit borne in long, branching clusters. The tall vines start ripening in about 60 to 65 days and keep producing nonstop until frost, so a single well-staked plant can yield many hundreds of tomatoes over a season. The fruit is high in sugars but, like most cherry tomatoes, tends to split after heavy rain following dry spells, so keep moisture even and pick promptly to limit cracking.

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Snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus) is the classic cottage garden flower with tall spikes of dragon-mouth blooms in every color from pure white to deep burgundy, plus bicolors and pastels. A cool-season cut flower beloved by pollinators (especially bumblebees, which are heavy enough to trip the dragon-mouth open), Snapdragon is a short-lived perennial usually grown as a cool-weather annual for spring and fall bloom.

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Elberta is the most famous heirloom peach, a large, freestone variety with golden, red-blushed skin and sweet, juicy yellow flesh that pulls cleanly from the pit, excellent fresh, canned, or baked. Unlike many tree fruits it is self-fruitful, so a single tree bears well, ripening its heavy crop in mid to late summer.

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Copenhagen Market is a classic early green cabbage forming a solid, round, blue-green head about six to seven inches across with mild, crisp leaves good for slaws, kraut, and cooking. A dependable cool-season brassica, it matures in about 65 to 70 days from transplant and was bred to head uniformly on a compact plant that fits a home garden.

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Dill is a fast-growing annual herb with feathery blue-green foliage and a fresh, tangy, grassy flavor, indispensable for pickles, fish, and potato dishes, while its seeds season brines and breads. The tall, airy plants are quick to bolt into flat yellow flower umbels that draw beneficial insects, and Bouquet is a compact strain bred for abundant foliage.

German Extra Hardy is the gold-standard porcelain hardneck garlic for cold climates, with large bulbs holding 4 to 6 big easy-peel cloves under white wrappers tinged purple. The flavor is strongly pungent raw and sweetly mellow when roasted, with high sugar content, and the bulbs store easily for 6 months.

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Black Beauty is the classic large, glossy, deep-purple eggplant, an heirloom prized for its plump, oval fruit and creamy, mild flesh that is excellent grilled, roasted, or layered into parmesan. The sturdy plants produce a handful of big fruit each, maturing in about 80 days, with surprisingly early ripening for such a large eggplant.

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Cafe au Lait is the famously sought-after dinnerplate dahlia, bearing 8 to 10 inch blooms in soft, shifting tones of creamy blush, buff, and palest peach. Bushy 3 to 4 ft plants flower from midsummer until frost and are the darling of wedding florists and cutting gardens. Grown from tubers that are lifted and stored over winter in cold climates.

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Gala is one of the most popular apples, a crisp, sweet, mild variety with thin skin striped in red over yellow, excellent for fresh eating and applesauce. The trees are productive and bear at a relatively young age, ripening their fruit from late summer into early fall, and like most apples Gala needs a second variety nearby for cross-pollination.

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Detroit Dark Red is the standard garden beet, an heirloom producing smooth, round, deep-red roots with sweet, tender flesh and a bonus crop of nutritious red-veined greens. A dependable cool-season root maturing in about 55 to 65 days, it resists turning woody even at full size and is good for fresh use, canning, and pickling.

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Chives are a hardy perennial herb in the onion family, forming neat grassy clumps of slender, hollow leaves with a mild, fresh onion flavor, plus edible purple pompom flowers in spring. The easiest allium to grow, chives return reliably year after year, are among the first herbs up in spring, and supply snippable leaves all season.

A small compact butterhead lettuce producing tight, loosely folded heads of soft, buttery-textured leaves with a sweet, mild flavor. Highly regarded by restaurant chefs for presentation and flavor. Bibb is the heirloom butterhead also sold as Kentucky Limestone (originally called limestone lettuce), considered by many the finest American lettuce. It forms beautiful small cups perfect for serving appetizers.

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Silver Queen is a classic late-season white sweet corn, prized for its large ears packed with small, tender, creamy-white kernels and an old-fashioned sweet corn flavor. A standard sugary hybrid maturing in about 88 to 92 days, it is a longtime favorite for fresh eating, best picked and cooked the same day before its sugars turn to starch.

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Butternut is the most popular winter squash, a tan, bell-shaped fruit with dense, sweet, deep-orange flesh, a small seed cavity, and a smooth rind that is easy to peel. The vigorous vines ripen fruit in roughly 85 to 110 days, and butternut is one of the best-keeping squash, sweetening in storage and lasting for months.

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Bartlett is the classic summer pear, medium to large with thin skin that ripens from green to golden yellow, very sweet, juicy, and tender, and the most widely grown pear for fresh eating and canning. A heavy, reliable midseason bearer, it crops best with a second pear variety nearby for pollination.

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African marigold of the Crackerjack type is a tall, robust annual carrying big, fully double pompom blooms in gold, orange, and yellow from summer to frost on 2 to 3 foot plants. Easy and dependable, it is both a bold bedding flower and a classic vegetable-garden companion.

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The habanero is one of the hotter peppers commonly grown, rated roughly 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units, with a distinctive fruity, floral aroma beneath its fierce heat. The small, lantern-shaped pods ripen from green to orange or red, and unlike most garden peppers it is a Capsicum chinense that needs a long, hot season, often 90 to 100 days or more from transplant.

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Italian flat-leaf parsley is the cook's parsley, with flat, deeply cut, dark-green leaves and a brighter, more robust flavor than the curly type, used both as a fresh herb and as a foundation of many dishes. Technically a biennial usually grown as an annual, it forms a generous leafy clump its first year and tolerates cold well, often standing into winter.

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A long, tapered open-pollinated carrot developed by market gardeners around Danvers, Massachusetts, in the 1870s — one of the most adaptable carrots for heavy soils where longer varieties struggle. 6 to 8 inch broad-shouldered roots with a dark orange core and good, balanced sweet flavor.

Snowball is the standard white cauliflower, forming a firm, domed head of tight, snow-white curds six to eight inches across with a mild, sweet flavor. A cool-season brassica maturing in about 65 to 80 days, the Snowball Y strain has leaves that curl over the head to help shade it, and cauliflower is the most weather-sensitive of the cabbage family, demanding cool, steady conditions.

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Eureka is the standard grocery-store lemon: medium to large bright yellow fruit with textured skin and intensely acidic juicy flesh, nearly seedless. The tree is everbearing in mild climates, meaning fruit and flowers appear together year-round, with the heaviest crop set in late winter through early summer. Cold-tender, so it lives in pots in any climate with frost.

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The zonal geranium is the quintessential summer container flower, the bold red, pink, or salmon geranium that fills window boxes, porch pots, and beds across the country. Despite the common name it is a Pelargonium, not a true hardy geranium. The Maverick series is bred for garden performance and grown from seed, producing compact, well-branched plants topped all summer with large rounded flower heads over softly scalloped, often zone-marked leaves. Sun-loving, heat-tough, and drought tolerant once established, it is a tender perennial grown as an annual in most of the country, blooming from spring until frost with a little deadheading.

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The russet is the classic baking and frying potato, a large, oblong tuber with rough brown skin and dry, fluffy white flesh that bakes light and fries crisp. A late-maturing main-crop variety, Russet Burbank needs a long season of roughly 100 to 120 days and produces heavily, storing for months through winter.

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Peppermint is a vigorous, high-menthol mint, a natural hybrid famous for its sharp, cooling flavor in teas, desserts, and candies. The lush, fragrant plants spread aggressively by underground runners and return year after year, making them best grown contained, but they reward with an abundance of leaves all season.

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Lacinato, also called dinosaur or Tuscan kale, is an Italian heirloom with long, narrow, deeply puckered blue-green leaves and a sweeter, more refined flavor than curly kale. A hardy cool-season brassica, it yields baby leaves in about 30 days and full leaves in 60 to 65 days, and like all kale it grows sweeter and more tender after frost.

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Clemson Spineless is the standard okra variety, an heirloom that has been the home-garden benchmark since the 1930s, bearing straight, ridged, deep-green pods on tall, sturdy plants. Its spineless pods are easy to pick, and the heat-loving plants crop heavily over a long, hot summer, with the first pods ready in about 55 to 65 days.

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Cantaloupe, or muskmelon, is the classic netted melon with rough tan webbing over the rind and fragrant salmon-orange flesh around a hollow seed cavity. Hales Best is a beloved old market variety prized for deep sweetness and heavy aroma, the smell that fills a kitchen when the fruit is ripe. The plants are sprawling warm-season annual vines that need room, heat, and a fairly long season, but they reward the space with intensely sweet fruit far better than most store-bought melons. As a heat-lover it thrives in hot, sunny summers.

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Mary Washington is the heirloom standard for home asparagus, a hardy, rust-resistant variety producing thick, tender green spears with purple-tinged tips. A long-lived perennial that can crop for fifteen to twenty years from a single planting, it sends up its spears in early spring, rewarding the patience it takes to establish a bed.

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Super Elfin is the classic bedding impatiens, for decades the most popular shade annual in North America for one simple reason: it blooms nonstop, all season, in the shady spots where little else will flower. It makes a low, dense, mounding plant covered in flat, five-petaled flowers in jewel tones of red, pink, salmon, violet, white, and bicolors, glowing in a dim corner from spring until frost with almost no care. It is a tender plant grown as an annual everywhere. Its one real drawback is susceptibility to impatiens downy mildew, a disease that can wipe out a planting; where that has been a problem, the newer disease-resistant series are a safer choice.

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The poblano is a large, heart-shaped mild chile with thick walls and gentle heat, about 1,000 to 2,000 Scoville units, the classic pepper for chiles rellenos and roasting. Picked dark green for fresh use, it ripens to red-brown and, when dried, becomes the ancho chile of Mexican cooking, maturing in about 75 days.

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The fragrant Southeast Asian basil with purple-tinged stems, glossy narrow leaves, and an anise-clove aroma quite different from Italian sweet basil. Essential in Vietnamese pho, Thai curries, and stir-fries. More heat-tolerant and slower to bolt than Genovese types.

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The archetypal fall and Halloween carving pumpkin. Large round orange fruits average 15 to 25 pounds with moderately sweet stringy flesh that is edible for pies and soups. Growing a classic pumpkin is a bucket-list garden experience and a practical source of fall decor.

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Stanley is the classic European prune-plum: dark blue-purple oval fruit, sweet golden-yellow freestone flesh, and a high sugar content that dries down beautifully into homemade prunes. The tree is self-fertile, extremely cold-hardy to minus 30F, and one of the most reliable plum varieties for the home grower.

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Acorn squash is a small, ribbed winter squash shaped like its namesake, with a hard dark-green shell and sweet, fine-grained yellow-orange flesh that is excellent halved and baked. The vigorous vines bear several fruit each and mature in about 80 to 100 days, and unlike most winter squash, acorn does not improve with long curing and is ready to eat at harvest.

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The most classic and beloved fragrant herb plant in the world. Tall spikes of small purple flowers above silver-gray aromatic foliage. English lavender is the hardiest, most fragrant, and most culinary of all lavender species. Beyond its famous use in sachets and soap, it is a culinary herb, an exceptional cut flower, a premier bee plant, and one of the most drought-tolerant perennials available.

A large, famously sweet and mild onion from Washington State. Walla Walla onions are some of the largest and juiciest of all sweet onions, with such low pungency they can be eaten like an apple by some people. They do not store well because of their high water content, so they are best enjoyed fresh over a short season.

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Swiss chard is a leafy beet relative grown for its large, glossy, crinkled green leaves and thick, succulent stalks, the Fordhook Giant strain bearing broad dark leaves on wide white stems. One of the most productive and forgiving greens, it tolerates both summer heat and light frost, yields for months from a single planting, and matures in about 55 to 60 days.

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Lemon balm is a bushy, lemon-scented perennial in the mint family, native to southern Europe and northern Africa and hardy from roughly zones 3 to 9. It forms branching clumps about two feet tall of soft, crinkled leaves that release a bright lemon fragrance when crushed. Easy to grow and almost pest-free, it is valued for soothing teas and for flavoring salads, fish, and desserts. Like its mint relatives it spreads, both by expanding clumps and by self-seeding, so it is often kept in a pot or a contained bed.

Seascape is a day-neutral strawberry from UC Davis (1991) that became a backbone of the California and home-garden trade for its sheer productivity and wide adaptability. It fruits in flushes from spring to frost, setting very large, firm, glossy berries with balanced sweet-tart flavor and good color through the cut. Seascape performs well across a broad climate range and in containers and hanging baskets, and it tolerates heat better than most day-neutrals, making it a strong pick where summers are warm.

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Cherokee Purple is a smoky, sweet pre-1890 Tennessee heirloom, said to trace to the Cherokee people, with dusky rose-purple shoulders over brick-red flesh that many rank among the best-tasting slicers ever grown. The 10 to 12 ounce beefsteak fruit carry a deep, almost wine-like flavor that intensifies in heat. Indeterminate vines produce all season and need sturdy staking or caging. As a classic heirloom it lacks modern disease resistance and the soft fruit does not keep long, so it is grown for flavor and fresh eating rather than shipping or storage.

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Big Boy is a longtime favorite hybrid slicing tomato introduced by Burpee in 1949 and still one of the most-grown big reds in American gardens. The indeterminate vines produce large, smooth, deep-red globes that commonly run from 10 oz to a full pound or more, with thick meaty walls and the rich, balanced old-fashioned flavor that made the variety famous. It keeps growing and setting fruit until frost, ripens its main crop about 78 days after transplanting, and the heavy fruit needs sturdy staking or a tall cage.

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A cheerful climbing and trailing annual with round, edible leaves and bright trumpet-shaped flowers in orange, red, and yellow. One of the most versatile companion plants — edible, beautiful, and a workhorse for pest control in the vegetable garden.

Sungold is a beloved hybrid cherry tomato bearing long trusses of small, golden-orange fruit with an intensely sweet, fruity, almost tropical flavor that ranks among the sweetest of all tomatoes. The vigorous indeterminate vines bear early, in about 57 to 65 days, and produce prolifically right up to frost.

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A sweet, mild perennial herb closely related to oregano but with a softer, more nuanced flavor. Used extensively in Mediterranean cooking — particularly French, Greek, and Italian — for poultry, lamb, egg dishes, and soups. Sweet marjoram is slightly more delicate than oregano and less bitter. It grows as a tender perennial (zones 9 to 10) or annual in colder climates.

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Patriot is a northern highbush blueberry released by the University of Maine in 1976 and prized as one of the most cold-hardy blueberries you can grow, shrugging off zone-3 winters that damage less resilient varieties. The vigorous, upright, medium-height bush (3 to 5 ft) bears large, firm, sweet berries with excellent flavor in the early-to-midseason window. Two traits set Patriot apart from standard highbush like Bluecrop: it tolerates heavier, wetter, silty-clay soils better than most blueberries (given good drainage) and carries a high natural resistance to root-rot pathogens, making it the dependable choice for difficult northern sites. It is partly self-fertile but yields larger, earlier berries when planted near a second highbush variety.

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Spaghetti squash is a winter squash whose cooked flesh pulls apart into tender, pasta-like strands, mild in flavor and low in calories, which makes it a popular noodle substitute. The vigorous vines produce oblong, hard-shelled, golden-yellow fruit that cure and store for months.

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Golden Bantam is the heirloom that made yellow sweet corn popular in America - introduced in 1902 by Burpee, before which most sweet corn was white. It is an open-pollinated standard (su) variety, so you can save seed, and it delivers the rich, old-fashioned corn flavor many gardeners prize over modern hybrids. Compact 5 to 6 ft stalks bear 5 to 7 in. ears of deep golden kernels in about 80 days. The su sugars convert to starch quickly after picking, so Golden Bantam is a get-it-to-the-pot-fast corn - the reward is unmatched traditional flavor.

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Calibrachoa, sold as Million Bells or trailing petunia, is a tender perennial from South America almost always grown as a warm-season annual. It makes a cascading mound 3 in tall and up to 20 in across, covered from late spring until frost in masses of half-inch bells in nearly every color. It is heat and drought tolerant, does not decline in hot summers, and needs no deadheading, which makes it one of the most popular plants for hanging baskets, window boxes, and mixed containers.

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Dense, heavy heads with striking burgundy-red to deep purple leaves that hold their color even after cooking. Slightly stronger flavor than green cabbage with a hint of pepper. Red cabbage is the basis of classic German and Eastern European braised dishes and beautiful in raw slaws. The pigment is water-soluble and turns blue when cooked with alkaline ingredients — add a splash of vinegar to the pot to keep it red.

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Beauregard is the most popular home-garden sweet potato, a vigorous, dependable variety with rosy-copper skin and sweet, moist, deep-orange flesh that bakes and roasts beautifully. A heat-loving tropical vine grown for its swollen storage roots, it is among the earlier sweet potatoes, maturing in about 90 to 105 days, and the sprawling vines also yield edible leaves.

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Fuji is a sweet, late-season Japanese apple beloved for its long storage life and balanced flavor. The bicolored skin shows pink-red striping over a green-yellow background, and the dense flesh snaps cleanly with a juicy, honey-sweet bite. It is excellent for fresh eating, slicing into salads, and long winter storage.

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Deep purple-to-near-black basil with a slightly more intense, clove-like flavor compared to green basil. Beautiful as an edible ornamental in containers and mixed beds. Makes vivid pink basil vinegar and a striking garnish. Grows identically to Genovese basil but stands out visually in any garden.

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Red Russian is a tender Siberian-type kale (Brassica napus, the same species as rapeseed, rather than the curly Brassica oleracea kales). Its flat, oak-shaped, blue-green leaves carry striking purple-red midribs and stems, and the texture is notably more tender and the flavor milder and sweeter than curly kale, making it the best choice for raw salads and massaged-kale dishes. Fast-growing and very cold-hardy, it produces baby leaves in about a month and full leaves in 50 to 60 days, sweetening further after frost.

Beefmaster is a classic beefsteak hybrid grown for sheer size: solid, meaty, mild-sweet red fruit that can top 2 pounds on vigorous indeterminate vines. It ripens its main crop about 80 days after transplanting and keeps bearing until frost. Beefmaster carries VFN disease resistance (verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt, and nematodes), giving the long-season plant the staying power to hold up over a full summer.

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Sweet alyssum is a low, mat-forming annual in the mustard family, native to the Mediterranean coast, that smothers itself in tiny four-petaled flowers with a soft honey fragrance. Carpet of Snow is the classic pure-white form, only three to nine inches tall but spreading wider into a dense flowering carpet. It blooms from early in the season until frost, tucking along bed edges, between pavers, and over the rims of containers and hanging baskets. Beyond its looks and scent, it is one of the most valuable beneficial-insect plants a gardener can grow.

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Sweet Banana is a mild, sweet pepper named for its long, tapered, banana-like shape, ripening from pale yellow through orange to red and growing sweeter as it colors. With essentially no heat, it is a heavy-bearing favorite for fresh eating, slicing into salads, and pickling, ready in about 70 days.

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Jewel is the standard summer-bearing black raspberry: large, glossy, deep-black fruit with rich winey flavor that ripens earlier than red raspberries, in late June to early July. The variety is vigorous, productive, and far less prone to virus problems than older black-raspberry selections, which is why it dominates home plantings in the eastern US.

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Garlic chives, also called Chinese chives, are a hardy clumping perennial with flat, grassy leaves that taste of mild garlic and a flush of edible, fragrant white flowers in late summer. They are tougher and slower to spread than common chives and are a staple in Asian cooking.

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Grand Rapids is the classic green leaf lettuce, a loose-leaf non-heading type that forms a large, open rosette of bright, light-green leaves with deeply frilled and crinkled edges. Bred originally for greenhouse forcing, it is fast, vigorous, and one of the most widely grown green leaf lettuces, with a mild, sweet flavor and a crisp, tender texture. It is slower to bolt than many leaf lettuces and well suited to cut-and-come-again harvesting, making it a dependable choice for spring and fall salads.

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The classic Southwestern U.S. and Mexican bean. Mottled tan-and-brown skin when dry becomes a creamy beige when cooked. Earthy, creamy flavor that is the backbone of refried beans, chili, and many Mexican-American dishes. Easy bush bean that grows well in hot, dry climates that challenge other legumes.

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Moonbeam (Coreopsis verticillata) earned Perennial Plant of the Year in 1992 and has been a border staple ever since. It builds an airy, ferny mound of fine threadlike foliage studded all summer with masses of soft, creamy butter-yellow daisies. The muted color blends with everything, the plant is tough and drought-tolerant, and the long nonstop bloom makes it a dependable bee and butterfly feeder. A sterile selection, it pours its energy into flowering rather than seed, blooming for months with a midsummer shearing.

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Purple Top White Globe is the standard old-fashioned garden turnip, a smooth round root with crisp white flesh and bright purple-red shoulders where the top pushes above the soil into the sun. Mild and faintly sweet when grown well, it is a fast, cold-hardy cool-season root maturing in about 55 days, and it is really two crops in one, since its tender young leaves make excellent cooked greens. Like other turnips it grows best in the cool of spring and fall and sweetens after a touch of frost, making the autumn-sown crop the prize of the two.

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A compact 8 to 10 lb icebox watermelon — the classic home-garden choice where space is limited. Deep green skin, crisp sweet red flesh, and fewer seeds than full-size types. Matures in about 75 days.

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Georgia Southern is an 1880s heirloom collard, a hardy loose-leaf brassica that is a Southern staple, with large, smooth, blue-green leaves on tall plants with white stalks. More heat- and cold-tolerant than most cabbages, it crops over a long season and turns noticeably sweeter after frost.

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A warm, spicy basil with a distinct cinnamon-clove aroma from the essential oil methyl cinnamate. Beautiful purple stems and pale pink flowers make it ornamental as well as culinary. Excellent in fruit salads, tropical drinks, desserts, and as a garnish. Slightly more compact than Genovese basil.

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A heat-loving Southern U.S. classic also called black-eyed pea or cowpea. Cream-colored beans with a distinctive black eye. Drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing, and productive in hot conditions where other legumes struggle. The centerpiece of traditional Southern New Year dishes. Both fresh-shelled green beans and dried are excellent.

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Kennebec is the gold-standard mid-to-late white potato, bred by the USDA in 1941 at Presque Isle, Maine. Smooth creamy skin, shallow eyes, and dense low-moisture white flesh make Kennebec the ideal frying potato, while its dependable yield and excellent disease resistance keep it a top home garden choice across the US.

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May Night (Salvia x sylvestris 'Mainacht') was the very first Perennial Plant of the Year, in 1997, and remains the standard perennial salvia. It forms a tidy clump that throws up dense spikes of deep violet-blue flowers from late spring into early summer, with reliable rebloom if sheared after the first flush. The nectar-rich tubular flowers are irresistible to bumblebees, native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, and the aromatic foliage is left alone by deer and rabbits. Drought-tolerant and unfussy, it anchors the early-season pollinator border.

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Montmorency is the benchmark tart pie cherry: bright red skin, pale juicy flesh, and a lively acidity that mellows perfectly with sugar in pies, preserves, and dried snacks. The compact tree is self-fertile, cold-hardy through zone 4, and one of the easiest fruit trees for a northern backyard.

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A brilliant golden-yellow beet that will not bleed onto cutting boards, fingers, or salads when sliced. Flavor is milder, sweeter, and less earthy than red beets, making it appealing to people who find red beets too strong. Both roots and greens are excellent eating. Beautiful in salads alongside red and striped varieties.

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Daikon is a large, long, white Asian radish with mild, crisp, juicy flesh, used raw in salads, grated as a condiment, pickled, and simmered in soups and braises; its deep taproot also makes it a popular soil-loosening cover crop. Unlike quick spring radishes, it is grown as a longer-season fall crop, maturing in roughly 50 to 70 days.

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Lemon thyme is a low, spreading evergreen perennial that layers a bright lemon scent over the warm, classic thyme flavor. Tidy 6 to 12 inch mounds carry tiny leaves and clouds of pink summer flowers that bees adore, and it doubles as an edging or container herb.

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Juliet is an indeterminate grape, or saladette, tomato that produces heavy clusters of shiny, elongated red fruit on vigorous vines. A 1999 All-America Selections winner, it ripens in about 60 days and keeps bearing until frost, and the meaty, crack-resistant fruit stores unusually well. Reliable and disease tolerant, it is a favorite for snacking, salads, and quick roasting.

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Goldsturm is the benchmark black-eyed Susan, an award-winning selection of Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii that blankets compact 2 ft clumps in golden-yellow daisies with dark chocolate centers from midsummer to fall. A tough, long-lived native perennial for zones 3 to 9 that anchors pollinator and cottage borders and returns reliably each year.

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A mandarin-lemon hybrid with sweeter, less acidic juice and thinner, softer skin than regular lemons. The cocktail lemon of choice for bartenders and home cooks. Meyer lemons are cold-hardier than standard lemons and fruit prolifically even in containers, making them the most popular citrus for home growing in non-tropical climates.

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The Anaheim is a long, mild New Mexico-type green chile with thin walls and gentle heat, around 500 to 2,500 Scoville units, ideal for roasting, stuffing, and chile rellenos. Its smooth, glossy skin ripens from green to red, growing sweeter and fruitier as it colors, and it dries well.

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A gorgeous heirloom eggplant from Gandia on Spain's Valencian coast (Listada de Gandia, often mislabeled an Italian heirloom), with distinctive purple-and-white longitudinal stripes and a teardrop shape. Flesh is sweet, less bitter than many eggplants, with a silky texture. One of the most beautiful eggplants for the garden and the table. A favorite in Mediterranean kitchens for its delicate flavor and striking presentation.

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A rich, intensely chocolate-and-orange-scented peppermint. The aroma is genuinely dessert-like — strongly evocative of chocolate-covered mint candies. Flavor in teas and desserts is peppermint with a background of chocolate and orange notes. One of the most popular specialty mints for herb gardens and container growing.

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Long Island Improved is the classic American open-pollinated Brussels sprout, dating to the 1890s and still a home-garden mainstay for its reliability and long, extended harvest. Compact plants about 24 in. tall produce a tall stalk densely packed with 50 to 100 firm, 1 to 2 in. sprouts that mature from the bottom up. Like all Brussels sprouts it is a long-season cool-weather crop, and the sprouts turn sweet and nutty once touched by frost - the reason it is grown for fall and early-winter harvest.

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Sarah Bernhardt, introduced in 1906, is the most popular garden peony ever grown and the classic florist peony. It bears enormous, fully double, bomb-shaped blooms in soft apple-blossom pink, often 6 to 8 in. across, with a sweet rose-like fragrance, in late spring to early summer. The plant forms a substantial 3 ft mound of handsome dark-green foliage that looks good all season, and once established it is astonishingly long-lived - peonies routinely outlive the gardeners who plant them, blooming for 50 years or more with almost no care. It needs a cold winter to flower well, making it a quintessential plant of temperate gardens.

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Thompson Seedless is the worlds best-known table grape and the classic raisin grape, producing long clusters of small pale-green berries that turn golden when fully sun-ripened. The Vitis vinifera variety is sweet, crisp, and seedless, making it the gold standard for fresh eating, drying, and homemade raisins.

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Music is a popular Porcelain-type hardneck garlic, hardy in cold climates and prized for its large, easy-to-peel cloves, white wrappers, and a strong but not overpowering, pleasantly spicy flavor. Each bulb holds just four to six big cloves, and the variety stores unusually well for a hardneck, keeping many months after curing.

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The serrano is a slender, thin-walled chile that packs bright, clean heat, rated roughly 10,000 to 25,000 Scoville units, several times hotter than a jalapeno. Crisp and grassy when green, it is the classic fresh-salsa and pico de gallo pepper, and pods left to ripen red turn slightly sweeter. The compact, very productive plants crop over a long, warm season.

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San Marzano is the classic Italian paste tomato, bearing elongated, thick-walled plum-shaped fruit with few seeds, low moisture, and a sweet, low-acid flavor that cooks down into rich sauce. Prized as the premier canning and sauce tomato, the vigorous vines ripen their meaty fruit in roughly 80 days and yield heavily for putting up.

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Sacred basil of India with a distinctly different character from sweet Italian basil — peppery, clove-forward, and slightly minty with an exotic aromatic depth. Revered in Hindu tradition as Tulsi, the queen of herbs. Used medicinally in Ayurveda for millennia and increasingly popular in Western herbal medicine. Also excellent as a culinary basil in Indian and Southeast Asian cooking.

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A stunning ornamental and edible chard with stems in red, yellow, orange, pink, and white — often sold as Rainbow or Bright Lights chard. Identical in culture and flavor to standard Swiss chard, but dramatically more colorful in the garden and on the plate. A cut-and-come-again workhorse of the vegetable garden from spring through frost.

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The classic green tart apple — bright lime-green skin, crisp dense flesh, and a sharp, refreshing acidity that holds up in cooking far better than sweet varieties. The gold standard for apple pies and tarts. Also excellent fresh for people who prefer tart over sweet. Granny Smith originated in Australia and is one of the most widely grown apples worldwide.

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Stella de Oro is the best-selling daylily in the world and the plant that launched the reblooming daylily craze. It forms a compact, grassy clump about a foot tall and wide that throws a long succession of cheerful golden-yellow trumpet flowers from early summer well into fall - a single established plant can open hundreds of blooms a season. Each flower lasts only one day (hence the name daylily, Hemerocallis, meaning beauty for a day), but fresh buds open every morning. Tough, drought tolerant, cold hardy, and nearly indestructible, it is the go-to perennial for low-maintenance color and mass plantings.

Sugar Pie is a small pie pumpkin, a sweet, fine-grained, dry-fleshed variety bred for baking rather than carving, weighing just a few pounds each. The vines bear several deep-orange fruit that mature in about 100 to 110 days, with flesh far less stringy and watery than a carving pumpkin, making it the choice for homemade pie and puree.

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A loose-leaf lettuce with frilly, deeply cut leaves tinted red to burgundy on the tips and edges. Quick to mature, mild and tender, and one of the most colorful lettuces for salad mixes. Red leaf lettuce adds visual appeal to any planting and is very easy to grow as a cut-and-come-again crop.

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A striking bicolor beet with alternating red-and-white concentric rings when sliced — named after the Italian town of Chioggia. Earthy sweet flavor similar to Detroit Dark Red but with a somewhat milder, less intense taste. Retains rings best when eaten raw or lightly cooked.

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A bright citrus-scented basil with genuine lemon flavor rather than just lemon scent. Pairs beautifully with fish, poultry, fruit salads, and desserts. Grows identically to sweet basil but with smaller leaves and a more compact habit. A versatile alternative to both basil and lemon zest in summer cooking.

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Contender is a cold-hardy freestone peach introduced by North Carolina State University in 1989 and prized in the north for cropping where other peaches fail. Its secret is a high chill requirement that delays bloom: by flowering late it dodges the spring frosts that wipe out earlier-blooming peaches, making it a dependable producer to about USDA zone 4. The medium-to-large fruit has mostly red skin over firm, sweet, juicy, aromatic yellow flesh that does not brown when cut, and the stone comes away cleanly. It is self-fruitful, so a single tree will bear a full crop. An award-winning, all-purpose peach for fresh eating, canning, and freezing.

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Becky is the gold-standard Shasta daisy and a former Perennial Plant of the Year, beloved because it does what other Shastas struggle to do: stand tall without staking and shrug off summer heat and humidity. It forms a clump of glossy dark-green leaves topped by rigid 3 to 4 ft stems, each carrying 3 to 4 inch flowers of pure white rays around a bright yellow center disk. Bloom runs for many weeks in mid to late summer, and the long sturdy stems make it one of the best cutting daisies for a vase. A dependable, long-lived border perennial that anchors a sunny bed.

Black Seeded Simpson is the most popular heirloom loose-leaf lettuce in the United States, dating to the 1850s. Plants form a loose rosette of crinkled, lime-green ruffled leaves with a mild, sweet, fresh flavor and a tender crunch. Named for the dark seed color that distinguished it from earlier white-seeded Simpson selections, it remains one of the fastest, most reliable, and most heat-tolerant loose-leaf lettuces.

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Lemon Boy is the bright-yellow counterpart to Better Boy, an F1 hybrid slicer that produces high yields of 6 to 7 oz lemon-yellow tomatoes with mild, sweet-tangy flavor and lower acid than red varieties. Indeterminate vines crop heavily from midsummer to frost. The variety carries an excellent disease-resistance package including verticillium wilt, fusarium, gray leaf spot, and nematodes, making it one of the most reliable yellow tomatoes for the home garden.

Rutgers is a foundational American heirloom, released by Rutgers University in 1934 after Dr. Lyman Schermerhorn stabilized a cross between J.T.D. and Marglobe at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. Developed in partnership with the Campbell Soup Company, it became the dominant US processing tomato of the mid-1900s and a canning staple for Campbell’s, Hunt’s, and Heinz and is still prized in home gardens for its high-acid, high-sugar, deeply tomato-flavored red fruits weighing 6 to 8 oz. Plants are determinate to semi-determinate, reaching 3 to 5 ft.

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Honeydew is the smooth-skinned green-fleshed muskmelon prized for its high-sugar pale flesh and refreshing mild flavor. The creamy yellow rind ripens to off-white when the fruit is ready, but unlike cantaloupe, honeydew does not slip from the vine and must be cut at the stem.

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A woody Mediterranean perennial prized for both its fragrant culinary leaves and striking pale blue flower spikes. Essential in many Mediterranean, French, and Italian dishes, and one of the most popular culinary herbs for beginning and experienced gardeners alike. Drought-tolerant once established, Tuscan Blue is one of the most cold-tender but intensely flavored rosemary cultivars.

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A long, thin, sweet Italian frying pepper with virtually no heat and a distinctive mild, sweet flavor. Pale yellow-green when immature, ripening to red. The classic pepper for Italian sausage and peppers dishes. Prolific, easy to grow, and productive all season. Also excellent raw, stuffed, or pickled.

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Benarys Giant is the workhorse cut-flower zinnia series, bred in Germany and recommended by the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers for its uniformity, productivity, and strong vase life. Plants reach 3 to 4 ft and produce densely petaled 4 to 5 in. double blooms in 13 saturated colors - deep red, scarlet, orange, golden yellow, lime, carmine rose, coral, salmon rose, wine, purple, bright pink, white, and a mix. Long thick stems do not bend like other zinnias, making this the cut-flower zinnia.

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A cream-and-green striped oblong winter squash with edible skin and exceptionally sweet, dry, nutty flesh. Small individual-sized fruits weigh 1 to 2 pounds, making them perfect for roasting halved and stuffing. One of the most flavorful and versatile winter squash, and among the easiest to store.

A miniature romaine-butterhead cross producing compact 4 to 6-inch heads of upright, sweet, crisp leaves. One of the most flavorful and space-efficient lettuces for home gardens. Popular in restaurant cooking as an individual serving size. Excellent in containers and small raised beds. Heat-tolerant enough for short summer windows.

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Washington Navel is the seedless eating orange that defined the California citrus industry. Large rounded fruit with the signature small secondary fruit (the navel) at the blossom end, an easy-peeling rind, and sweet richly flavored juice. The variety is parthenocarpic, meaning it produces fruit without pollination, which is the source of its seedlessness.

Mortgage Lifter is a beloved West Virginia heirloom developed in the 1930s by radiator repairman M.C. Byles, who crossed four of the biggest tomatoes he could find and sold the seedlings to pay off his mortgage. The enormous pink beefsteak fruit run 1 to 2 pounds with meaty, low-acid, mild-sweet flesh and very few seeds, making each tomato enough for a whole sandwich. The indeterminate vines are large and need a long, warm season to ripen their heavy crop, rewarding patient growers with some of the most satisfying slicers in the garden.

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An elegant perennial herb with a distinctive licorice-anise flavor essential in classic French cooking. True French tarragon cannot be grown from seed — it must be propagated by division or cuttings. The fresh leaves have an incomparably brighter flavor than dried, making a home garden plant invaluable for bearnaise sauce, fines herbes blends, and chicken dishes.

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Common morning glory is a fast, twining annual vine that quickly climbs trellises, fences, and arbors, reaching 6 to 10 ft or more in a single season. It unfurls showy 2 in funnel-shaped flowers in blue, purple, pink, crimson, and white that open in the morning and last only a few hours. It is easy and rewarding from seed and tolerates poor, dry soil, but it self-seeds freely and has naturalized as a weed of fields and waste ground, so it needs managing to stay where you want it.

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Black Krim is an heirloom from Krymsk, on the Black Sea near the Crimean peninsula, introduced to Western gardeners by Seed Savers Exchange in 1990 as one of the first widely available black tomatoes, famous for striking dark mahogany shoulders over brick-red flesh. The flavor is complex, rich, and slightly salty-sweet with a hint of smokiness that heirloom collectors prize, and it deepens further in hot weather and lean soil. The indeterminate vines produce 8 to 12 ounce beefsteak fruit all season and need staking or caging. Like most dark tomatoes it is a touch softer and shorter-keeping than a modern hybrid, which is the trade for its remarkable taste.

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Scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus) is a vigorous twining vine native to the mountains of Central America, grown both as an ornamental for its brilliant scarlet flowers, which hummingbirds love, and as a dual-purpose vegetable. Young pods are eaten like green beans, and the large, handsome seeds are shelled fresh or dried for a chestnut-like cooked bean. Vines can reach 15 ft but are usually 6 to 8 ft on a trellis. It is technically a short-lived perennial in zones 7 to 11, where it resprouts from tuberous roots, but is grown as an annual elsewhere. It is a little more cold tolerant than common beans but its flowers can drop in extreme summer heat.

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Pink Lady (cultivar name Cripps Pink) is one of the last apples picked each year, delivering a bright sweet-tart flavor with citrus and berry notes over crisp, slow-browning flesh. The signature pink-blushed skin develops only with long sun exposure and warm autumn days, which is why this Australian-bred cultivar needs the longest season of any major variety.

Rainbow Carrot Mix is a colorful blend of heirloom carrot varieties (typically a blend such as Lunar White, Solar Yellow, Atomic Red, Cosmic Purple, and a classic orange) that produces a striking range of orange, yellow, white, red, and purple roots from a single planting. Each color contributes a slightly different flavor and antioxidant profile, making rainbow carrots a visual and nutritional standout.

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Florence Fennel (also called finocchio) is grown not for seed but for the swollen white bulb of overlapping leaf bases at the soil line, with a delicate sweet anise flavor that mellows beautifully when roasted or shaved raw into salads. The variety is more demanding than herb fennel and needs cool steady conditions to form a proper bulb.

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Yellow Pear is a prolific small-fruited heirloom grown since at least the 1800s, producing hundreds of bite-size, pear-shaped yellow tomatoes on a single plant all season long. The flavor is mild and sweet with very low acid, which makes the fruit popular with children and as a cheerful addition to salads, kebabs, and garnish plates. The indeterminate vines are vigorous and sprawling, easily reaching 6 feet, and they keep setting clusters until frost. What it lacks in intensity it makes up for in sheer abundance and ornamental charm.

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ProCut is the standard-bearer series of pollenless single-stem cut-flower sunflowers, bred for the cut-flower trade. F1 plants produce one flower per seed on a strong straight 5 to 6 ft stem in just 55 to 60 days. The pollenless blooms - 4 to 6 in. across - do not shed yellow dust on tablecloths and last 7 to 10 days in the vase. Colors run lemon yellow, classic gold, orange, peach, rose-pink, plum, white, and bicolors like Horizon and Red.

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A compact, bushy summer squash producing scalloped flying-saucer-shaped fruits in yellow, green, and white. Tender sweet flesh with a mild flavor. Among the most ornamental summer squashes in the garden — beautiful harvested young at 2 to 3 inches. Excellent for stuffing whole, grilling, or sautéing.

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One of the most extreme hot peppers in the world, registering over 1,000,000 Scoville heat units. Originally from the Assam region of India, Ghost Peppers have a slow-building fruity heat underneath the burn. Grow as a specialty crop for hot sauces and culinary adventures.

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Chicago Hardy Fig (Ficus carica 'Chicago Hardy') is the fig for cold-climate gardeners. Its roots survive to roughly USDA zone 5, and even when a hard winter kills the top growth to the ground, it resprouts vigorously in spring and fruits the same year on the new wood - because it bears its main crop on current-season growth. The medium, brownish-purple figs have sweet strawberry-red flesh and ripen in late summer into fall. It is self-fertile, needing no pollinator (and none of the specialized fig wasps of some types), and stays a manageable 10 to 15 ft, or smaller with pruning or in a pot. A genuinely productive fig far north of where figs are supposed to grow.

Big Beef is a 1994 All-America Selections winner and one of the most-grown red beefsteaks in the US. Indeterminate vines produce 10 to 12 oz blemish-free globe-shaped red tomatoes with full classic flavor, and they ripen early for their size. Big Beef carries one of the broadest disease-resistance packages of any home-garden tomato, including verticillium, fusarium races 1 and 2, stemphylium, tobacco mosaic virus, nematodes, and alternaria stem canker.

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A mint-family perennial that is irresistible to cats but produces a mild, calming herbal tea for humans. Compact mounding plants with soft gray-green leaves and small white-to-lavender flowers beloved by bees and butterflies. Beyond the cat appeal, catnip is an excellent pollinator plant and a traditional herbal remedy for relaxation and sleep.

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Coleus is a tender perennial grown as an annual for its vivid, patterned foliage rather than its small, insignificant blue flower spikes. Plants range from 6 in to 3 ft tall and wide, with leaves in red, burgundy, pink, orange, yellow, green, and endless variegations. Long thought of as a shade plant, many modern cultivars take full sun, so coleus now works in beds, borders, and containers in nearly any light. It roots so easily from cuttings that favorite plants can be carried over winter on a bright windowsill.

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The go-to cucumber for home pickles. Short blocky fruits 3 to 4 inches long with thin warty skin, crisp flesh, and very low moisture — exactly what keeps pickles crunchy. Prolific, quick to mature, and much better-tasting fresh than the name suggests.

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A bright orange bell pepper that is the sweetest of all the bell colors, with a rich, fruity sweetness and virtually no bitterness. Orange bells take the same time to ripen as red bells (85 to 95 days) and are equally productive. Beautiful raw in salads and on crudite platters, and excellent roasted. High in beta-cryptoxanthin, a carotenoid linked to lung health.

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Anjou is a European winter pear with a sweet, juicy white flesh and the unusual habit of staying green even when fully ripe. The teardrop fruit is mild and floral, ideal for both fresh eating and poaching, and the variety stores for as long as six months in cold storage, which is why winter grocery shelves are full of it.

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Wide flat Italian green beans with meaty, tender pods and a richer, more complex flavor than round snap beans. A staple of Italian cooking — excellent sauteed with garlic and olive oil, braised slowly, or added to minestrone. More forgiving of harvest timing than standard snap beans — pods stay tender longer. Both bush and pole varieties exist.

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A short, stout, cone-shaped heirloom carrot 5 to 7 inches long with broad shoulders that taper to a blunt tip. The best carrot for heavy, clay, or rocky soil where long varieties cannot fully develop. Chantenay produces excellent flavor even in less-than-ideal soil conditions and stores exceptionally well through winter.

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A sprawling annual herb with bright blue star-shaped flowers and fuzzy cucumber-scented leaves. One of the top companion plants for deterring pests and attracting pollinators and beneficial insects to the garden.

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Angelonia, widely sold as summer snapdragon, is a tender perennial grown as an annual that forms upright, bushy plants 12 to 18 in tall topped with loose spikes of small orchid-like flowers in purple, pink, blue, and white. It blooms from June into September and has excellent tolerance for summer heat and humidity along with some drought tolerance, so it keeps performing when many annuals fade. It needs no deadheading and works equally well in beds, borders, and containers, where it adds welcome vertical structure.

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A compact yellow summer squash producing straight-necked cylindrical fruits identical in flavor to yellow crookneck but without the curved neck, making them easier to slice uniformly. Among the most prolific and fastest-producing summer squash. The classic family garden squash — a few plants will produce far more than most families can eat.

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Honeoye is the benchmark early June-bearing strawberry, bred at Cornell and beloved across the northern US and Canada for its cold-hardiness and dependable, heavy yields. June-bearers concentrate their entire crop into a 2 to 3 week window in late spring or early summer, ideal for a jam-and-freeze blitz. Honeoye berries are large, bright red, glossy, and firm with a bright, slightly tart flavor that sweetens in cooler summers. It is one of the most productive and forgiving varieties for short-season gardens.

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The famous sweet Georgia onion — one of the mildest, sweetest, and juiciest onions in the world. The Vidalia sweetness comes from the low-sulfur soils of Toombs County, Georgia, but any gardener can grow a similar sweet onion in low-sulfur soil conditions. Enormous white-fleshed bulbs with a paper-thin golden skin. The onion people eat like an apple.

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The English shelling pea, also called the garden pea, is the classic cool-season pea grown for the sweet round seeds inside the pod. Unlike snow and snap peas, the pod itself has a tough inner parchment and is not eaten; instead you split it open and shell out the peas. The plump seeds are at their sugary best straight from the vine and are a traditional spring and early-summer treat. Plants are productive in cool weather and shut down once summer heat arrives, so timing the planting early is everything.

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German chamomile is a cheerful, daisy-flowered annual herb whose small, apple-scented white-and-gold blooms make the classic soothing tea. An easygoing, self-seeding plant, it grows fast in lean soil, draws bees and beneficial insects, and once established returns on its own from dropped seed year after year.

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Dutch Master is the standard yellow trumpet daffodil, introduced in 1938 as a more vigorous replacement for the old King Alfred and now the most widely grown large yellow daffodil in the world. It rises to about 18 inches and opens broad, showy, golden-yellow flowers four inches across in mid-spring, each with a long bold trumpet. Planted once in fall, the bulbs naturalize and return in larger clumps year after year, and because every part of the plant is toxic, deer, squirrels, voles, and rabbits leave it completely alone - making it the most reliable spring bulb for problem gardens.

Salad Bowl is a green oakleaf-type looseleaf lettuce and a 1952 All-America Selections winner that has stayed popular for over seventy years. It forms a large, open rosette of deeply lobed, notched, bright-green leaves that are tender and mild with no bitterness. Notably slow to bolt and more heat-tolerant than most lettuces, it holds in the garden well into warm weather and is ideal for cut-and-come-again harvesting, giving weeks of salad greens from a single sowing.

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Red Delicious is the iconic dark-red American apple, first recognized in Iowa in 1872 and one of the most planted varieties in the world. Modern Red Delicious has been bred for deeper color and tougher shipping skin, with mild sweet low-acid flavor and crisp pale yellow flesh; best eaten fresh straight from the tree rather than cooked.

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Dwarf Blue Curled Vates is the standard curly kale of American gardens - compact plants 12 to 16 in. tall packed with tightly ruffled, blue-green leaves. The Vates strain was selected for cold-hardiness, slow bolting, and a low, non-trailing habit that holds up to wind and snow, so it stands in the garden well into winter and is the classic kale for braising, chips, and soups. The curled leaves hold dressing and crisp up beautifully roasted.

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Leeks are a mild, sweet member of the onion family grown for their thick, blanched white shanks rather than a bulb, prized in soups, braises, and stocks. A long-season, very cold-hardy allium needing roughly 100 to 120 days, leeks stand in the garden through hard frosts and can be harvested well into winter, sweetening as the weather cools.

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Arugula is a fast, peppery salad green with deeply lobed leaves and a distinctive nutty, mustardy bite that sharpens as the plant ages. A cool-season crop in the cabbage family, it is among the quickest greens to grow, with baby leaves ready in about three weeks and full leaves in 35 to 45 days, and it bolts rapidly once the weather turns hot.

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A tropical perennial grass grown as an annual in temperate climates. The thick, aromatic stalks are essential in Thai, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian cuisines, providing a citrusy, floral background to curries and soups. Lemongrass is also valued as a patio ornamental and as a natural mosquito deterrent.

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Apeldoorn is the definitive Darwin Hybrid tulip and one of the most widely planted tulips in the world. It opens enormous, classically egg-shaped blooms in brilliant glowing scarlet-red, sometimes with a black base and yellow ring inside, atop sturdy 20 to 24 in. stems that stand up to spring weather. Darwin Hybrids are the longest-lived, most perennial group of tulips, so unlike many fancy tulips that fade after one year, Apeldoorn often returns and even multiplies for several seasons. It blooms in mid-spring and is superb in mass plantings, borders, and as a long-lasting cut flower.

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Carlos is the self-fertile bronze muscadine grape, the most widely planted muscadine in the southeastern US. The medium 1/2 in bronze grapes ripen in late summer with the distinctive musky-sweet flavor that defines muscadine wines, juice, and jam. The vigorous heat-loving vines thrive where European and American grapes fail (zones 7 to 9).

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Black Cherry is the original dark cherry tomato, introduced in 2003 by Vincent Sapp of Tomato Growers Supply, who never disclosed its exact parentage. Indeterminate vines reach 4 to 8 ft and carry heavy clusters of 1 to 1.5 inch round purple-brown fruits with the rich, complex, slightly smoky flavor of the larger black heirlooms in a poppable cherry size.

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A bright yellow bell pepper that ripens from green to sunshine yellow. Slightly sweeter than green or orange bells with a mild, fruity flavor and thick walls. Popular raw in salads, on veggie platters, and in stir-fry dishes. Very similar in culture to the red bell pepper.

Long, slender, virtually seedless cucumbers with thin edible skin and a sweet, never-bitter flavor. The standard grocery-store seedless cucumber, originally developed for European greenhouse production. Grows well outdoors in warm seasons and does not need peeling.

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Stevia (Sweet Leaf or Sugar Leaf) is a tender perennial native to Paraguay with sweet-tasting leaves used as a natural zero-calorie sugar substitute. Just one fresh leaf chewed gives an intense sweetness 30 to 40 times more concentrated than sugar. Dried and ground stevia leaves can be used in teas, baking, and homemade drinks, and refined stevia extract is the source of the commercial stevia sweetener.

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Stargazer is the most famous Oriental lily in the world, the flower that made upward-facing lilies popular. Each sturdy stem, about three feet tall, carries several enormous star-shaped flowers of vivid crimson-pink, heavily spotted and brushed with a white edge, and pours out an intense, sweet perfume that fills a garden or a room. It blooms in mid to late summer and is a premier cut flower. Lilies grow from true bulbs and return and multiply for years. One serious caution: every part of this and all true lilies is deadly toxic to cats, so it is best avoided in gardens and bouquets where cats roam.

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Rainier is the cream-colored sweet cherry with a vivid red blush, crossed at Washington State University's Prosser station in 1952 from Bing and Van, released in 1960, and named after Mount Rainier. The cherries carry among the highest sugar content of any cherry (about 17 to 23 percent sugar), with a delicate floral sweetness and notes of peach and caramel. Rainier is the cherry connoisseurs cherry, with a short harvest window in late June through early July.

Tyee is the long-standing benchmark semi-savoy spinach, a fast-growing F1 hybrid with thick dark green leaves that are slightly rumpled, upright, and clean of soil splash. Bred for resistance to bolting in summer heat and downy mildew races 1 and 3, it is a reliable workhorse for both spring and fall cropping and is widely recommended by cooperative extension programs for home gardens.

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Napa, or Chinese cabbage, forms an oblong head of crinkled, pale-green leaves with broad white ribs and a mild, sweet, juicy flavor that is essential for kimchi, slaws, and stir-fries. It heads best as a fall crop, sizing up as the days shorten and temperatures cool. Spring plantings are risky because Napa bolts readily after a cold spell or when summer heat arrives, sending up a flower stalk instead of a head.

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California Early is an artichoke-type softneck garlic and one of the most widely grown softneck types in the United States - the mild, all-purpose "supermarket" garlic. Each bulb holds about 10 to 16 cloves in two to three overlapping layers, with a mild, mellow true-garlic flavor that is softer than the stronger-tasting California Late. Like all softnecks it makes no central flower stalk, so the dried tops braid easily, and like other softnecks it stores well - several months longer than hardneck types, though California Late is the longer keeper of the two. It is the easiest, most widely adapted garlic for home gardens, and does especially well in mild-winter regions.

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Red Pontiac is the heavy-yielding red-skinned potato bred in Florida in 1945, with thin smooth red skin, crisp white flesh, and an oblong-to-round shape. The variety tolerates heavy soils, heat, and rough conditions better than most potatoes, making it a top pick for difficult ground and gardeners in warm zones.

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Boysenberry is a 1920s Knotts Berry Farm hybrid (raspberry x blackberry x dewberry x loganberry) producing huge deep-maroon aggregate berries 8 g each with a soft thin skin and the famous sweet-tart bramble flavor that made the variety a California icon. The trailing thorny canes need a sturdy trellis but reward the effort with one of the most flavorful cane berries in any garden.

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Endless Summer (Hydrangea macrophylla 'Bailmer') was the breakthrough reblooming bigleaf hydrangea, introduced in 2004. Traditional mophead hydrangeas bloom only on old wood, so a cold winter or a careless spring pruning that kills last year's stems means no flowers; Endless Summer blooms on both old and new wood, so it flowers reliably all summer into fall and recovers even after a hard winter. The big rounded mophead flower clusters can be blue or pink depending on soil pH - acidic soil turns them blue, alkaline soil pink - giving the gardener a measure of color control. It forms a rounded 3 to 5 ft shrub ideal for part-shade borders and foundation plantings.

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Italian Large Leaf is a Genovese-type Italian sweet basil grown for its big, broad, dark-green leaves up to 3 to 4 in long, prized as even sweeter and more fragrant than Genovese itself. The tall, erect, slow-to-bolt plant is a vigorous, high-yielding tender annual and the classic choice for Neapolitan cooking and big batches of pesto, as well as fresh use in salads and on pizza. Its large leaves are smooth and flat, unlike the heavily crinkled, savoyed leaves of Lettuce Leaf basil, and it grows taller and leafier than compact Greek or standard Genovese types.

French Breakfast is an 1880s French heirloom radish, named for its tradition of being sliced with butter and salt for breakfast in Paris. Roots are elongated cylinders 2 to 3 in. long, scarlet on the top three-quarters and white-tipped at the bottom. Flavor is mild, crisp, sweet for a radish, and the variety is faster than almost any vegetable - ready in about 3 weeks from sowing.

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A striking bright orange cauliflower containing 25 times more beta-carotene (vitamin A) than white cauliflower. Orange color is caused by a natural genetic mutation that concentrates the same beta-carotene found in carrots. Flavor is mild and slightly sweeter than white cauliflower. The orange color intensifies when cooked. A nutritional powerhouse in an eye-catching package.

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Bok choy, or pak choi, is a non-heading Asian cabbage with crisp, succulent white stalks and tender deep-green leaves, prized for stir-fries, soups, and braises. A quick cool-season brassica, it matures in around 50 days, with baby heads ready even sooner, and it bolts under summer heat and long days.

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Key lime (also called Mexican lime or West Indian lime) is the small, intensely aromatic citrus that gives Key lime pie its name. The fruit is round to oval, 1 to 2 inches across, with thin yellow-green skin when ripe and seedy juicy flesh that is sharper and more floral than the larger Persian lime. The flavor is hard to mimic.

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Mister Lincoln is the rose most people picture when they think of a classic red rose - the tall, long-stemmed, velvety crimson hybrid tea of the florist and the home garden. Introduced in 1965 and an All-America Rose Selections winner, it grows three to five feet tall and opens large, fully double, deep-red flowers one at a time on long straight stems, each pouring out one of the strongest, sweetest damask-rose perfumes of any rose. Bloom begins in late spring and repeats through summer to frost. It is among the best of all roses for cutting, prized for the size, color, and intense fragrance of its blooms.

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De Cicco is an Italian heirloom broccoli introduced around 1890, prized by home gardeners for its long, generous production rather than one big supermarket head. It forms a modest 3 to 4 in. blue-green central head, then keeps pumping out a steady run of tender side shoots for weeks after the main head is cut. Plants mature somewhat unevenly, which is a feature for the kitchen garden - a continuous trickle of broccoli rather than a glut. Compact and quick, De Cicco is also excellent for fall sowing and for cut-and-come-again harvesting.

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A soft, fuzzy mint with rounded leaves and a gentle apple-mint fragrance much milder than peppermint or spearmint. One of the most approachable mints for culinary use. Excellent in cold drinks, fruit salads, and Middle Eastern cooking (the mint of authentic tabbouleh). More ornamental than culinary mints because of its woolly, silvery-green leaves.

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The shallot is a gourmet allium grown for clusters of small, elongated bulbs with a flavor milder, sweeter, and more refined than an onion and a hint of garlic. Each planted bulb multiplies into a cluster of four to six, much like garlic, and the harvest stores for months. Shallots are prized in French and Asian kitchens for vinaigrettes, pan sauces, and quick pickles, where their gentle sharpness disappears into the dish. Grown as an annual in most climates, they are easy and rewarding once established.

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Scallions, also called green onions, are non-bulbing onions grown for their tender green tops and slender white stem bases. Milder than storage onions, they are quick to mature in about 60 to 70 days and forgiving of cold, making them a staple of spring and fall gardens. Many types regrow after cutting, giving a cut-and-come-again harvest from a single sowing. They are the easiest allium for beginners and fit neatly into containers, narrow rows, or the gaps between slower crops.

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Tifblue is the most widely planted rabbiteye blueberry in the world, a 1955 University of Georgia release that thrives where northern highbush types struggle with heat. Rabbiteye blueberries are Southern natives - vigorous, long-lived, more heat- and drought-tolerant, and lower-chill (around 600 to 700 hours), suiting zones 7 to 9. Tifblue grows into a large 6 to 10 ft bush bearing late-season, light-blue, sweet berries with a small dry stem scar. Rabbiteyes are self-unfruitful, so Tifblue must be planted with another rabbiteye variety such as Powderblue or Climax to set a crop.

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Tiny pearl-like white onions typically 1 inch or smaller at harvest. The classic onion for pickling in jars, creamed pearl onions at holiday dinners, and as a garnish in cocktails and stews. Very mild, sweet flavor in a compact package. Grow them fresh from the garden for far superior flavor compared to frozen pearl onions.

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Annual vinca, also called Madagascar periwinkle, is a tender perennial grown as an annual that blooms relentlessly through the hottest, most humid part of summer. It makes neat, glossy-leaved plants 6 to 18 in tall covered in flat, five-petaled flowers of pink, rose, red, and white, often with a contrasting eye. With moderate to high drought tolerance and a love of heat, it is one of the most trouble-free bedding plants for sunny, baking spots, and modern hybrids need no pinching or deadheading.

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Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans) is a tender perennial salvia from the mountains of Mexico and Guatemala, grown as much for its fragrance as its flowers. Crush a leaf and it releases a sweet, distinctly pineapple aroma; in fall, just as the garden winds down, it erupts in spikes of brilliant scarlet tubular flowers that hummingbirds and late-season bees cannot resist. The plant makes a substantial 3 to 4 ft bush by season end. Both the soft green leaves and the edible red flowers are used fresh in fruit salads, teas, summer drinks, jellies, and as a garnish. Hardy only to about zone 8, it is grown as an annual or overwintered indoors farther north.

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Green Zebra is an eye-catching 1983 introduction by breeder Tom Wagner, with lime-green skin striped in yellow that ripens to a golden-green rather than red. The 2 to 4 ounce fruits have a bright, tangy-sweet, almost citrusy flavor that makes them a standout sliced onto a plate or mixed into a colorful salad. The indeterminate vines are productive and reliable, and the firm flesh holds together well in the kitchen. Its main quirk is teaching the gardener to judge ripeness on a tomato that never turns red.

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The shishito is a small, slender, thin-walled Japanese pepper picked green and mild, famous for blistering quickly in a hot pan as a popular appetizer. It is generally sweet and grassy with little heat, though roughly one pepper in ten carries a surprising kick. The compact plants are very productive and bear early, in about 60 days.

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Charleston Gray is the legendary 1954 USDA-bred heirloom watermelon (developed by Charles Andrus at the USDA vegetable lab in Charleston, South Carolina), producing huge 22 to 26 inch oblong fruits (25 to 35 lb each) with gray-green rind and bright sweet pink-red flesh that stays crisp even in hot weather. The variety carries resistance to fusarium wilt and anthracnose, classic flavor, and excellent storage.

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Short, slim cucumbers 4 to 6 inches long with thin smooth skin, crisp flesh, and a sweet flavor free of bitterness. A staple of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking, they are eaten whole without peeling or seeding. Among the most versatile and widely loved cucumbers for home gardens.

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Hollyhock is the towering cottage-garden classic - 5 to 8 ft single stems studded bottom-to-top with crepe-paper single or double blooms in pastel pink, deep maroon, white, yellow, or apricot. Most types are biennial, meaning they produce a leafy rosette the first year and flower spectacularly in the second, then self-seed and reseed in place to behave like long-lived perennials. They draw bumblebees and hummingbirds and look right against any fence, barn, or wall.

A loose-leaf lettuce with deeply lobed leaves resembling oak leaves. Tender, mildly sweet, and extremely heat-tolerant compared to other lettuce types. An ideal cut-and-come-again variety — harvest outer leaves repeatedly for weeks without removing the whole plant. Available in green and red forms.

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Lemon verbena is a tender deciduous shrub grown for narrow, glossy leaves that carry the purest, most intense lemon fragrance of any herb. Native to South America, it reaches 3 to 6 ft in warm zones 8 to 11 and is easily kept in a pot and overwintered indoors in colder climates. It is prized for teas, desserts, and potpourri.

Bolero is the gold-standard storage carrot in the cooperative-extension world, an F1 Nantes type bred for uniform 7 to 8 in. blunt-tipped roots that hold their sweetness and texture in cold storage for months. Highly resistant to alternaria blight and powdery mildew, with intermediate resistance to cavity spot, bacterial blight, and cercospora, it is the workhorse fall carrot and the variety to grow when you want to eat homegrown carrots through winter.

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Cosmic Crisp is the next-generation apple bred at Washington State University: a 1997 cross of Enterprise and Honeycrisp released to growers in 2017 after 20 years of trials. The bright red fruit with white lenticel speckling has firm crisp juicy flesh, balanced sweet-tart flavor, and the remarkable ability to stay fresh for up to 12 months in cold storage with no loss of texture or flavor.

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The classic American chili and soup bean. Curved kidney-shaped dark red dried beans with dense, earthy flavor that holds up to long cooking. The essential bean for chili con carne and the red beans of Louisiana red beans and rice. Easy to grow as a dry bean in most gardens.

A large, mild, all-purpose yellow storage onion — the backbone of most savory cooking worldwide. Milder than white onions when raw, it becomes rich and sweet when cooked. A sweet, long-day onion that, well cured, keeps a moderate 2 to 4 months - sweet Spanish types are mild and are not long-storage onions. Spanish onions refer to the largest, mildest yellow types.

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Tall, old-fashioned cut flowers with spikes of tubular blooms ranging from white to deep purple-red. A cool-season biennial that blooms in its second year, beloved by bumblebees and hummingbirds. The sheer flower spikes add dramatic height to any garden.

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Greek basil is a compact, mounding form of sweet basil that grows into a tight green globe of tiny, intensely aromatic leaves a fraction the size of Italian sweet basil. The small leaf still carries the full clove-and-anise flavor, and the neat dome makes it as much an ornamental edging or container plant as a kitchen herb. A tender annual that lives one warm season and dies at first frost, it is a bit more heat- and drought-tolerant than large-leaf basil but grown the same way: heat, sun, and rich, well-drained soil.

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Early White Vienna is the standard pale-green kohlrabi, a brassica grown for the swollen, bulb-like stem that forms just above the soil, with crisp, sweet flesh tasting somewhere between a mild turnip and a broccoli stem. It matures quickly in 55 to 65 days and is good raw or cooked, at its best when grown fast in cool weather.

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Bosc is the cinnamon-skinned winter pear with an elongated neck and dense, sweet, spicy flesh that holds its shape under heat. The russet brown skin is natural to the variety and signals the rich honeyed flavor inside. Bosc is the classic baking and poaching pear, equally good fresh once ripened.

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Ichiban is a popular Japanese-type hybrid eggplant bearing long, slim, glossy purple-black fruit up to 8 to 10 in. long. Compared with big globe eggplants, the slender Asian types like Ichiban have thinner skin, fewer seeds, and tender, sweet, non-bitter flesh that cooks quickly and absorbs flavors beautifully - ideal for stir-fries, grilling, and roasting. The plants are vigorous, early, and highly productive, setting fruit over a long season. As a heat-loving warm-season crop it needs a long, warm summer (or a head start indoors) to thrive, and it crops generously once the weather is hot.

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Savoy cabbage forms a loose, slightly cone-shaped head of crinkled, tender blue-green leaves, the most delicate and mild-flavored of the round-head cabbages and prized for wraps, slaws, and slow braises. It is hardy and reliable, especially as a fall crop, and its savoyed leaves take cold weather in stride.

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Globe Amaranth is a heat-loving annual with clover-shaped, papery 1 in. blooms in saturated magenta, hot pink, soft pink, white, lavender, and orange on wiry 18 to 24 in. stems above mounded foliage. It blooms nonstop from midsummer through frost, shrugs off heat and drought, and dries to hold its color for years - one of the very best everlasting flowers for wreaths, dried bouquets, and confetti. Equally good for fresh cut, the wiry stems hold up in the vase for 7 to 10 days.

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The world-record pumpkin. Atlantic Giant holds multiple world-record titles, with the record now exceeding 2,800 pounds and is the variety for competitive giant pumpkin growing. Average home-grown fruits reach 100 to 300 pounds. Growing an Atlantic Giant requires dedicated bed space, intensive care, and significant compost inputs — but the result is an unforgettable garden spectacle.

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A hardy perennial subshrub with narrow, dark green leaves and a sharp, peppery, resinous flavor - its carvacrol and thymol give it a pungent thyme-and-oregano character, stronger and more bitter than its milder annual cousin, summer savory. Used in beans, stuffings, marinades, sausage, and herb blends, and traditionally taken as a digestive herb.

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Tall Utah 52-70 is the standard green stalk celery, forming upright bunches of crisp, thick, stringless ribs with a deep flavor and good disease tolerance. It is a long-season, moisture-hungry crop that rewards steady care.

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Persian Lime (also called Tahiti or Bearss lime) is the seedless lime found on every grocery store shelf, a vigorous triploid hybrid between Key lime and lemon. The 1 to 3 inch oval fruits are juicy, acidic, and thornless on the plant, with a longer shelf life and milder flavor than Key lime. Hardy in zones 9 to 11; lives happily in pots elsewhere.

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Southern Giant Curled is an heirloom mustard with bright green, frilly, crumpled leaves and a bold, peppery, horseradish-like bite that mellows with cooking. It is a fast cool-season brassica, ready in about 50 days, valued across the South for quick spring and fall harvests. The curled type is hardier than broadleaf mustards and holds in the garden later into winter, while heat and long days sharpen the flavor and push it to bolt.

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Edamame is the vegetable soybean, harvested young and green when the pods are plump but still tender, then boiled or steamed in the pod as a sweet, nutty, protein-rich snack. The bushy plants set clusters of fuzzy green pods that all ripen within a narrow window, maturing in roughly 75 to 95 days, and unlike most vegetables edamame is a complete protein.

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A hardy annual with bright orange and yellow daisy-like flowers that bloom from spring until frost. Companion plant extraordinaire — the flowers attract beneficial insects, the scent deters pests, and the sticky stems trap aphids and whiteflies.

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Amish Paste is a large Italian-American style paste tomato long grown by Amish communities and prized for flavor unusual in a sauce type. The plump, oxheart-to-plum-shaped fruit run 6 to 10 ounces with meaty, low-moisture flesh and few seeds, giving more usable tomato per fruit than a small Roma while still cooking down thick. That combination bridges the gap between a dedicated canning tomato and a fresh slicer, so the fruit is good enough to eat raw yet ideal for sauce and paste. The indeterminate vines are vigorous and set fruit over a long season rather than in one flush.

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Summer Savory is an annual culinary herb in the mint family with a mild peppery thyme-like flavor that is the classic seasoning for fresh shell beans (Italians call it the bean herb), as well as soups, vinegars, and herb butters. The upright bushy plants reach 12 in tall with narrow green leaves and small lilac flowers from July through September.

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Moorpark is the classic English heirloom apricot, prized since the 1600s for its honeyed orange flesh, lively apricot tang, and intoxicating perfume. The fruit ripens unevenly over several weeks rather than all at once, spreading out the harvest. Self-fruitful and a strong pollinizer for other apricots, Moorpark is widely considered one of the best for fresh eating, jam, and drying.

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A medium-heat wax pepper (5,000 to 10,000 SHU) that ripens from pale yellow to orange-red. Milder than jalapeños but with a distinctive sharp bite. Classic in Hungarian and Central European cooking, excellent fresh, pickled, or stuffed. Very productive plants with an upright, tidy habit.

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The classic New York deli pickle cucumber. Short, bumpy, thin-skinned fruits 3 to 5 inches long with a reliably crisp texture and classic cucumber flavor. The variety behind countless jars of half-sour and full-sour deli pickles. Also excellent eaten fresh. Very prolific and one of the best cucumber varieties for both fresh eating and pickling.

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The classic annual wildflower of European grain fields — intense blue button flowers on wiry 18 to 24-inch stems. Edible petals are used as a garnish and food coloring. Extremely cold-hardy and one of the few flowers that can be direct-sown in fall for the earliest spring bloom. A valuable bee plant and one of the simplest flowers to grow from seed.

An Italian loose-leaf lettuce with deeply frilled, curly leaves shading from bright green at the base to deep burgundy-red at the tips. Mildly bitter flavor that adds complexity to salad mixes. One of the most beautiful and ornamental lettuces available, often used as a border plant. Slow to bolt compared to many colorful varieties.

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Redhaven is the gold-standard yellow-fleshed freestone peach, developed at Michigan State University in 1940 and still the benchmark for fresh and frozen quality. The medium-large fruit has firm sweet flesh with balanced acidity and a clean stone-free release when fully ripe, which is why it is the most-planted peach variety in the world.

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Mother of Thyme (Thymus serpyllum), also called creeping thyme or wild thyme, is a low, mat-forming perennial that hugs the ground at just 2 to 4 in. tall while spreading 12 in. or more wide. Its tiny aromatic evergreen leaves release the classic thyme scent when brushed or stepped on, and in early summer the mats disappear under a haze of small pink to rose-purple flowers that bees swarm. It is equally a culinary thyme and a tough living groundcover for paths, rock gardens, walls, and the gaps between stepping stones, tolerating light foot traffic and shrugging off heat and drought once established.

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Large white kidney-shaped Italian beans with a nutty, creamy flavor and firm texture that holds up in long-cooked dishes. The classic bean for pasta e fagioli, minestrone, and Tuscan white bean soup. One of the most beloved beans in Italian cooking. Bush plant, easy to grow, excellent as a dry bean.

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A mild, low-sulfur sweet onion excellent for raw use in salads, sandwiches, and guacamole. White onions are a staple of Mexican, Latin American, and Southwestern cooking. Less pungent than yellow onions, they have a brighter, cleaner flavor and a shorter storage life than storage varieties.

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Redbor is a frilly, intensely curled kale in glowing magenta-to-deep-purple, a hybrid that is as much an ornamental as an edible. It grows upright on sturdy stems to 2 to 3 ft, holding its color all season and deepening to richer purple in cold weather, which also sweetens the leaves. Fully edible, the tender curly leaves are used like any kale - in salads, chips, soups, and sautées - while the plant itself makes a dramatic centerpiece in beds, borders, and large containers. Cold hardy and productive, it keeps cropping into winter and shrugs off light snow.

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Sweet William is a fragrant, old-fashioned cottage-garden flower, a biennial or short-lived perennial often grown as an annual. It forms sturdy clumps 1 to 2 ft tall topped in spring by rounded, dense clusters of fringed flowers in red, pink, white, and eye-catching bicolors. The blooms are sweetly scented, long-lasting, and excellent for cutting, and they draw bees, butterflies, and moths. As a biennial it typically makes leaves the first year and flowers the second, then often self-sows to carry on.

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Methley is the easiest plum to grow in the home orchard: self-fertile, low-chill, and incredibly productive. The medium reddish-purple Japanese plums have juicy sweet red flesh ideal for fresh eating and jam, and ripen in June to July, earlier than most other tree fruit. A reliable workhorse for backyard growers from zones 5 to 9.

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American Purple Top is the standard rutabaga, also called swede, a globe-shaped root 5 to 6 inches across with a deep purple crown over yellow shoulders and sweet, nutty yellow flesh. A long-season brassica root, it needs a cool finish to develop its flavor, sweetens markedly after frost, and stores for months as a winter keeper.

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Orange Mint (Mentha x piperita Citrata, also called Bergamot Mint or Eau de Cologne Mint) is a peppermint cultivar with the haunting citrus-bergamot aroma of an Earl Grey tea garden. The dark green leaves with purple veining produce an unmistakable orange-flower scent that flavors teas, fruit salads, and infused waters beautifully. Hardy and spreading; container culture recommended.

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Parsnip is a hardy root vegetable resembling a pale, cream-colored carrot, with sweet, nutty, almost spicy flesh that is best after heavy frost, the Hollow Crown strain producing long, broad-shouldered, tapering roots. A long-season crop needing roughly 110 to 120 days, it is famously slow to germinate and improves dramatically once cold weather converts its starch to sugar.

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Hakurei is the benchmark Japanese salad turnip (a kabu-type Brassica rapa), and it changes how people think about turnips. The smooth, pure-white, golf-ball-sized roots are so sweet, mild, and crisp that they are eaten raw out of hand or sliced into salads, with none of the pungency of storage turnips. They mature fast - about 38 days - and the greens are equally prized, tender and delicious cooked or raw. A cool-season crop, Hakurei is excellent for both spring and fall sowings and for succession planting, giving quick, gourmet returns from a small space.

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Moss rose is a low, spreading annual with fleshy, needle-like succulent leaves and bright, satiny flowers in red, pink, orange, yellow, white, and magenta. It grows only 3 to 8 in tall but forms a mat up to a foot wide, thriving in exactly the hot, dry, sun-baked, sandy spots that defeat most annuals. The flowers close on cloudy or rainy days and from sundown to sunup. It self-seeds without becoming invasive and is perfect for rock gardens, edging, hot slopes, and cascading containers.

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Wonderful is the gold-standard pomegranate, the most-planted commercial variety in the US, with large red-purple fruit and ruby-red juicy seeds that have a perfect balance of sweet and tart. Bred for productivity and flavor over a century ago, Wonderful is the variety behind the worldwide pomegranate juice boom and the easiest pomegranate to find in nurseries.

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Romanesco is the most theatrical member of the cabbage family, forming a chartreuse-green head built from spiraling, pointed cones in a self-repeating fractal pattern that looks almost mathematical. Botanically a cauliflower, it has a flavor milder and nuttier than broccoli, slightly earthy and sweet, and it holds its dramatic shape best shown off fresh. It is a cool-season biennial grown as an annual for that single head, and it is as fussy as any cauliflower: it needs a long stretch of steady, cool weather to form a solid head and punishes heat by failing to crown.

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Pineapple Mint (Mentha suaveolens Variegata) is the variegated cream-and-green apple mint with a sweet pineapple-fruit aroma instead of the usual mint sharpness. The fuzzy round leaves are striking in the garden and pleasant to brush against, and the mild fruity flavor is perfect for fruit salads, dessert garnishes, and herbal teas where you want mint without menthol bite.

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Victoria is a classic green-and-pink-stalked rhubarb, a hardy perennial grown for its thick, tart leaf stalks used like fruit in pies, sauces, and preserves. The bold clumps return reliably each spring for many years and are among the first things ready in the garden, though only the stalks are eaten, since the large leaves are toxic.

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Burgundy Okra is a stunning All-America Selections winner with deep red stems, mottled red-and-green leaves, yellow hibiscus blooms, and slender 6 to 8 inch deep red-purple pods. The vibrant color shifts to brick red when cooked, but the eating quality is exceptional: crisp tender texture, mild slightly sweet nutty flavor with little of the sliminess that puts off some okra eaters.

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Russian Banana is the classic fingerling potato from the Baltic region: small, crescent-shaped tubers (6 to 7 cm long) with smooth khaki skin and dense, waxy gold flesh that turns fluffy when cooked. The flavor is rich, buttery, and nutty, making Russian Banana the gold standard for roasting and potato salads.

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McIntosh is the classic apple of New England and Canada, a chance seedling discovered in Dundela, Ontario in 1811 that is now Canada's national apple. It is cold-hardy, juicy, and bright tart at harvest, with white flesh that mellows beautifully through storage. The two-tone red and green skin and tender, almost yielding flesh make it a favorite for fresh eating, applesauce, and pies that should be on the saucy side.

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Big Leaf Lupine is the showy garden lupine, a clump-forming perennial native to the Pacific Northwest that throws dramatic 3 to 5 ft vertical spikes of pea-shaped flowers in blue, purple, pink, white, or bicolor against handsome palmate leaves. As a legume it fixes its own nitrogen and improves the soil, and its spires draw bumblebees and other long-tongued pollinators in droves. Lupines prefer cool summers and short-lived but reseed and divide easily.

A heirloom radish with striking green skin and a vivid hot-pink-to-red interior that resembles a watermelon when sliced. Mild flavor with a crisp, juicy texture and pleasant slight bite. The showstopper of any salad or charcuterie board. Larger and slower-maturing than spring radishes — grown as a fall and winter crop for best results.

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Mojito Mint is the Cuban hybrid (Mentha x villosa, a cross of spearmint and apple mint) used in the original Havana mojito. Unlike sharper peppermint or spearmint, Mojito Mint carries a gentle warm sweetness with subtle citrus undertones, designed to balance lime and rum rather than overpower them. The vigorous spreading habit makes container culture mandatory.

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A Japanese winter squash with dark green skin and extraordinarily sweet, dry, dense orange flesh with a flavor resembling sweet potato or roasted chestnuts. One of the highest-sugar winter squashes available. Smaller than a butternut, the Kabocha is ideal for soups, tempura, stews, and as a butternut substitute anywhere a drier, sweeter squash is preferred.

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A spectacular giant heirloom beefsteak with massive 1 to 2-pound fruits featuring marbled yellow-and-red flesh. The color pattern and tropical-sweet, low-acid flavor resemble the fruit it is named for. One of the most visually impressive slicing tomatoes, and among the most rewarding heirlooms for flavor despite its slow ripening time.

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Braeburn is the crisp sweet-tart apple discovered as a chance seedling in New Zealand in 1952, with a refreshing balance of acidity and sugar that carries spicy notes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and citrus. The variety holds its shape under heat, which is why Braeburn is the chef-preferred apple for pies, tarts, and baked dishes that need apple chunks to stay intact.

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Iceberg is one of the most widely planted floribunda roses in the world, prized for sheer flower power and easy care. An upright, well-branched bush 3 to 5 ft tall, it carries large clusters of lightly ruffled, semi-double to double pure-white flowers, sometimes blushed pink in cool weather, from late spring until frost. The blooms have a light honey fragrance and nearly smother the plant at peak. Floribundas were bred to combine the cluster flowering of polyanthas with the refinement of hybrid teas, and Iceberg is the class benchmark, with notably good resistance to black spot and rust.

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A heart-shaped sweet red pepper with thick, dense flesh and an intensely sweet, almost candy-like flavor. The pepper inside stuffed olives and pimento cheese. Smaller and sweeter than a bell pepper with more flavor per bite. Excellent fresh, roasted, and pickled. Very productive compact plants that ripen reliably even in shorter seasons.

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A charming heirloom that produces round, pale yellow fruits the size and shape of lemons. Flavor is mild, sweet, and never bitter, with a thin edible skin. One of the most beginner-friendly cucumbers and a conversation starter at the farmers market.

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Lettuce Leaf Basil (also sold as Mammoth or the Italian Foglia di Lattuga) produces enormous 5 to 6 in deeply crinkled, savoyed lettuce-sized leaves with the same sweet flavor as Genovese basil but milder and slower to bolt. The bright green leaves are perfect for layering into sandwiches, wrapping rice for Vietnamese-style rolls, or as the base for huge bright-green pesto. A productive long-harvest variety for kitchen garden cooks.

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Small jet-black dried beans with creamy white interior and earthy flavor. A staple of Latin American, Caribbean, and Southwestern U.S. cuisine. Black beans are among the easiest dry beans to grow and are exceptionally high in nutrients. Compact bush plants that fit even smaller gardens.

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Cortland is the cold-hardy McIntosh descendant bred at Cornell, with deep red skin and pure snow-white flesh that famously does not brown after slicing. The flavor is sweetly tangy and vinous, slightly sweeter than McIntosh, and the soft white flesh makes Cortland a top pick for fresh salads, fruit plates, and applesauce.

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Fast-growing, peppery greens harvested from turnip plants before — or alongside — the roots. One of the most nutritious cool-season greens available, widely eaten in the American South, Italian cooking (cime di rapa), and Asian cuisines. Young leaves are tender enough for salads; older leaves are best braised or sauteed with garlic and olive oil.

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Autumn Joy (Hylotelephium 'Herbstfreude', long sold as Sedum) is the classic upright stonecrop and one of the most dependable late-season plants in the garden. All summer it forms tidy 18 to 24 in. mounds of thick, succulent blue-green leaves topped by flat broccoli-like flower heads that open soft pink in late summer, deepen to rose, and age to coppery rust that stands all winter. Those late flowers are a vital landing pad and nectar source for honeybees, native bees, hoverflies, and butterflies at a time when most flowers are spent. Tough, drought-proof, and deer-resistant.

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Cylindra is a Danish heirloom beet from the 1880s (also called Butter Slicer or Formanova) that produces dark red roots shaped like fat carrots, 5 to 8 inches long and 2 inches wide. The cylindrical shape slices into uniform rounds for pickling and roasting, and the smooth ringless flesh has a tender sweet earthy flavor.

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African Blue Basil is a sterile hybrid (Camphor Basil x Dark Opal) discovered in Ohio in the early 1980s, with deep purple-edged leaves, striking purple flower spikes, and a camphor-mint scent. Because it is sterile and cannot set seed, the plant blooms continuously all summer and is one of the very best pollinator plants in the garden, drawing bees, hummingbirds, and beneficial insects.

Champion is an improved Vates-type collard bred for bolt resistance, holding in the garden far longer before going to seed than older strains. The robust plants produce large, broad, slightly crumpled, waxy blue-green leaves with a milder, sweeter flavor than kale. Champion is the rare green that tolerates both heat and hard cold - it pushes through Southern summers and survives Northern winters, often delivering tender early-spring greens - making it one of the most productive and forgiving leafy crops a gardener can grow.

Ozark Beauty is the classic everbearing strawberry, an Arkansas introduction that has been a home-garden favorite for decades. Everbearing types give two to three concentrated flushes - a heavy crop in early summer, a lighter one in late summer, and often a third in fall - rather than the continuous trickle of day-neutrals. The medium-large berries are bright red, sweet, and aromatic, excellent fresh and for preserves. Ozark Beauty is vigorous and resists leaf spot and leaf scorch, though it is susceptible to red stele in soggy soil.

Mokum is an F1 Amsterdam-type carrot bred for early baby and bunching markets, with slender 6 in. pencil-shape roots that color up fast and reach edible size in under 8 weeks. Outstanding flavor for an early variety - juicy, intensely sweet, and almost crunchy - and the sweetness holds up in warm weather better than most early carrots. Resistant to alternaria leaf blight. A favorite of market growers and home gardeners who want fresh carrots in early summer.

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Walker's Low (Nepeta x faassenii) is not low at all - it makes a billowing 2 to 3 ft mound of small, aromatic gray-green leaves topped for weeks by a haze of lavender-blue flowers. Named Perennial Plant of the Year in 2007, it is a sterile hybrid, so it blooms relentlessly from late spring onward without setting seed, and a midseason shearing brings a whole second flush. The flowers hum with bumblebees and other bees and draw butterflies and hummingbirds, while the minty foliage makes it reliably deer- and rabbit-resistant and very drought-tolerant.

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Jersey Knight is one of the original Rutgers-bred all-male hybrid asparagus varieties, producing up to 3 times more spears than older open-pollinated types because the plants put all their energy into spears instead of seeds. The variety has excellent rust resistance plus tolerance of fusarium wilt and crown rot, and the tight-tipped medium-to-large spears hold beautifully through harvest.

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Popcorn (Zea mays var. everta) is a special type of corn whose small, hard kernels contain just enough moisture inside a strong hull that, when heated, the moisture flashes to steam and bursts the kernel inside out. Japanese Hulless is a classic home variety with small ears and tender, nearly hull-free popped corn. It is grown exactly like sweet corn but is left on the plant far longer, until the kernels are fully hard and dry. Plants reach about 4 to 5 ft tall. Because all corn is wind-pollinated, popcorn must be grown in a block of several short rows for the ears to fill.

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A slow-growing Mediterranean evergreen shrub whose dried leaves are a fundamental flavoring in stocks, stews, soups, and braises around the world. Bay leaves are dried and used as whole aromatic flavor infusions — always removed before serving. A container-grown bay tree on a patio is both ornamental and endlessly useful in the kitchen.

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June-bearing strawberries produce one large, concentrated crop in late spring to early summer, prized for the heavy flush of big, sweet berries that makes them the choice for preserving and freezing. The plants spread vigorously by runners to form a dense matted row and, well cared for, bear for several years.

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Ambrosia is a bicolor sugary-enhanced (se) sweet corn that has become a home-garden standard since the 1990s. The se gene gives tender, creamy kernels and a high sugar level that converts to starch more slowly than old-fashioned types, so picked ears stay sweet for several days. Ambrosia produces well-filled 8 in. ears with 16 rows of yellow and white kernels in about 75 days. As an se variety it does not require isolation from standard (su) corn the way supersweets do, which makes it easy to fit into a mixed garden.

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Bulls Blood is a dual-purpose heirloom beet beloved for its dramatic deep merlot-red leaves and sweet tender dark roots. The greens are exceptional in salads and saute (often winning taste tests against chard and spinach), and the burgundy roots are sweet and nutty without bitterness. A garden showstopper that earns its place for both kitchen and ornamental value.

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Limelight is the panicle hydrangea that made the group a garden staple, prized because it blooms dependably no matter how cold the winter or how hard you prune. It grows into a large, upright, multi-stemmed shrub 6 to 8 ft tall and wide, and in mid to late summer it produces enormous cone-shaped flower panicles up to 8 inches long that open an unusual cool chartreuse-lime, mature to creamy white, then take on pink-to-rose tones as fall arrives before fading to beige. Unlike the blue-and-pink bigleaf hydrangeas, its bloom color does not change with soil pH, and it is the most sun- and cold-tolerant of the common hydrangeas.

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A striking dark purple bell pepper — deep violet-black skin with crisp green flesh inside. The purple color comes from anthocyanins and fades to green when cooked, so use raw for maximum visual impact. Flavor is slightly more complex than standard green bell peppers. One of the most ornamental bell peppers in the garden, beautiful in container plantings.

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Cuban Oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus) is not related to true oregano at all but to coleus and Swedish ivy. It is a tender tropical succulent with thick, fuzzy, scallop-edged leaves that carry a potent aroma and flavor of oregano crossed with thyme and a hint of mint. Native to southern and eastern Africa and naturalized across the tropics, it goes by many names - Spanish thyme, Indian borage, Mexican mint. Because it is hardy only in zones 10 to 11 it is grown almost everywhere as a warm-season container plant or houseplant, where its trailing succulent habit also makes it ornamental. A little of the strong leaf goes a long way in beans, meats, and stuffings.

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Nijisseiki (the 20th Century) is the most popular Asian pear cultivar in the world: medium to large round fruit with smooth yellow skin and snow-white juicy crisp flesh that has the flavor of pear with the crunch of an apple. The variety is hugely productive and stores up to six months under refrigeration. Asian pears eat firm-ripe straight from the tree, no countertop ripening needed.

A modern seedless slicing cucumber that sets fruit without pollination (parthenocarpic). Smooth, straight, dark green fruits 7 to 9 inches long with thin edible skin and a mild, sweet, never-bitter flavor. An excellent choice for enclosed spaces like high tunnels or when pollinator activity is unreliable. Award-winning variety for flavor and disease resistance.

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A beautiful speckled shell bean with creamy white pods splashed with vivid red-pink markings that fade to tan when dried. The fresh-shelled beans are nutty and creamy. A staple of Italian, Portuguese, and South American cooking. Can be eaten fresh-shelled (like lima beans) or as a dried bean. One of the most ornamental beans for the vegetable garden.

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Annabelle is the beloved snowball hydrangea, a selection of the eastern North American native smooth hydrangea that produces some of the largest flower heads of any hardy shrub. It is a rounded, deciduous shrub 3 to 5 ft tall and wide that bears huge, symmetrical, rounded heads of pure white sterile flowers up to a foot across, opening in early summer and lasting about two months, with the heads drying to soft green and tan into fall. Because it blooms on new wood it flowers reliably every year even in cold climates, and as a native it is at home in woodland-edge and shade gardens.

Striped German is a gorgeous bicolor beefsteak heirloom whose marbled red-and-yellow flesh looks like a sunset when the fruit is sliced open. The tomatoes often reach about 1 pound, with large fruit up to 1.5 to 2 pounds, and a complex, fruity-sweet flavor with low perceived acidity, and the swirled interior makes them one of the most visually striking tomatoes any garden can grow. Indeterminate vines produce these large fruits over a long season and need firm support. Like most big heirlooms the fruit is soft, short-keeping, and prone to cracking, so it is grown for the table rather than for storage.

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A medium-heat pepper (2,500 to 10,000 SHU) that looks nearly identical to a jalapeño but ripens earlier and has a noticeably fruitier, slightly sweeter flavor. Named for the city of Fresno, California. Excellent fresh, in salsa, pickled, or as a jalapeño substitute. Very productive plants with an upright, tidy habit.

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Niagara is the classic American white slipskin grape, crossed in 1868 by Hoag and Clark in New York's Niagara County from Concord and Cassady, then introduced commercially in 1882. The pale green-to-golden clusters are bold and grapey, with the famously aromatic foxy flavor of Vitis labrusca that defines white grape juice in the US. Cold-hardy to minus 20F, Niagara is the white grape of choice for the upper Midwest and Northeast.

Italian oregano is a hybrid of true oregano and sweet marjoram, prized for a flavor that splits the difference between its parents - the warm, savory note of oregano softened by the sweet, floral roundness of marjoram. Milder and more versatile than pungent Greek oregano, it seasons delicate tomato and cream sauces, pizza, eggs, cheese, and vegetables without taking over the dish. It grows as a tender, spreading perennial with soft gray-green leaves and tiny white flowers, and like its relatives it loves sun, heat, and lean, fast-draining soil. It is sometimes sold as hardy marjoram or Sicilian oregano.

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A dark green turban-shaped winter squash with exceptionally sweet, dry, dense orange flesh that tastes like sweet potato crossed with pumpkin. One of the most flavorful winter squashes for baking and pies. The distinctive turban shape makes it a beautiful fall decoration as well as a culinary ingredient. Stores well for 3 to 4 months.

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Purple Sprouting Broccoli is the cold-hardy broccoli grown not for one large central head but for a long, generous succession of slender purple side-shoots, each a miniature broccoli spear on a tender, edible stem. In its traditional form it is sown in late spring or early summer, grows a large frame over the season, overwinters, and then explodes with spears in late winter and early spring when almost nothing else is producing - a celebrated hungry-gap vegetable in Britain. The spears turn green when cooked, with a sweet, nutty flavor many prefer to standard broccoli. It rewards patience with weeks of cut-and-come-again harvests.

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Tall verbena is an airy, see-through perennial, grown as an annual in cold zones, whose wiry, branching 3 to 6 foot stems are topped with clusters of small purple flowers from summer to frost. Despite its height it is sparse enough to plant near the front of a border, and it is one of the very best butterfly plants.

Easter Egg is not a single variety but a cheerful blend of round radishes that mature in a rainbow of colors - red, pink, rose, purple, and white - from one sowing, so each pull from the row is a surprise. The roots are crisp, juicy, and mild, ready in under a month, and the assortment makes a colorful show on the plate and a fun crop for getting children into the garden. Like all spring radishes it is fast, easy, and ideal for filling gaps and edging rows, giving near-instant gratification in cool weather.

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Catawba is the historic American pink-skinned grape that became the first commercially successful US wine grape in the mid-1800s. The labrusca grape produces clusters of dusty-red berries with the classic foxy aroma of native American grapes, slipskin texture, and a balanced sweet-tart juice that makes excellent rose, sweet pink wines, and grape juice.

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German Butterball is a yellow-fleshed all-purpose potato introduced in 1988 and the first-place winner of Rodale Organic Gardening Magazines Taste-Off Contest. The pale yellow skin is lightly netted and the dense waxy gold flesh cooks up creamy with such a rich buttery flavor that the variety is often described as butterless.

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Ginger is a tropical rhizome grown for its pungent, warmly spicy, citrus-edged root used fresh, dried, or in tea. Grown from a piece of plump rhizome, it forms a clump of reed-like leaves and needs a long, warm, humid season, so most US gardeners grow it in containers or as tender baby ginger.

Inchelium Red is a softneck garlic discovered on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State and the winner of taste tests at both Cooks Illustrated and Rodale Institute. Large bulbs hold 8 to 20 cloves arranged in layers, with pinkish skins and white flesh; flavor is robust but mild rather than hot, making it the favorite for raw garlic preparations and garlic butters.

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A showy perennial wildflower native to eastern North America that produces brilliant red tubular flowers beloved by hummingbirds, bumblebees, and butterflies. Belongs to the mint family and spreads via underground runners to form a colony. One of the most important plants for supporting pollinators in summer gardens.

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Miniature striped purple eggplants 2 to 4 inches long that are mild, creamy, and virtually never bitter — even when left on the plant past prime. Award-winning variety loved for its sweet flavor, ornamental appearance, and compact size. Perfect for grilling whole, stuffing with cheese, or roasting. One of the most beginner-friendly eggplants available.

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Black Tartarian is a heritage sweet cherry introduced from Russia in the late 1700s, prized for its purplish-black skin, juicy dark red flesh, and sprightly full-bodied flavor with hints of caramel and honey. The tree ripens early - from late May in warm regions into June farther north - and is one of the first cherries of the season, making it a sentimental favorite in heirloom orchards.

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Cinderella Pumpkin (officially Rouge Vif d Etampes) is the French heirloom that inspired the iconic Cinderella carriage illustrations. The flattened deeply-ribbed fruits average 15 in across and 6 in tall (the squat shape gives them the carriage silhouette), with brilliant red-orange skin and excellent sweet flesh that bakes beautifully into pies and soups. Introduced to the US by Burpee in 1883.

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Turmeric is a tropical ginger relative grown for its vivid orange-fleshed rhizomes, the source of curcumin and the golden color of curry. It forms tall, broad-leaved clumps and needs a long warm season of eight to ten months, so it is usually grown in containers outside frost-free regions.

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Thai Bird (Prik ki nu) is the small fiery chili of Southeast Asian cooking, 50,000 to 100,000 SHU (roughly 15 times hotter than a jalapeno). The 2 cm pods grow upward in clusters and ripen from green to bright red, with a clean fast-flashing heat that defines Thai, Lao, Cambodian, and Vietnamese dishes.

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Not a true cucumber but a melon relative that grows and tastes exactly like one. Produces extra-long pale-green ribbed fruits up to 3 feet in length with a mild, sweet, never-bitter flavor and tender, fully edible skin. A heat-loving vine that climbs enthusiastically and is extraordinarily productive in warm climates.

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Butterfly Weed is the orange-flowered milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), a tough native perennial of dry prairies and roadsides across most of the eastern and central US. Flat-topped clusters of brilliant orange (sometimes yellow) blooms top 1 to 2 ft stems from early to late summer, drawing every pollinator in the neighborhood. As a true milkweed it is a host plant for monarch caterpillars, which eat the foliage, while the flowers feed adult monarchs, swallowtails, fritillaries, and native bees. Unlike other milkweeds it has clear (not milky) sap and a deep taproot that makes it intensely drought-tolerant but resentful of transplanting once established.

Jubilee is the iconic Florida picnic watermelon, released by the University of Florida in 1963 and once the dominant commercial watermelon of the American South. Long oblong fruits weigh 25 to 40 lb with light green rind boldly striped in dark green and bright sweet red flesh. The tough rind ships well and the vines tolerate the disease pressure of humid Southern summers, making it a reliable home-garden choice.

Sugar Daddy is a dwarf, stringless sugar snap pea, notable as one of the first snap peas bred entirely without the tough string along the pod seam. The plump, rounded pods are eaten whole, pod and peas together, with the crisp snap and sweetness that make snap peas a favorite raw or stir-fried. Its standout trait is the compact bush habit: plants stay around 24 to 30 inches and support themselves, so they fit containers and small beds and need little or no trellising. It also carries good resistance to powdery mildew and tolerance to bean leaf roll virus.

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A massive blue-gray winter squash producing fruits of 12 to 25 pounds or more with dense, sweet, fine-grained orange flesh. The classic New England storage squash, once a staple winter food. Extremely long-storing — up to 6 months properly cured. The large size makes it ideal for making big batches of soup, pie filling, or roasted squash.

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A perennial leafy green with a distinctive bright, refreshing lemon-sour flavor from oxalic acid. The surprising tartness makes it unique among garden greens — useful as a flavor accent like lemon juice in soups, sauces, and salads. The classic ingredient of French sorrel soup. Once established, a sorrel plant provides harvest for 10 or more years with minimal care.

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Broccoli rabe, or rapini, is a fast Italian green grown for its leafy shoots and small, broccoli-like flower buds rather than a head, with a pleasantly pungent, mustardy bitterness. A cool-season brassica, it can mature in as little as 5 to 6 weeks and is harvested young while the buds are still tight.

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A flat-topped native perennial producing broad clusters of tiny white, yellow, or pink flowers beloved by a remarkable diversity of beneficial insects. Called the landing pad of the insect world, yarrow flowers attract predatory wasps, hoverflies, lacewings, and parasitic wasps that hunt aphids, caterpillars, and other pest insects. Extremely tough, drought-tolerant, and long-lived.

Black Diamond is a heritage round watermelon from the 1950s known for its near-black rind and impressive size - 35 to 50 lb fruits with thick, bruise-resistant skin and bright red, crisp, very sweet flesh. Long widely grown in the American South as a roadside-stand variety, it remains a favorite for gardeners who want the classic giant picnic melon and have the space for sprawling vines.

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A large beefsteak heirloom with vivid red-and-yellow streaked skin and sweet, low-acid bicolor flesh inside. Fruits average 1 to 2 pounds and are named for their colorful exterior markings. Low-acid profile makes this a favorite for people who find standard tomatoes too tart. Stunning on a caprese platter.

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Not a true garlic but a leek relative producing massive bulbs with very large, easy-to-peel cloves and a mild, sweet, roasted-garlic-like flavor even eaten raw. Individual cloves can be the size of a whole head of regular garlic. Perfect for people who love garlic flavor without intense heat. Excellent roasted whole, made into garlic butter, or used anywhere large quantities of garlic are needed.

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Chervil, sometimes called French parsley, is a delicate cool-season annual herb with fine, fern-like leaves and a subtle flavor of parsley with a hint of anise. A classic component of the French fines herbes blend, it grows 1 to 2 ft, thrives in the cool and shade most herbs dislike, and bolts quickly in summer heat.

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A compact shelling pea producing heavy yields of small, very sweet peas on 24 to 30-inch vines that often need no trellis. Lincoln is considered one of the sweetest and most reliable heirloom shelling peas for home gardens. It is also among the most heat- and wilt-tolerant of garden peas, which makes it well-adapted to a wide range of climates and one of the best choices for a small garden where a tall trellis is impractical.

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Norland is the workhorse red potato for short-season northern gardens, developed at North Dakota State University and ready in just 70 days. Dark Red Norland is instantly recognizable by smooth deep-red skin with famously shallow eyes (which makes prep effortless) and firm fine-grained white flesh that boils, mashes, and steams beautifully.

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Ruby Red is the first widely grown red-fleshed grapefruit, a 1929 Texas bud sport of Pink Marsh (Thompson) that put red-fleshed grapefruit on the commercial map. The large round fruit has yellow-orange skin with a slight blush and juicy ruby-red to pink flesh, with a notably sweet, low-bitterness flavor. A perfect breakfast citrus.

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Grape hyacinth, Muscari armeniacum, is a tough little bulb that carries spikes of tightly packed, grape-like, deep violet-blue urn-shaped flowers, each tipped with a fine white rim, on six to eight inch stems in early spring. Lightly fragrant and incredibly easy, it naturalizes fast into rivers and drifts of intense blue, and is a favorite for edging paths, underplanting tulips and daffodils, and tucking into rock gardens. Despite the common name it is not a true hyacinth. Its grassy foliage often reappears in fall and overwinters, marking exactly where the bulbs sit.

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Crimson Cherry is a deep red-stemmed rhubarb cultivar known for the brightest scarlet stalks of any garden rhubarb, holding their color through cooking. Rhubarb is the perennial pie plant: a single crown produces tart juicy stalks for 15 to 20 years, returning each spring as the first homegrown fruit of the year.

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A pointed cone-shaped cabbage with a compact, sweet, and more tender head than round cabbages. Similar to the classic Hispi but an improved, larger-headed selection. Matures faster than round types (about 60 to 68 days) and is less prone to splitting. The sweet, delicate flavor is excellent raw in slaws or lightly steamed. A beautiful and space-efficient cabbage for smaller gardens.

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Caraway is a cool-season biennial herb in the carrot family, grown for its crescent-shaped seeds that flavor rye bread, sauerkraut, cheeses, and spice blends with a pungent anise-licorice character (driven by the essential oil carvone). The feathery first-year foliage is also edible and tastes like a milder dill.

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Kellogg's Breakfast is a prized Michigan heirloom bearing large beefsteak fruit of deep orange flesh, often near a pound, that is meaty and nearly seedless. The flavor is sweet, rich, and low in acid with fruity melon-citrus notes, on tall indeterminate vines that need sturdy staking.

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Owari Satsuma is the cold-hardy Japanese mandarin that handles brief dips into the mid-teens once mature, making it the most reliable citrus for the Gulf South and the West Coast outside frost-free zones. The seedless easy-peel fruit has tender juicy bright-orange flesh with a sweet flavor balanced by subtle floral notes.

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Delft Blue is the classic Dutch hyacinth, famous for the heady perfume of its dense, waxy flower spikes. Each stout stem, eight to ten inches tall, is packed with soft porcelain-blue, star-shaped florets that open over two to three weeks in mid-spring above strappy bright green leaves. It is one of the most fragrant of all spring bulbs, wonderful massed in beds, lined out in formal plantings, grown in pots, or forced in water indoors for winter bloom. Hyacinths are hardy perennials, though the fat first-year spikes tend to loosen and naturalize into a more relaxed, informal flower in later years.

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A small Spanish tapas pepper mostly mild but occasionally — and unpredictably — hot, with roughly one in ten delivering a significant kick. This Russian-roulette quality is part of the Padron appeal. Blistered quickly in very hot oil with coarse salt, they are one of the most popular bar snacks in Spain. Compact productive plants suited to containers and small gardens.

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A Chinese heirloom cucumber producing extra-long ribbed fruits up to 18 inches with a mild, sweet, burpless flavor and very thin skin. One of the most productive and heat-tolerant cucumbers available. The ribbed surface and tapered ends are distinctive. An excellent trellis cucumber that grows straight when vertical and produces prolifically through hot summers.

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A striking purple-skinned carrot with a bright orange interior that appears dramatically when sliced. The purple skin contains anthocyanins while the interior retains classic carrot beta-carotene. Flavor is slightly earthier and more complex than standard orange carrots with mild spice notes. Beautiful raw in salads and on crudite platters.

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Anise is a delicate annual herb grown for its sweet, licorice-flavored seeds and lacy, edible foliage. Reaching about 2 feet, it carries flat umbels of small white flowers that draw beneficial insects before the aromatic seeds ripen.

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Valencia is the quintessential juicing orange, accounting for nearly half of all Florida citrus production. The thin smooth bright-orange rind peels easily, and the flesh delivers the highest juice content of any orange (about one-third cup per medium fruit) with a sweet bright flavor. The unusual late spring through summer harvest fills the gap when navel oranges are out of season.

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Small creamy-white oval beans with a mild, delicate flavor. The classic Boston baked bean and the bean of Senate Bean Soup. Also called haricot beans in Europe. Among the most versatile dried beans for soups and stews. Compact bush plants that fit easily into small gardens and produce prolifically.

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Garden gladiolus is the towering summer cut flower beloved for generations, sending up dramatic sword-like spikes three to five feet tall lined with large funnel-shaped flowers that open from the bottom up in nearly every color imaginable. The name comes from the Latin for sword, for the blade-shaped leaves. Grown from corms planted each spring, glads are tender and are dug and stored over winter in cold climates or simply replanted each year. Planting a few corms every couple of weeks through spring gives a steady supply of spikes for cutting all summer long.

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Chinese broccoli — a thick-stemmed brassica with small white flowers and flat, blue-green leaves that is a staple of Cantonese and Chinese-American cooking. The entire plant is edible: stems, leaves, and flower buds. Flavor is slightly more bitter than Italian broccoli with a pleasantly robust character. Excellent stir-fried with garlic and oyster sauce.

Purple Passion is an open-pollinated purple asparagus that produces tender, sweet, burgundy-purple spears with a notably higher sugar content (commonly cited around 20 percent more) than green asparagus. Bred from old Italian purple types, it is a standard variety rather than an all-male hybrid, so a bed includes both male and female plants. The spears turn green when cooked but eat raw beautifully in salads, with a mild, slightly nutty flavor and a tender texture that is less stringy than green spears, so you eat more of each stalk.

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Blood orange (Citrus x sinensis Moro) is an evergreen citrus tree bearing medium, round oranges whose flesh ranges from streaked to deep, solid wine-red, with a sweet flavor carrying hints of raspberry. The red pigment is anthocyanin, which develops most strongly when fruit matures through cool winter nights, so blood oranges color best in subtropical climates with a distinct cool season. Moro is the darkest and most dependable of the blood oranges, an early-to-midseason variety that crops well in Florida and other warm regions.

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Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) is a fast-growing annual legume, about 1.5 to 2 ft tall, grown for two harvests: its tender, clover-like leaves (methi), used as a cooked green and herb, and its small, hard, golden seeds, used as a warm, maple-like, slightly bitter spice. It is a staple of Indian cooking and, as a legume, fixes nitrogen, making it a useful rotation and green-manure crop. Leaves are ready in a few weeks, while seed needs a longer warm season to ripen.

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Toma Verde is an early, productive tomatillo bearing tart, bright-green fruit wrapped in papery husks, the essential base for salsa verde and green enchilada sauce. The sprawling plants are vigorous and heavy-bearing, ripening fruit in roughly 60 to 80 days, and because tomatillos are largely self-incompatible you must grow at least two plants for them to set fruit.

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Jackmanii is the original large-flowered garden clematis, introduced in England in 1862 and still the most widely planted clematis in the world. It is a deciduous climbing vine that scrambles 10 to 15 feet up a trellis, arbor, fence, or shrub, clinging by twisting leaf stalks, and from early summer until fall it covers itself in a sheet of velvety, four-sepaled, violet-purple flowers up to 5 inches across. Because it flowers on the current season growth (new wood), it can be cut to the ground each spring and still bloom heavily the same year, which makes it one of the easiest clematis to prune and grow. The old rule for clematis sums it up: it likes its head in the sun and its feet in the shade.

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The Green Globe artichoke is grown for its large, rounded, immature flower buds, eaten for their tender leaf bases and meaty heart before the bud opens into a purple thistle flower. A tender perennial that lives for years in mild-winter regions on five-foot, silvery plants, it is grown as an annual in cold climates by tricking young plants into budding their first year.

Rosa Bianca is the showcase Italian heirloom eggplant from Sicily, with teardrop fruits 5 to 6 inches long, striped in white and violet, and creamy white flesh that is sweet and never bitter. The variety is the chef-favored choice for grilling, roasting, and Italian classics like caponata and parmigiana because of its meaty texture and clean mild flavor.

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Fantasia is a large freestone yellow nectarine bred in California, with deep red skin, golden-yellow firm flesh, and a sweet-tart flavor that gets sweeter the longer the fruit hangs on the tree. The variety is a mid to late season producer ripening in late July, with bright pink spring blossoms that bring early color to the orchard.

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Fordhook 242 is the benchmark bush lima, or butterbean, and an All-America Selections winner that made limas easy for home gardeners by needing no trellis. The compact 16 to 20 inch plants are early, heavy-bearing, and heat-resilient for a Fordhook, setting broad pods over large, plump, pale-green seeds with a rich, creamy texture. It is a warm-season annual that wants the same conditions as snap beans but a bit more heat and a longer season. Like all beans it fixes nitrogen, so it asks little in the way of feeding.

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Cumin (Cuminum cyminum) is a slender, ferny annual herb about 8 to 12 in tall, grown for its small, ridged, intensely aromatic seeds, a backbone spice of Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, and North African cooking. It is monocarpic, flowering, setting seed, and then dying, and it needs a long, hot, frost-free season of about four months to ripen seed, so in most of the country it is started indoors. The tiny umbels of pinkish-white flowers give way to the prized seeds, which are harvested when the heads dry and brown.

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A semi-aquatic peppery green that grows wild in streams and is cultivated in shallow trays or near water features. One of the most nutritious salad greens available, with a distinctive spicy bite and crisp texture. The standard ingredient in French watercress salads, sandwiches, and as a garnish for steaks. Grows perennially in zones 3 to 10 with reliable moisture.

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Patriot is one of the most popular variegated hostas, grown for bold foliage that brightens shade. It forms a mound twelve to twenty inches tall and two to two and a half feet wide of broad, oval leaves with deep green centers and wide, irregular, crisp white margins that seem to glow in a dim corner. In summer it sends up scapes of lavender, funnel-shaped flowers above the leaves. Like all hostas it is a long-lived, easy-care perennial and the backbone of the shade garden, combining beautifully with ferns, astilbe, and other woodland plants. Its one real enemy is slugs, though the thick leaves give it some resistance.

La Roma IV is an improved hybrid paste tomato that builds on the classic Roma with a heavier, more uniform set and strong disease resistance. The compact determinate plants ripen a concentrated crop of bright red, blocky roma fruit weighing 4 to 6 oz with dense, low-moisture flesh that cooks down beautifully for sauce, paste, and canning. It matures in about 70 to 75 days and resists alternaria stem canker, fusarium wilt races 1 and 2, gray leaf spot, root-knot nematode, and verticillium wilt.

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Damson is the traditional British cooking plum, a subspecies of European plum that produces small ovoid blue-black fruit with sweet-spicy-tart flesh and exceptionally high pectin content. The fresh flavor is too tart for most palates, but Damson transforms in cooking into the best plum jam, fruit cheese, and gin-infused liqueur (sloe gin substitute) imaginable. Extremely hardy and disease-resistant.

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A Caribbean hot pepper in the same heat range as habanero (100,000 to 350,000 SHU) with a distinctively sweet, fruity, almost tropical flavor underneath the intense heat. Essential in Jamaican jerk seasoning, hot sauces, and Caribbean cuisine. The squashed, wrinkled shape resembles a bonnet. Plants are very productive in warm climates.

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Sesame is one of the oldest cultivated oilseed crops, a heat-loving annual grown for the small, flat, nutty, oil-rich seeds packed inside upright capsules along the stem. Slender plants two to four feet tall carry tubular foxglove-like flowers, white to pale pink, followed by the capsules. It is famously one of the most drought-tolerant crops in the world, but it pays for that with a demand for heat: it needs a long, hot season of roughly 110 to 150 frost-free days and warm soil, so it suits southern gardens or the hottest stretch of summer farther north.

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Mizuna is a Japanese mustard green grown for its deeply cut, feathery, serrated leaves that rise in graceful rosettes on thin, crisp white stems. Also called Japanese mustard, spider mustard, or California pepper grass, it has a mild peppery, mustardy bite gentler than arugula that works raw in salad mixes and cooked into stir-fries, soups, and even pesto. It is one of the fastest and most forgiving greens in the garden, harvestable as baby leaves in three to four weeks, unusually slow to bolt, and tolerant of light frost, which makes it a dependable spring and fall staple.

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Spiked speedwell is a clump-forming perennial 2 to 3 ft tall that sends up dense, tapering spikes packed with small flowers in blue, purple, pink, or white from late spring into midsummer. The flowers are highly attractive to bees and butterflies, and the plant reblooms in fall if sheared after the first flush. It is a low-maintenance, long-blooming choice for sunny borders, cottage gardens, and pollinator plantings.

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Tatsoi is a compact Asian mustard green (Brassica rapa var. rosularis) that forms a low, flat rosette of small, dark-green, glossy, spoon-shaped leaves on crisp pale stems. The flavor is mild and sweet with only a faint mustardy note, good raw in salad mixes and quickly wilted into soups and stir-fries. It is one of the most cold-hardy greens in the garden, standing up to hard frost and even harvestable from beneath snow, which makes it a standout fall and winter crop. Baby leaves are ready in about three weeks and full rosettes in around 45 days.

Spanish Roja is the gold-standard rocambole hardneck garlic, grown in North America since at least the late 1800s. The bulbs carry a light purple tint on white wrappers with reddish-brown clove wrappers, hold 8 to 12 cloves per head, and deliver true rich spicy garlic flavor with a touch of sweetness. The hardneck class also produces edible scapes in early summer.

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Stevens is the gold-standard large-berried American cranberry, the most-planted commercial cranberry variety in the US, producing deep red 1/2 in berries packed with tart-sweet flavor and exceptional storage life. Despite the bog-grown commercial image, cranberries are simply low-growing evergreen ground cover plants that need acidic moisture but NOT standing water (the commercial bogs are flooded only for harvest).

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Dragon is an eye-catching carrot with deep purple skin, a contrasting orange-to-yellow core, and a sweet, slightly spicy flavor that mellows when cooked. The 6 to 8 inch tapered roots hold their color best when not overcooked and add bold color to fresh and roasted dishes.

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Salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) is a tidy, low, evergreen perennial herb forming mounding rosettes of lacy, toothed leaflets with a fresh, cool cucumber flavor. The young leaves are used raw in salads, dressings, herb butters, soft cheeses, and cool summer drinks. Very hardy in about USDA zones 4 to 8, it thrives in lean, well-drained, even chalky or alkaline soil, stays green well into winter, and can live for many years. Wiry stems carry small green-and-purple flower clusters in summer, and the plant self-seeds readily.

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Broad Windsor is the traditional English broad bean (fava), grown for centuries for its big, flat, buttery seeds. It is one of the hardiest garden legumes: the sturdy, erect, two to four foot plants tolerate cold and light frost, so they go in very early and crop before summer heat arrives. White black-blotched flowers give way to thick, plush-lined pods, each holding a few large seeds eaten fresh-shelled, or left to dry. As a legume it fixes nitrogen and makes an excellent cool-season cover crop and soil builder as well as a food crop.

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Creeping phlox, also called moss phlox, is a low, mat-forming native perennial just 4 to 6 in tall that spreads 2 to 3 ft wide into a dense carpet of evergreen, needle-like foliage. In late April and early May it disappears under loose clusters of small star-shaped flowers in pink, lavender, white, or red-purple. Native to central and eastern North America, it is a tough, long-lived groundcover for slopes, rock gardens, wall edges, and the front of borders, and it tolerates hot, dry sites better than other phlox.

German Queen is a German heirloom beefsteak prized for its huge, sweet, low-acid fruits. Pink-red shoulders ripen to a deep rose-pink and the meaty 1 to 2 lb tomatoes are nearly seedless inside. Plants are indeterminate, vigorous, and reach 6 to 10 ft on a strong cage or stake, producing through midsummer to frost. Considered one of the best slicing heirlooms for sandwiches and fresh eating.

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Pixwell is the gooseberry for home growers: nearly thornless canes, abundant pink-to-purple berries that ripen mid-summer, and a name that means picked well (the fruit hangs on short stems below the branches, making harvest pleasant). Berries can be picked green for pies and jam, or left to ripen pink for fresh eating.

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Carolina Reaper held the Guinness World Record as the hottest pepper from 2013 to 2023, with heat levels averaging 1.56 million Scoville units and individual pods reaching 2.2 million SHU. The small wrinkled red pods with the signature scorpion-style tail carry a fruity sweet undertone behind the wall of capsaicin heat. Use sparingly and wear gloves.

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Purple Tomatillo is the small purple-fleshed husk tomato (Physalis philadelphica) with a sweet-tart flavor more fruit-like than the standard green tomatillo. The 1 to 2 inch deep purple fruits hide inside papery tan husks; the slight sweetness and lower acidity make Purple Tomatillo perfect for jams, preserves, and salsas where a balanced flavor matters.

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Lovage is the forgotten herb that should be in every kitchen garden: a 6 to 7 ft hardy perennial with the bright flavor of parsley, savory depth of celery, and a whisper of anise, all in one plant. The leaves are an instant one-herb seasoning blend for soups, stews, and stocks, and the hollow stems can be used as crunchy straws for Bloody Marys (a classic British use).

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David is the benchmark white garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) and a 2002 Perennial Plant of the Year, prized above all for its outstanding resistance to powdery mildew - the disease that disfigures most tall phlox. It forms upright 3 to 4 ft clumps topped from mid to late summer with large, domed heads of pure-white, sweetly fragrant flowers. The long-tubed blooms are built for butterflies and hummingbirds and are also worked by long-tongued bees and night-flying moths, making David a centerpiece of the fragrant summer pollinator border.

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Tromboncino is an Italian heirloom climbing summer squash, technically a butternut relative (Cucurbita moschata) rather than a true zucchini. Vigorous vines run 10 to 15 ft and can be trained up a sturdy trellis; trumpet-shaped fruits curve and dangle to 36 in. long. Picked young at 8 to 12 in. the flesh is tender, nutty, and cooks like the best zucchini; left to mature and cure, fruits keep like winter squash. Because moschata stems are dense and solid, Tromboncino is essentially immune to squash vine borer, the bug that kills most home-garden zucchinis.

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Hass is the dominant commercial avocado worldwide: pebbly dark-green skin that turns near-black at ripeness, exceptional creamy buttery flesh with the highest oil content (and richest flavor) of any avocado variety, and reliable year-round bearing in mild-winter climates. The variety is a Guatemalan-Mexican hybrid discovered in 1926 in California and accounts for over 80 percent of US avocado production.

A round black-skinned radish with white, dense, crisp flesh and a sharp, pungent flavor much stronger than red radishes. One of the oldest cultivated radishes, traditional in Eastern European, German, and Jewish cooking where it is used grated in salads, fermented as a condiment, and used medicinally as a digestive and liver support herb. Very cold-hardy and stores well through winter.

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Choy sum (Brassica rapa var. parachinensis), also widely sold as yu choy, is a fast Chinese flowering cabbage grown for its mild, sweet leaves, crisp stems, and small yellow flower buds, all harvested and cooked together at the bud stage. A cool-season green, it is ready in just 30 to 50 days and often regrows for a second cutting after the main stem is cut. It is a stir-fry staple with a clean, slightly sweet cabbage flavor, also good steamed or in soups. Plants stand about 8 to 16 in tall.

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Anise Hyssop is a fragrant native perennial in the mint family, with violet-purple flower spikes from early summer through fall and licorice-mint leaves that make a wonderful tea. Identified by the Xerces Society as one of the top pollinator plants, the spikes draw bumblebees, hummingbirds, and beneficial insects all season long.

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Peace is the most celebrated rose of the twentieth century, a large-flowered hybrid tea bred by Francis Meilland in France and released in the United States in the spring of 1945, as the Second World War in Europe drew to a close. It carries very large double flowers up to 6 inches across in soft shades of pale gold to cream, each petal lightly brushed with rosy pink at the ruffled edge, set against glossy dark green leaves that open with reddish tints. Blooms begin in late spring and repeat well all season on a vigorous bushy plant 3 to 4 ft tall. It won the first All-America Rose Selections award after the war and remains the benchmark for the classic long-stemmed garden rose.

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Komatsuna (Brassica rapa var. perviridis), also called Japanese mustard spinach, is a fast, easy leafy green with glossy, deep-green leaves whose flavor is milder than mustard. It is unusually adaptable, far more heat tolerant than spinach and more cold tolerant than most greens, standing light frost and cropping from spring through fall. Baby leaves are ready in under a month and full-size leaves soon after. Young leaves are eaten raw in salads, while larger leaves are cooked in stir-fries, soups, and pickles. Plants reach about 12 to 18 in.

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Glenn is the smooth fiberless mango developed in southern Florida in the 1940s, with golden-yellow skin blushed orange-red at ripeness and rich aromatic flesh that tastes like a sweet peach with a tropical edge. The tree is naturally compact (10 to 20 ft) and one of the most reliable mango varieties for home growers, with early fruit production (2 to 3 years from grafted stock) and exceptionally productive crops.

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Brandywine is a famous Amish heirloom beefsteak tomato dating to the 1880s, producing very large, pink-red fruit with a rich, sweet, old-fashioned flavor that many gardeners consider the best of any tomato. The vigorous indeterminate plants have distinctive potato-leaf foliage and are among the slowest tomatoes to ripen, needing roughly 80 to 100 days from transplant. They yield fewer fruit than modern hybrids but reward the wait with exceptional taste.

An old-fashioned American beefsteak heirloom producing large round red fruits averaging 12 to 16 oz with a classic balanced sweet-tart flavor. Named for the country singer Box Car Willie of the Grand Ole Opry, this tomato is prized for dependable productivity and genuine tomato flavor without the fussiness of some show heirlooms.

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Aji Amarillo (Capsicum baccatum) is the most important pepper in Peruvian cuisine: large, 5 to 6 inch yellow-orange pods with a fruity berry-like flavor (with hints of mango and passion fruit) and a medium-hot 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville heat. The variety is foundational in aji de gallina and papa a la huancaina; the plant grows over 5 feet tall.

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Hyssop is a compact, semi-evergreen Mediterranean herb with narrow aromatic leaves and dense spikes of blue, sometimes pink or white, flowers that are a magnet for bees and butterflies. The slightly bitter, minty-anise foliage has long been used in teas and traditional remedies.

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Queen Elizabeth is the rose that created the grandiflora class in 1954, combining the long elegant buds of a hybrid tea with the cluster flowering and vigor of a floribunda. It is a tall, upright, almost thornless plant reaching 4 to 6 ft, carrying high-centered silver-pink double flowers either singly on long stems or in small clusters, blooming from late spring to frost. Named for the new British queen and a former All-America Rose Selections winner, it is valued as a back-of-border specimen and for its long cutting stems, with generally good disease resistance for a rose of its age.

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Issai (Actinidia arguta 'Issai') is the famously easy hardy kiwi: unlike most kiwis, which need separate male and female vines, Issai is self-fertile and will fruit on its own. The vigorous vine bears clusters of smooth-skinned, grape-sized green kiwiberries that you pop in your mouth whole - no peeling - with the sweet-tart flavor of a kiwi and no fuzz. Hardy to roughly zone 5, far tougher than the fuzzy grocery kiwi, it can climb 10 ft or more and needs a strong support. It tends to fruit young, often within a couple of years, and a single plant can crop, though yields improve with a male vine nearby.

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Adirondack Blue is a Cornell-bred mid-season blue potato released in 2003, with deep purple skin and bright violet flesh that holds its color through cooking. The high-yielding plant produces large oblong tubers loaded with anthocyanin pigments, making it a striking and nutritious specialty potato for fries, salads, and roasting.

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Mung bean (Vigna radiata) is a small, fast, warm-season legume about 2 to 3 ft tall, best known worldwide as the source of crisp bean sprouts and, in South Asia, as the split pulse for dal. The bushy plants set slender pods that ripen unevenly to brown or black over a long window. It is frost tender and heat loving, drought tolerant once established, and like other legumes it fixes nitrogen, making it a useful rotation or green-manure crop. Mung beans can be eaten as dried beans, sprouted, ground into flour, or harvested as young pods.

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Costata Romanesco is the legendary Italian heirloom zucchini, famous for prominently ribbed, gray-green, flecked fruits with a nutty, creamy, almost meaty flavor that ranks at the top of every taste test. Plants yield about half what a hybrid zucchini does, but each fruit is markedly better eating and the big semi-vining plants throw heavy sets of male blossoms perfect for stuffing and frying.

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Stock is a fragrant cool-season cut flower with 12 to 28 in. spikes of densely packed single or double blooms in pastel pink, white, lavender, cream, and burgundy. The clove-and-honey scent is the strongest of any cottage-garden flower and fills an entire room from a single bouquet. Stock is short-day-loving and stops blooming above 60F, so it is a spring or fall flower in most regions and a winter-greenhouse crop for cut-flower growers.

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Hayward is the standard fuzzy kiwifruit - the brown, hairy, egg-sized fruit sold in every grocery store, with sweet emerald-green flesh and a ring of tiny black seeds. It grows on a huge, vigorous, twining deciduous vine that can stretch 15 ft or more and live for decades. Like date palms, kiwifruit are dioecious: Hayward is a female that produces all the fruit, but it must be pollinated by a separate male vine (such as Tomuri or Matua) planted nearby. Given a strong trellis, the right climate, and a male partner, a single mature Hayward vine can produce 100 lb of fruit, making it one of the most productive fruits a temperate gardener can grow.

Atomic Red is a striking heirloom Imperator-type carrot with bright coral-red skin, a deep red core, and feathery green tops. The red color comes from lycopene, the same carotenoid that colors tomatoes and watermelon. Roots reach 8 to 11 in. long and are slender, tapered, and crisp; flavor is mild and sweet raw and noticeably richer cooked, when heat releases more of the lycopene.

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Sweet woodruff is a charming low perennial groundcover for shade, with whorls of bright green leaves and a carpet of tiny white star flowers in spring. The dried foliage smells of fresh hay and vanilla and is the traditional flavoring for German May wine.

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A high-anthocyanin tomato bred at Oregon State University that turns deep purple-black wherever sunlight hits the skin. The shaded underside stays red when ripe. Flavor is rich and plummy with good balanced acidity. A novelty that is also genuinely delicious.

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Trinidad Scorpion is a Capsicum chinense superhot at 1.2 to 1.5 million Scoville units, with the distinctive scorpion-tail point at the bottom of each wrinkled red pod. The flavor behind the wall of heat is fruity and floral; the heat itself is slow-building and lingering. One pod can flavor a large pot of chili. Always wear gloves.

All Blue is the heirloom blue potato most common in US grocery stores, with dark blue skin, violet-blue flesh, and a creamy all-purpose texture that holds purple color through cooking. The plants even bloom blue, and the medium-starch tubers excel at baking, roasting, and mashing for visually striking dishes.

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Adams is the early-ripening American elderberry, prized since the 1920s for huge clusters of dark purple-black berries and large fragrant white spring flowers. The fast-growing 8 to 10 ft bush is one of the easiest fruits to grow (often bearing in year 1), and the cooked berries are foundational in elderberry syrup, jam, wine, and immune-supporting tonics that have surged in popularity.

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Strawflower is an everlasting annual daisy whose stiff, papery bracts in jewel tones of gold, red, pink, and white feel like straw and hold their color superbly when dried. Bushy 2 to 3 foot plants bloom all summer in the heat and are a cutting-garden mainstay for fresh and dried arrangements.

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White mustard (Sinapis alba) is a fast, cheerful cool-season annual in the cabbage family, 1 to 3 ft tall, with bright yellow flowers that quickly give way to seed pods holding the pale, pungent seeds used to make table mustard. It is a triple-purpose plant: the seeds are ground for condiment mustard, the young leaves are eaten as a peppery salad or cooked green, and the whole quick-growing plant is a popular cover crop and green manure that smothers weeds and, dug in, helps suppress soil pests. It grows from sowing to flower in just a few weeks and is one of the easiest things in the garden.

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Adzuki bean is the small red Asian bean (Vigna angularis) widely grown in Japan, China, and Korea for sweet bean paste (anko), red bean rice, and traditional Asian desserts. The annual vine produces clusters of pods filled with shiny 5 mm red beans with a chestnut-like sweetness, lower in cooking time than most dry beans and easier to digest.

Purple Cape is an old heritage cauliflower, originally from the Cape region of South Africa, grown as an overwintering crop rather than a quick summer one. Its deep violet color comes from anthocyanins and the flavor is mild and slightly nutty. Plants are set out in mid to late summer, build a large leafy frame through fall, stand over winter where the climate is mild, and form their colorful domed heads in late winter and early spring when little else is ready. The purple fades toward green with long cooking, so it is best eaten raw or only lightly steamed to keep its striking color.

White Satin is a Nantes-Imperator hybrid carrot with cylindrical 8 to 9 in roots in a creamy white from skin to core. The flavor is mild, sweet, and crunchy raw, none of the wild-carrot bitterness that affects some white carrot varieties. A great showcase variety alongside orange and purple carrots, with strong heat tolerance and uniform shape.

fruit⚠ Regional

Ben Sarek is the compact disease-resistant Scottish black currant with large flavorful aromatic berries beloved for jam, syrup, and the famous British blackcurrant cordial Ribena. The 3 to 4 ft bush is loaded with shiny black fruit in midsummer and resistant to American gooseberry mildew and moderately resistant to white pine blister rust (important because some US states regulate Ribes plantings; check before planting).

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Statice is the classic dried-flower annual - 18 to 30 in. winged stems topped with airy clusters of papery 1/4 in. blooms in saturated violet, blue, white, yellow, pink, apricot, and rose. A short-lived perennial grown as an annual, it tolerates heat, drought, poor soil, and salt spray, and the flowers hold their color for years dried, making it indispensable for wreaths, bouquets, and confetti.

Tiny Tim is a dwarf determinate cherry tomato bred for containers and tight spaces, forming a tidy, self-supporting bush only 12 to 18 inches tall. It crops very early, about 45 to 55 days from transplant, ripening clusters of half-inch red cherry tomatoes in a short window on a compact plant. It is ideal for balconies, windowsills, and small pots where full-size vines will not fit.

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Culantro (Eryngium foetidum), known as recao, shado beni, or sawtooth herb, is a tropical herb whose flavor is essentially a much stronger, more pungent cilantro - so much so that it stands in for cilantro in cooking and, unlike cilantro, keeps its flavor through long cooking. It forms a flat rosette of long, narrow, saw-toothed leaves close to the ground, with a spiny flower stalk if it bolts. A defining ingredient in Caribbean sofrito and recaito and in Thai, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian dishes, it is a tender perennial usually grown as an annual, and it prefers shade, where it stays leafy longest before bolting.

Killarney Red is a high-yielding rocambole hardneck garlic with 7 to 9 large cloves per head and a well-balanced flavor: nutty and full-bodied raw, then smooth and sweetly earthy when cooked. The loosely-wrapped mahogany clove skins peel off easily, which is why many restaurant chefs prefer Killarney Red for quick kitchen prep.

Purple Majesty is a mid-season purple-flesh potato bred at Colorado State University, with vibrant deep purple skin and bright violet flesh that holds color through baking, mashing, or boiling. The flavor is rich and slightly nutty with creamy texture, and the plants are hardy and disease-resistant for reliable yields.

fruit⚠ Regional

Red Lake is the most popular red currant in the US, a productive long-clustered Minnesota selection with bright translucent ruby-red berries on long dangling stems. The shrub is incredibly ornamental in fruit (jewel-like clusters glow against green foliage) and produces 5 to 8 lb of fruit per mature bush. Red currant has a sharper more vibrant tartness than black currant and makes the best clear-red jelly imaginable.

Paris Market is a 19th-century French heirloom carrot that grows in small round golf-ball shapes rather than the long taproot of typical varieties. The bite-sized roots reach about 2 inches across, taste deliciously sweet and tender, and thrive in containers or shallow rocky soils where regular carrots will not size up.

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Larkspur is the annual delphinium - 3 to 4 ft tapering spires densely packed with finely cut blue, purple, pink, or white blooms above ferny foliage. A spring-blooming cool-season annual that hates heat and bolts to seed and dies by midsummer, leaving a few weeks of dramatic flower production. Direct sow only; the taproot resents transplanting. The vintage cottage-garden look in a single packet of seed. All parts are toxic if eaten.

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Vietnamese Coriander (Persicaria odorata), called rau ram, is a sprawling tender perennial in the knotweed family whose narrow, pointed leaves - often marked with a dark chevron - taste like a hot, peppery, lemony cilantro. It is a workhorse herb of Vietnamese and wider Southeast Asian cooking, eaten raw in salads, spring rolls, and noodle bowls and added at the end of cooking. Crucially for hot-climate gardeners it never bolts the way cilantro does, staying productive all summer. It loves warmth and constant moisture, even shallow water, and roots so easily from cuttings that one plant quickly becomes many; north of zone 9 it is grown as an annual or overwintered indoors.

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Red Noodle is a striking yardlong bean, a member of the cowpea family grown for its slender, deep burgundy pods that can reach 14 to 18 inches. Despite the name and looks, it grows like a vigorous pole bean and loves what ordinary beans dislike: heat and humidity. The fast climbing vines reach 5 to 10 feet and crop heavily over a long season, hanging their dramatic red pods in pairs. Picked young, the pods are tender, nutty, and slightly sweeter and denser than a green bean, excellent stir-fried (they hold their texture) - and the rich red color cooks to a deep green.

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A rosette-forming winter salad green from Italy with deep burgundy-red leaves, a slightly bitter chicory flavor, and satisfying crunch. Often called Italian chicory, it can be grown as a cut-and-come-again salad or allowed to form tight heads in fall.

fruit⚠ Regional

White currant (Ribes rubrum White Imperial) is a white-fruited form of the red currant, a hardy deciduous shrub about 3 to 5 ft tall bearing hanging strings of translucent, pale-gold berries. They are sweeter, milder, and lower in acid than red currants, making them pleasant for fresh eating as well as for jelly and preserves. White Imperial is an old, richly flavored variety. The bush is easy, productive, and very cold hardy, thriving in cool-summer climates. Note that as a member of the genus Ribes it is legally restricted in several states.

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Broad-leafed escarole — a less bitter, more substantial relative of curly endive with wide, wavy leaves and a mild bitter edge that mellows beautifully in cooking. A cornerstone of Italian cuisine, particularly in soups like wedding soup and Italian bean soups. Also excellent raw in salads when dressed assertively with anchovy-garlic vinaigrette.

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The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is the brilliant orange state flower of California, a drought-tough annual (or tender perennial in mild climates) with finely cut, ferny blue-green foliage and silky, cup-shaped flowers that open in sun and close at night and in cloud. Beyond its beauty and its value to bees, it has a gentle traditional use, the whole aerial plant gathered. It is one of the easiest wildflowers to grow, blooming fast from a direct sowing in poor, sunny ground, and it self-sows reliably to paint the same spot orange year after year. It resents transplanting, so it is always direct-sown.

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Bitter melon, also called bitter gourd or karela, is a vigorous tropical climbing vine grown for its distinctive warty, cucumber-shaped green fruit. As the name promises, the flesh is genuinely bitter - an acquired but beloved taste central to Chinese, Indian, and Southeast Asian cooking, where it is stir-fried, stuffed, or curried, often after salting or blanching to soften the edge. The fast, tendril-bearing vine can run 12 to 20 feet in a single season and is best trained up a trellis, which keeps the hanging fruit straight and clean. It is grown as a warm-season annual, thriving in the heat and humidity that defeat many vegetables. The young leafy shoots are also eaten as a cooked green.

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Epazote (Dysphania ambrosioides), once classed as Chenopodium ambrosioides, is a pungent, fast-growing annual to short-lived perennial herb of the Americas, reaching 2 to 5 ft with many irregular side branches and strongly scented, oil-glanded leaves. Its leaves are the traditional seasoning for black beans and many Mexican dishes, where they add a distinctive flavor and are said to reduce the gassiness of beans. It is a tough, weedy plant that reseeds aggressively. Used as a fresh culinary herb it is safe, but its concentrated oil and seeds are toxic.

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Chayote is a vigorous, tendril-climbing vine of the gourd family grown for its pale-green, pear-shaped fruit, each holding a single soft, flat, edible seed. The crisp, mild flesh tastes like a cross between a cucumber and a young summer squash and is eaten raw or cooked, skin and all when young. Beyond the fruit, the tender vine tips are eaten as a green and the swollen tuberous root is edible like a potato. A single plant is enormously productive, its vines reaching 30 to 50 feet, so it is usually trained up a strong arbor or fence. It is a tender perennial in frost-free gardens - often most productive in its second and third years - and grown as a long-season annual where winters are mild.

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Illinois Everbearing is the long-bearing hybrid mulberry (Morus alba x rubra), with dark blackberry-shaped fruit that ripens continuously from July through September. Each 1.5 in berry has a sweet rich complex flavor unlike any commercial fruit, and a mature tree produces 15 to 25 lb of fruit per year. Self-fertile, hardy to minus 20F, and one of the few cultivated mulberries widely adapted to cold US winters.

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Jicama, also called yam bean, is a tropical vining legume grown for one thing: its large, round, tan-skinned storage root. Peeled, the white flesh is crisp, juicy, and lightly sweet - eaten raw like an apple, cut into sticks for dipping, or tossed into slaws and salads, and it stays crunchy even when cooked. The catch is that ONLY the root is edible. The vines, pods, seeds, and leaves all contain rotenone, a natural insecticide that is poisonous to people and animals, so everything above ground must be discarded. The plant is a vigorous twining vine that can run 20 feet and needs a long, hot growing season - five to nine months without frost - to size up a good root.

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Taro is a lush tropical perennial grown for its starchy underground corm, one of the oldest cultivated food plants and a staple across the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean - the source of Hawaiian poi. Bold, heart-shaped elephant-ear leaves rise 3 to 6 feet on long stalks, making the plant as ornamental as it is useful, and both the corm and the young leaves are eaten after cooking. Taro loves warmth and water: it thrives in rich, constantly moist to boggy ground and even at the edge of a pond, which is why it is traditionally grown in flooded paddies. It is a tender perennial that grows year-round in frost-free climates and is lifted as an annual where winters are cold.

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Ageratum, or floss flower, is a frost-tender annual that forms tidy mounds 6 to 12 in tall covered from late spring until fall with fluffy, tufted flower clusters. It is most loved for its powder-blue and clear-blue forms, a rare true blue among bedding plants, though pink and white types exist. It is a dependable edging and massing plant, seldom bothered by rabbits or deer, and the taller cultivars are good for cutting.

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Winter melon, also called wax gourd or ash gourd, is a sprawling warm-season vine of the gourd family that produces enormous fruit - oblong gourds that can reach 10 to 40 pounds. Young fruit is covered in fine fuzz, while mature fruit develops a powdery white waxy bloom that seals it so well it stores for 6 to 12 months, far longer than almost any other garden vegetable and the source of the name. The mild, white, faintly sweet flesh is a staple of Asian kitchens, simmered in the classic winter melon soup (often served in the hollowed-out gourd), stir-fried, or candied into sweets. Despite the name it is a hot-weather crop, needing a long warm season of 120 to 150 days to mature its giant fruit.

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Red shiso is the deeply colored, frilled-leaf form of the Japanese culinary herb Perilla frutescens, with purple-red foliage carrying a unique flavor between basil, mint, anise, and cinnamon. A fast summer annual that reaches 1 to 3 ft, it is grown for pickling, garnishes, and its anthocyanin color, and it self-seeds so freely that the species has naturalized and is considered invasive in parts of the Southeastern US.

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Curly endive with fine, finely-divided, lacy frilled leaves and a pleasantly bitter flavor. A classic component of French bistro salads, often paired with warm bacon dressing, poached eggs, or lardons. The pale, blanched heart is milder and more tender than the outer leaves. One of the most elegant and sophisticated salad greens for the home garden.

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Goji Berry (also called wolfberry) is a deciduous Chinese superfruit shrub producing tiny orange-red oval berries packed with carotenoids, vitamin C, and antioxidants. The arching thorny branches reach 3 to 10 ft, with small purple funnel-shaped flowers all summer and a long ripening window from midsummer through frost. Drought-tolerant, cold-hardy to zone 3, and self-pollinating.

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Chicory (Cichorium intybus) is a tall, deep-rooted perennial with sky-blue dandelion-like flowers that open in the morning, grown for three things: bitter salad and cooking greens, blanched winter chicons (forced from the root in the dark, as in Belgian endive), and the big taproot that is roasted, ground, and brewed as the classic coffee substitute and additive. A close cousin of the dandelion and of radicchio and endive, it is rugged, drought-tolerant once established, and beautiful enough at the roadside for its blue flowers alone. It rewards the home gardener with bitter greens, a winter forcing crop, and a home-roasted coffee root.

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Dusty miller is a tender perennial grown as an annual for its striking foliage, which is densely covered in white to gray hairs that give it a silvery, felted look. Plants reach 1.5 to 3 ft tall with deeply lobed, lacy leaves that cool down and unify hot color schemes in beds and containers. It bears small yellow daisy-like flowers, but most gardeners remove them to keep the focus on the foliage. It is highly drought tolerant, deer resistant, and trouble-free.

Dwarf Siberian is a Brassica napus kale (like Red Russian) with broad, thick, lightly frilled blue-gray-green leaves on stocky 12 to 16 in. plants that spread 2 to 3 ft wide. It is among the most cold-tolerant kales of all, shrugging off hard freezes that flatten other greens, and the flavor is mild, sweet, and tender - excellent both raw and cooked. Vigorous and forgiving, it is a top choice for overwintering and for gardeners in the coldest zones.

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Mexican tarragon, also called Mexican mint marigold or Texas tarragon, is a heat-loving perennial marigold grown as a culinary herb. Its narrow green leaves have a sweet anise-tarragon flavor that stands in for French tarragon in hot climates where true tarragon struggles, and in late summer it crowns itself with small golden flowers. It is perennial in zones 8 to 11 and grown as an annual elsewhere.

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January King is a traditional overwintering cabbage with handsome, slightly savoyed blue-green outer leaves flushed with rose-purple, wrapped around a dense, well-flavored head. Bred to stand in the garden through the depths of winter, it is extremely cold hardy, and a touch of frost actually improves it, sweetening the leaves. Sown in spring and left to mature slowly through the season, it provides crisp, fresh cabbage for harvest from late fall right through winter, long after summer cabbages are gone - a beautiful and practical crop for extending the homegrown season into the cold months.

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Viking Aronia (Black Chokeberry) is a hardy native US shrub with one of the highest antioxidant levels of any fruit on Earth. The 6 to 8 ft upright bushes produce abundant white spring flowers followed by clusters of deep blue-black berries with a tart astringent flavor that mellows beautifully in juice, jam, syrup, and wine. The glossy summer foliage turns flame orange-red in fall.

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Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), also called calabash, is a vigorous annual vine in the cucumber family with large white flowers that open at night. It is grown two ways: picked young and pale green, the mild, soft fruit is cooked like summer squash, and left to ripen fully it dries into a hard, waterproof shell used for bowls, dippers, utensils, and birdhouses. Vines easily run 10 to 16 ft and are best trained up a strong trellis, which also keeps the long fruit straight. It needs warmth, a long season, and plenty of room.

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Also known as corn salad or lambs lettuce, Mache is a tiny rosette-forming winter salad green with small, round, very tender leaves and a delicate, slightly nutty flavor. One of the most cold-hardy salad greens available — surviving temperatures down to 5 F in some varieties. The traditional winter and early spring salad green of France and Northern Europe.

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Globemaster is the grandest of the ornamental onions, the giant allium that stops traffic in late spring. On stout stems about two and a half feet tall it lifts enormous, perfectly spherical flower heads eight to ten inches across, each a dense globe of hundreds of tiny, star-shaped, deep violet florets that together shimmer with a metallic sheen. The globes bloom for weeks, then dry to handsome tan seed heads that hold their shape into summer for continued structure. A sterile hybrid, it sets no seed and never becomes weedy, and like all alliums it is completely deer and rodent proof. Planted in groups among lower perennials, its floating purple spheres are one of the great spectacles of the spring garden.

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Celeriac (also called celery root) is the underground cousin of celery, grown for its knobby globe-shaped swollen stem rather than its stalks. The cream-colored flesh has a mild celery flavor with a hint of parsley and nuttiness, and is delicious raw in remoulade, roasted into wedges, or pureed into silky soups. A cool-weather crop with surprisingly good winter storage.

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Curry leaf (Murraya koenigii, also classed as Bergera koenigii) is a small tropical evergreen tree of India grown for its glossy, intensely aromatic leaves, an essential tempering herb in South Indian cooking with a warm, citrus-nutty fragrance. Despite the name it is unrelated to curry powder or to the silvery curry plant (Helichrysum). It is frost tender, evergreen in about USDA zones 10 to 12, and grown as a container plant wintered indoors in colder climates. Fresh leaves have by far the best flavor; drying loses most of it. A mature tree can reach 10 to 15 ft.

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Berry Smart Blue is a partly self-fertile honeyberry (haskap) producing elongated navy-blue berries that look like elongated blueberries but ripen 2 weeks earlier than strawberries. The flavor is unique: a blend of blueberry, raspberry, and a hint of kiwi or blackberry, intensely sweet-tart and aromatic. The cold-hardy shrub (hardy to minus 50F) is one of the most beginner-friendly fruits for northern gardens.

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Celtuce (Lactuca sativa var. augustana), also called stem lettuce or asparagus lettuce, is a type of lettuce bred for its thick, succulent flower stalk rather than its leaves. The peeled stem is crisp, juicy, and mildly nutty, eaten raw in salads or stir-fried, while the young leaves can be used like leaf lettuce before they turn bitter. As a cool-season lettuce it bolts in heat, but here that bolting is the goal, since it produces the swollen, edible stem. It is grown as an annual.

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Garland chrysanthemum (Glebionis coronaria), known as shungiku, tong hao, or chop suey greens, is an edible chrysanthemum grown for its aromatic, faintly bitter young leaves and shoots, a beloved green in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cooking. An erect, branched annual reaching 1 to 3 ft, it is a fast cool-season crop harvested young, before it flowers and the leaves turn strong. The greens go into hotpots, soups, stir-fries, and tempura, and the cheerful yellow daisy flowers are an edible garnish. Formerly classed as Chrysanthemum coronarium.

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Miss Molly is one of the best of the new sterile butterfly bushes, prized for its unusually deep, rich magenta-red flowers, about the closest a butterfly bush comes to true red. It forms a compact, rounded shrub four to five feet tall and wide, and from midsummer until frost it sends out a constant succession of tapering flower spikes that are alive with butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds drawn to the nectar and light fragrance. Just as important, Miss Molly is functionally sterile, setting less than two percent viable seed, which makes it a responsible choice in regions where the old seedy butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) has become an invasive weed. It blooms the first year, asks almost nothing, and earns its keep as a pollinator magnet.

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Red Leaf Amaranth is the edible leaf form of Amaranthus tricolor, the leafy green known across the Caribbean as callaloo and across Asia as Chinese spinach or tampala. It is grown for its vivid, often red-and-green leaves, which cook down mild and tender like a richer spinach. Fast, upright, and heat-loving, it thrives in hot weather and poor soil where temperate greens fail, making it a dependable summer leaf crop. The same species also yields edible seeds, and many ornamental and culinary varieties exist - they differ mostly in leaf color and size and share the same easy care. Note this is cultivated edible amaranth, distinct from the weedy wild pigweeds.

fruit⚠ Regional

Jostaberry (Ribes x nidigrolaria) is a vigorous, thornless shrub, up to about 6 to 8 ft tall, that is a complex hybrid of black currant and gooseberry. It bears large, smooth, dark reddish-black berries with a flavor between its parents: the deep, musky richness of black currant softened by the refreshing tartness of gooseberry, good fresh or cooked. It is self-fertile, easy, and notably disease resistant, shrugging off the powdery mildew, leaf spot, gall mites, and white pine blister rust that trouble its parents. Note that as a member of the genus Ribes it is legally restricted in some states.

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Curry Plant (also called Italian Strawflower or Immortelle) is a Mediterranean evergreen perennial with silvery needle-like foliage that exudes a strong curry-like aroma even without being touched. Despite the name, it is not used in commercial curry powder; the resinous bitter flavor is used sparingly in Mediterranean cooking to flavor stocks and slow-cooked dishes. The compact woody-stemmed plant doubles as a fragrant silver ornamental.

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Malabar spinach is a heat-loving tropical climber from southern Asia with thick, glossy, succulent leaves that thrive when true spinach has long since bolted. The plant is unrelated to true spinach but is used the same way - cooked it has a mild flavor reminiscent of spinach or Swiss chard with a slightly mucilaginous quality similar to okra. Vines climb to 6 to 10 ft on a sturdy trellis and crop steadily through 100F heat.

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New Zealand spinach is a sprawling, heat-tough green from coastal Australia and New Zealand with succulent triangular leaves that look and cook like spinach but hold their quality straight through summer. Captain James Cooks expedition fed it to the crew to prevent scurvy. Plants spread 2 to 4 ft as a low ground cover, suppress weeds, and tolerate salt spray and lean soil.

Space is a vigorous smooth-leaf F1 hybrid spinach with dark green, slightly spoon-shaped leaves on upright plants. Bred for rapid growth, cold tolerance, strong downy mildew resistance, and slow bolting, it is a true three-season variety that performs equally well in spring, fall, and overwintered crops. The smooth leaves wash quickly and are favored for salads.

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Wine and Roses is the weigela that brought dark foliage to the shrub border, an award-winning selection (cultivar name Alexandra) grown for the striking contrast of rosy-pink flowers against glossy burgundy-purple leaves. It forms an arching, rounded deciduous shrub about five feet tall and wide, and in late spring it lines its branches with funnel-shaped, hummingbird-luring pink flowers, often reblooming sporadically through summer. The dark foliage holds its color all season and deepens in full sun, making it a bold partner for chartreuse or silver plants. Tough, adaptable, and easy, weigela is an old-fashioned favorite given a modern, colorful makeover.

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Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea Koralle) is a low, spreading, evergreen groundcover shrub, only 6 to 12 in tall, in the same genus as blueberry and cranberry. It carries glossy little leaves, dainty pink-white bell flowers, and clusters of tart, bright-red berries used much like cranberries in sauces, jams, and the classic Scandinavian preserve. Koralle is a heavy-bearing selection that often produces two crops a season, one in summer and a larger one in fall. It is extremely cold hardy and makes an attractive edible groundcover for acidic soils.

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The sunchoke, or Jerusalem artichoke, is a tall native sunflower grown for its knobby underground tubers, which have a sweet, nutty, water-chestnut crunch raw and a flavor like artichoke heart when cooked. The vigorous perennial plants reach six feet or more with small yellow blooms, and they are extremely easy to grow, spreading readily from any tuber left in the ground.

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Saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) is a small, fall-blooming crocus grown to produce saffron, the worlds most expensive spice. Each lavender-purple flower yields just three vivid red stigmas, which are picked by hand and dried. The corms are planted in late summer and bloom that same autumn, with grass-like foliage that persists through winter and dies back in late spring. It is hardy to about USDA zone 6 and, with the foliage as winter insulation, survives in zones 4 and 5. It needs full sun and very sharp drainage, and the corms must be protected from burrowing rodents.

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Cardoon is a dramatic, silvery, thistle-like relative of the artichoke grown for its tender, blanched leaf stalks, which taste of mild artichoke and celery. Architectural 4 to 6 foot plants also make a bold ornamental and, if left to flower, draw bumblebees to violet thistle blooms.

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Takinogawa is the long-rooted Japanese burdock (gobo) bred in the Edo period at Takinogawa village near Tokyo. The slender taproots grow 24 to 36 inches deep, with a mild earthy nutty flavor reminiscent of artichoke or salsify. Burdock is foundational in Japanese cooking, especially kinpira (julienned and sauteed with carrot) and miso soup.

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Miss Kim is the best small-garden lilac, a compact selection of the Korean or Manchurian lilac that solves the two big faults of the old common lilac: it stays neatly sized at four to seven feet and it has excellent resistance to the powdery mildew that disfigures other lilacs by midsummer. In May it covers itself in dense, conical clusters of single flowers that open from purple buds to a soft lavender-blue, pouring out the sweet, classic lilac perfume, and it blooms a little later than common lilac to extend the season. Unlike most lilacs it offers a bonus in autumn, when the tidy foliage turns burgundy-red. Hardy, deer-tolerant, and low-maintenance, it suits foundation plantings, low hedges, and shrub borders.

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Evergreen huckleberry is a Pacific Northwest native shrub and a close relative of the blueberry, grown both for its small, sweet, blue-black berries and for its year-round good looks. Glossy, leathery, dark green leaves (bronzy-red when new) clothe a dense, slow-growing bush, and pinkish urn-shaped flowers in spring give way to berries that ripen unusually late - often August into the fall and lingering on the plant for weeks. The berries are smaller and more intensely flavored than a blueberry, wonderful fresh or in pies, jam, and syrup. Tolerant of shade and shearing, it doubles as a handsome evergreen hedge or woodland-edge plant, and it is a magnet for birds and pollinators.

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Salsify (also called oyster plant or vegetable oyster) is a hardy biennial root vegetable with a mild oyster-like flavor that gives the plant its alternate name. The slender white taproots grow 6 to 12 in long and 1 to 2 in thick, with purple flowers on the seed stalks of second-year plants. A traditional European root crop now mostly forgotten but worth rediscovering.

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Sea kale (Crambe maritima) is a robust, long-lived herbaceous perennial of European sea coasts, forming a handsome clump of large, lobed, wavy-edged, powder-blue leaves about 30 to 36 in tall and wide, topped in early summer by fragrant clouds of small white flowers. It is grown chiefly for its blanched spring shoots, forced in darkness under a pot and cut like asparagus, with a sweet, nutty, mild-cabbage flavor. Exceptionally hardy and tolerant of salt, wind, and lean sandy soil, an established plant can crop for many years.

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Wasabi (Eutrema japonicum) is the true Japanese horseradish, a slow, demanding perennial of cold mountain streamsides whose pungent green rhizome is grated into the genuine condiment for sushi and sashimi - sharper, fresher, and more fleeting in heat than the dyed horseradish-and-mustard paste usually sold as wasabi. It is famously one of the hardest plants to grow well: it needs deep shade, cool temperatures, constant moisture or running water, and roughly two years for the prized rhizome to size up. The leaves, stems, and flowers are also edible and carry the same wasabi heat. A rewarding challenge for the dedicated gardener in cool, shaded, wet conditions.

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Luffa (also spelled loofah) is a rampant tropical gourd vine that gives two completely different harvests from the same plant. Picked young and green at under 6 or 7 inches, the fruit is a tender vegetable cooked much like zucchini or okra, mild and slightly sweet, popular across Asia and Africa. Left on the vine to fully mature and dry, that same fruit develops a tough fibrous interior that, once peeled and seeded, becomes the familiar natural sponge used in the bath and kitchen. The vigorous vine climbs by tendrils to 30 feet or more and is covered in cheerful yellow flowers. It needs a long, hot, frost-free season - at least four warm months - to ripen sponges, so northern growers usually start it indoors.

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Snake gourd (Trichosanthes cucumerina var. anguina) is a tropical climbing vine grown for its remarkable long, slender, often coiling fruit, which can reach a foot and a half or more, harvested young and tender as a mild cooked vegetable across South and Southeast Asia. The vine is fast and rampant, climbing to 16 ft, with delicate, lacy, fringed white flowers that open at night. It is very frost tender and needs heat, a long season, and a tall, strong support, on which the hanging fruit grows straighter. It is grown as a warm-weather annual.

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Regent is a compact cultivar of the saskatoon, or western serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia), a tough native shrub of the northern plains whose fruit gardeners prize as Juneberries. It stays a tidy 4 to 6 ft, making it easy to net and harvest, and is extremely cold hardy - dependable to about zone 3. In spring it is covered in clouds of white flowers, followed in early summer by sweet, blue-purple, blueberry-like pomes with a mild almond note, good fresh, baked, or preserved. Regent is self-pollinating, so a single shrub will fruit, and the plant also offers good fall color and value for pollinators and birds.

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Lynwood Gold (also sold as Lynwood Variety) is the standard golden-bells forsythia, one of the first and most cheerful signs of spring. It is a vigorous, upright, somewhat arching deciduous shrub growing six to nine feet tall and as wide, and in late winter to early spring, well before its leaves appear and ahead of almost everything else, its bare branches light up from top to bottom with brilliant four-lobed yellow flowers. A branch sport selected for flowers that line the stems more evenly than older types, it is tough, fast, and adaptable, long planted as a specimen, an informal hedge, or a bank cover. Cut branches taken in late winter force easily into early bloom indoors.

vegetable⚠ Regional

Ivy gourd (Coccinia grandis) is a fast, perennial climbing vine of the tropics with glossy, ivy-shaped leaves and white star-shaped flowers, grown for its small, smooth, cucumber-like fruit and tender shoots, both popular cooked vegetables in India and Southeast Asia. In frost-free climates it crops nearly year-round and can become very large and vigorous. That same vigor makes it a serious invasive weed where it escapes: it is a designated noxious weed in Hawaii, where it smothers vegetation and is illegal to grow. Grow it only on a strong trellis and keep it contained.

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Aloe vera is the familiar clumping succulent grown on countless windowsills for the cool, clear gel inside its thick, fleshy, spine-edged leaves - a classic windowsill plant. It forms a rosette of upright gray-green leaves and, in good conditions, sends up a tall spike of tubular yellow or orange flowers. Native to the Arabian Peninsula and tender to frost, it is hardy outdoors only in zones 9 to 11; everywhere else it is an easy, nearly indestructible houseplant that asks for sun, sharp drainage, and very little water. A single plant slowly offsets into a colony of pups.

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Cassava, also called yuca or manioc, is a fast-growing tropical woody shrub grown for its large, starchy storage roots - the source of tapioca and a dietary staple feeding hundreds of millions of people in the tropics. It is one of the most drought- and heat-tolerant food crops there is, producing a heavy harvest of calories on poor soil where little else thrives, which is why it is so important to food security. The plant grows 6 to 10 feet tall with handsome deeply-lobed leaves and is started from stem cuttings rather than seed. Critically, the raw root contains cyanide-producing compounds and is highly poisonous - it must be peeled and thoroughly cooked before eating. The young leaves are also eaten cooked in many cuisines.

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Quinoa is an Andean pseudo-grain grown for protein-rich seeds borne in showy, often colorful seed heads on 4 to 6 foot plants; the young leaves are edible like spinach. It prefers cool nights and a long, frost-free but not blazing-hot season.

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Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides Leikora) is a tough, thorny, deciduous shrub, 6 to 12 ft tall, with narrow, silvery-green leaves and dense clusters of brilliant orange berries that are intensely tart and exceptionally high in vitamin C. It fixes its own nitrogen through root symbiosis, so it thrives in poor soils and even enriches them. The plant is dioecious: Leikora is a heavy-fruiting female, and a male plant must be planted nearby (about one male for every six females) to pollinate it. It is extremely hardy and tolerant of wind, salt, and drought.

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Goldflame is a small, mounded Japanese spirea grown as much for its ever-changing foliage as for its flowers. The new leaves emerge a fiery orange-gold in spring, mature to bright chartreuse-green through summer, and finish coppery-orange in fall, so the two to three foot shrub holds color for months. In early to midsummer it adds flat-topped clusters of bright rose-pink flowers that butterflies love, and deadheading often brings a lighter second flush. Tough, heat tolerant, and undemanding, it is a popular low shrub for foundations, edging, and massing. Note that Japanese spirea can self-sow and is considered invasive in parts of the eastern United States, so deadheading to limit seed is worthwhile.

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Black Beluga is a gourmet small black lentil named for its resemblance to beluga caviar - tiny, round, glossy-black seeds that hold their shape and shine beautifully after cooking. The plants are low and bushy, roughly 12 to 18 inches tall, with small leaves and slender pods that each hold a seed or two. Lentil is a cool-season annual legume that is more drought-tolerant than most pulses and matures fast for a dry bean, in under three months, making it one of the more practical pulses for a home garden in a cooler climate. It fixes its own nitrogen and doubles as a soil-building cover crop.

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Black Kabouli is an unusual heirloom chickpea (garbanzo) from Afghanistan, with charcoal-black, knobbly seeds that are even richer in flavor than the familiar tan kind. The plants are small, bushy, and branching, around 1 to 2 feet tall with delicate ferny leaves, carrying short pods that each hold one or two seeds. Chickpea is a cool-season annual legume that needs a fairly long season to dry down, but it is genuinely easy to grow - it can be sown as early as garden peas - and like other pulses it fixes its own nitrogen and is notably drought-tolerant once up.

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Feverfew is a bushy, short-lived perennial herb covered in small white daisy flowers with yellow centers above aromatic, citrus-scented, lacy foliage. Long grown in medicinal and cottage gardens - traditionally for headaches and migraines - it reaches 1 to 3 ft, blooms from early summer, and self-seeds freely to return year after year in zones 5 to 9.

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Tennessee Red Valencia is a sweet, productive Valencia-type peanut well suited to home gardens, including surprisingly far north for a peanut. Valencia peanuts carry three to five small kernels in a long shell, with bright red seed coats and a sweet flavor that makes them a favorite for boiling and for fresh roasting. The plant is a low, bushy annual legume with a remarkable trick: after the yellow flowers are pollinated, the stalks (pegs) bend down and push into the soil, where the pods form and ripen underground. Like other legumes it fixes its own nitrogen, so it needs little feeding, but it is hungry for calcium to fill its pods.

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Quince (Cydonia oblonga) is a small, often crooked deciduous tree, 8 to 14 ft tall and wide, grown for large, golden, downy fall fruit with an extraordinary perfume. The raw fruit is rock-hard and astringent, but cooking transforms it into sweet, fragrant, rosy-pink jelly, paste (membrillo), and preserves. Pineapple is a popular American cultivar selected by Luther Burbank for its pineapple-like aroma. The tree is self-fruitful, long-lived (30 to 50 productive years), and ornamental, with showy pale-pink blossoms in spring.

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Orach (Atriplex hortensis), also called mountain spinach or French spinach, is an old-world leafy green grown long before modern spinach and valued for one big advantage: it takes summer heat without bolting nearly as fast, extending the fresh-greens season when spinach has long since given up. It grows as a tall, upright annual - reaching 4 to 6 ft if left to flower - with arrow-shaped leaves in striking green, gold, or deep red-purple forms that are as ornamental as they are edible. The mild, slightly salty, spinach-like leaves are used raw young or cooked like spinach, and the red types add vivid color to salads.

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PJM is the rhododendron for cold climates, a famously tough hybrid group that survives where most rhododendrons fail. It forms a compact, rounded evergreen shrub three to six feet tall and wide, clothed in small, leathery, dark green leaves that take on rich mahogany-purple tones through winter, and in mid-spring, ahead of most rhododendrons, it covers itself in showy clusters of bright lavender-pink flowers. Bred by the Weston Nurseries in Massachusetts, the PJM group is prized for cold hardiness (often to zone 4), good sun tolerance for a rhododendron, and strong resistance to root rot. It is the easiest rhododendron for the northern garden, excellent massed, in foundation plantings, or in a woodland border.

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Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is a low, sprawling, succulent annual with smooth reddish stems and plump, paddle-shaped green leaves, usually dismissed as a sidewalk-crack weed but in fact a delicious and remarkably healthy vegetable. Its crunchy, juicy, faintly lemony leaves and stems are eaten raw in salads, stirred into yogurt, or cooked, and they contain more omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy plant. It revels in heat, drought, and poor soil, forming a mat in the warmest part of summer when little else thrives, and it is grown across the Mediterranean, Mexico, and Asia as a real crop.

herb⚠ Regional

Valerian is a tall, hardy perennial herb topped in early summer with rounded clusters of sweetly fragrant white-to-pink flowers on stems reaching 4 to 5 feet. It is grown both as an old-fashioned medicinal, whose root is used for sleep, and as a pollinator plant that draws bees and beneficial insects.

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Lamb's quarter (Chenopodium album), also called wild spinach or fat-hen, is a fast-growing annual and one of the most nutritious leafy greens in the world - a close cousin of both spinach and quinoa. Its soft, diamond-shaped, gray-green leaves, often dusted with a mealy white bloom on the undersides and growing tips, cook down like a richer, milder spinach, and the abundant tiny seeds can be cooked like its relative quinoa. Usually pulled as a weed, it is well worth growing or simply letting stand: it thrives in any decent soil through the heat of summer, when spinach has long since bolted.

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American Persimmon is a native US fruit tree producing small 1 to 2 in orange fruits with intensely sweet honey-and-date flavor when fully ripe. The fruit is fiercely astringent until ripe (a single unripe persimmon will pucker your mouth for an hour), and most fruit needs to drop from the tree or experience a frost before it sweetens. A treasured wild fruit of Appalachia and the Ozarks, now grown in home orchards.

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The dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) needs no introduction as a lawn weed, but grown on purpose it is a genuinely useful, entirely edible perennial: the toothed leaves are a vitamin-packed bitter green, the golden flowers are battered, made into wine, and loved by early bees, and the long taproot is roasted as a coffee substitute. Cultivated strains and good conditions give larger, milder, more tender leaves than the lawn weed. Tough, hardy, and nearly impossible to kill, it offers something to harvest in every season - greens in spring, flowers in early summer, root in fall.

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Karen is one of the hardiest evergreen azaleas, a Gable hybrid bred in Pennsylvania for gardens too cold for most evergreen types. It forms a dense, rounded mound three to four feet tall and wide of small glossy olive-green leaves that take on coppery tones through winter, and in mid to late spring it disappears under masses of open, funnel-shaped, lavender-purple flowers about two inches across. Azaleas are shallow-rooted woodland shrubs that thrive in the dappled light and acid, humus-rich soil beneath high trees, and Karen is a reliable choice for foundation plantings, shrub borders, and woodland edges in zones 5 to 8 where harder cold would kill lesser azaleas.

vegetable⚠ Regional

Yellow dock (Rumex crispus), also called curly dock, is a deep-taprooted perennial of fields and roadsides with long, lance-shaped leaves crimped along the edges and tall spikes of rusty-brown seed clusters that persist into winter. It is grown for two things: the tart, lemony young spring leaves, eaten as a sour green much like its relative sorrel, and the yellow taproot, long valued as a traditional bitter root. Extremely hardy and adaptable, it sends a thick taproot deep into the soil and reappears every spring, providing some of the earliest greens of the year and a root to dig in fall.

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Prickly pear (Opuntia humifusa, the cold-hardy Eastern species) is a low, sprawling paddle cactus, surprisingly hardy to about zone 4, grown for two foods: the flat green pads (nopales), eaten as a vegetable once the spines are removed, and the sweet, ruby-red fruits (tunas) that follow its big, satiny yellow flowers. The mucilaginous pad sap is also used on skin much like aloe. Tough, drought-proof, and architecturally striking, it asks only for sun and sharp drainage, slowly forming a spreading patch of paddles that flower beautifully in summer and fruit in late summer to fall.

herb⚠ Regional

St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a wiry, upright perennial, 1 to 3 ft tall, that bursts into bright golden-yellow, five-petaled flowers around midsummer - traditionally around St. John's Day, hence the name. Hold a leaf to the light and you see tiny translucent dots (the perforatum of its name), and the flowers and buds yield a deep red pigment when crushed. It is among the most famous of traditional herbs, harvested as the flowering tops, and a tough, drought-hardy, sun-loving plant. But it spreads vigorously by runners and prolific seed and is toxic to grazing livestock, so it is a listed noxious weed across much of the western US, where it should not be planted.

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Fuyu is the non-astringent Asian persimmon: a flat-bottomed orange tomato-shaped fruit you can eat firm and crisp like an apple right off the tree, with sweet honey-mild flavor and no mouth-puckering tannins. Fuyu is the most popular persimmon worldwide and the easiest entry point to growing persimmons (no waiting for frost, no waiting for soft pulp).

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Horseradish is a tough, deep-rooted perennial grown for its thick taproot, which releases an intense, sinus-clearing pungency only when grated. A single planting establishes quickly and returns for years; the broad leaves are vigorous and the plant spreads readily.

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Field Pea (also called Austrian Winter Pea) is a cool-season legume grown both as a tender edible green and as a cover crop that fixes 70 to 125 lb of nitrogen per acre. The vines reach 2 to 4 feet long with pink, purple, or white flowers; young tendrils, shoots, and flowers are sweet pea-flavored treats for spring stir-fries and salads.

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Karma Choc is among the darkest dahlias ever bred - a Holland selection from the cut-flower-focused Karma series with 4 to 6 in. blackened-burgundy decorative blooms above dramatic dark-purple foliage. The 3 ft bushy plants produce a strong straight stem behind every flower, and the variety has won awards for both garden display and post-harvest performance. Like all dahlias, grown from a tuber that is lifted and stored over winter in zones colder than 8.

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Egyptian Walking Onion is the perennial onion that propagates by topsets: bulbils form at the top of the flower stalk, the stalk eventually flops over from the weight, and the bulbils take root where they land, walking the plant across the garden over years. Both the green shoots and the small bulbs are edible, with a stronger, more concentrated flavor than common onions.

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Pineapple Guava (also called Feijoa) is an evergreen South American shrub with silvery green foliage, spectacular red-and-white edible flowers in spring, and egg-sized fruit in autumn with sweet juicy flesh tasting like a cross of pineapple, apple, and mint. Cold-hardy to zone 8 (the hardiest tropical-flavored fruit), self-supporting as either a shrub or small tree (6 to 20 ft), and one of the most beautiful edible landscape plants.

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Small flat Italian onions with a distinctively sweet, low-acid flavor that makes them ideal for roasting whole, pickling, and caramelizing. The name means little onions in Italian. Unlike many onions that turn sharp and pungent when raw, cipollini remain mild and sweet. Beautiful in agrodolce (sweet-and-sour) preparations and roasted alongside meats.

herb⚠ Regional

Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) is a bold, statuesque thistle, 3 to 6 ft tall, instantly known by its large, spiny, glossy green leaves dramatically marbled with milky-white veins and its big rosy-purple, spiny-bracted flowerheads. It is grown as a striking architectural plant and, traditionally, for its silymarin-containing seeds. Native to the Mediterranean, it is an easy, drought-tough annual or biennial that self-sows freely - so freely that it is a regulated noxious weed in parts of the western US, where it should not be planted.

flower⚠ Regional

Miss Huff is the hardiest of the lantanas - a vigorous shrubby selection of Lantana camara that reaches 4 to 6 ft and carries rounded clusters of orange, coral, and yellow flowers nonstop from midsummer until frost. Where most lantanas are pure annuals north of the Deep South, Miss Huff reliably overwinters to about zone 7b, dying to the ground and resprouting from the roots. The flowers are an absolute butterfly and hummingbird magnet, and a real bonus: Miss Huff is self-sterile, so it sets little or no fruit and will not seed around the way invasive lantanas do.

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Medlar (Mespilus germanica Nottingham) is an old-fashioned, slow-growing deciduous tree, gnarled and picturesque, that bears large white spring flowers and unusual brown, open-ended fruit in late fall. The fruit is hard and sour at harvest and must be bletted, an after-ripening in which the flesh softens, browns, and turns sweet and spiced, tasting like spiced applesauce with notes of cinnamon and wine. Nottingham is a flavorful traditional cultivar. The tree is self-fertile, hardy, long-lived, and ornamental.

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Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera), also called Indian ginseng or winter cherry, is a small, branching, gray-green shrub in the nightshade family, grown as a warm-season annual for its prized root. Native to the dry regions of India, the Middle East, and Africa, it bears inconspicuous greenish-yellow bell flowers followed by red-orange berries in papery husks like a tomatillo. It is a cornerstone herb of Ayurvedic tradition, the root harvested at the end of a season and dried. Heat-loving and drought-tolerant, it is easy in a hot summer or a container and rewards a long, warm season with a usable root.

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Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) is a striking native perennial of eastern North America, growing 4 to 5 ft tall and topped in late summer and fall by spikes of brilliant, velvety scarlet-red flowers - one of the best hummingbird plants there is. Unlike most showy perennials it loves consistently moist to wet soil, thriving along streams, pond edges, and in rain gardens. It can be short-lived but self-sows and re-roots from its basal rosettes to persist. It was named NC Wildflower of the Year three times.

Moon and Stars is a classic American heirloom watermelon, sold in seed catalogs by the early 1900s and then nearly lost, until Missouri farmer Merle Van Doren shared his saved seed with the Seed Savers Exchange around 1980 and revived it. Round to oblong 10 to 25 lb fruits have a deep green rind speckled with yellow polka dots - big moons and tiny stars - and even the foliage is mottled. Inside is fine-textured, sweet, juicy red flesh with classic old-fashioned watermelon flavor.

herb⚠ Regional

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) is a dramatic biennial that spends its first year as a ground-hugging rosette of large, pale, felted leaves so soft they were once used as lamp wicks and shoe liners. In its second year it sends up a single stout flower spike 4 to 8 ft tall, studded with five-petaled yellow flowers that open a few at a time from summer into fall and draw bees. It thrives on neglect in poor, dry, gravelly ground - roadsides, old fields, gravel - and self-sows freely from its dustlike seed. Gardeners grow it as an architectural specimen and harvest its leaves and flowers.

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Eastern red columbine is a delicate native wildflower of eastern North American woodlands, and one of the most charming spring perennials for a shady garden. From a mound of soft, blue-green, clover-like foliage it lifts wiry stems of nodding, bell-shaped flowers in mid-spring, each a striking combination of red sepals and spurs with yellow centers and a puff of golden stamens. The long nectar spurs are made for hummingbirds, which arrive just as it blooms, and it is also worked by long-tongued bees. A short-lived perennial, it self-sows politely to keep itself going, drifting naturally through a woodland or cottage garden.

Orangeglo is an heirloom watermelon from the early 1960s Willhite Seed Company in Texas, prized for stunning bright orange flesh that is exceptionally sweet, crisp, and almost tropical in flavor. Oblong 20 to 30 lb fruits have a thin striped rind and few seeds. Vines are vigorous and crop reliably, and many tasting trials have crowned Orangeglo as the best-flavored heirloom watermelon period.

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Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is a fast, rhizome-spreading perennial whose toothed leaves and stems are armed with tiny hollow hairs that sting on contact - a defense that vanishes the moment the leaves are cooked or dried. Beneath that sting it is one of the most nutritious wild greens: the tender spring tops are eaten like spinach, brewed into a deep-green mineral tea, and made into soups and pesto. It grows in dense colonies in rich, damp ground and spreads aggressively by creeping roots, so it is best given its own contained bed. It also hosts the caterpillars of several butterflies.

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Blue Bird is a classic Pacific Giant delphinium, the plant that defines the romantic English border. It sends up towering, densely packed flower spikes four to six feet tall in early summer, lined with large, clear sky-blue flowers each centered with a contrasting white eye known as the bee. Few perennials match its vertical drama or its pure blue color. Delphiniums are, however, demanding and often short-lived: they crave rich soil, full sun, and cool summers, dislike heat and humidity, and their tall hollow stalks must be staked against wind and rain. Cut back after the first bloom, they often rebloom in late summer. They are the centerpiece of the cottage and cutting garden where summers stay cool.

Mini Love is a 2017 All-America Selections winner and the standout personal-sized watermelon for small gardens, containers, and short-season growers. Compact vines reach only 3 to 4 ft and produce 4 to 6 melons per plant, each weighing 7 to 9 lb with bright dark-green-striped rind, dense red flesh, high sugar, and a thin but crack-resistant rind.

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Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) is the original marshmallow - a tall, elegant perennial of damp meadows and ditches, 3 to 5 ft high, with soft, velvety gray-green leaves and pale pink, hibiscus-like flowers. Every part is rich in mucilage, the slippery substance for which it has long been grown; the confection was once made from its root. Native to salt marshes and riverbanks, it loves moist ground and full sun, draws bees, and is grown for its root (dug in autumn), leaves, and flowers. It is hardy, long-lived, and easy once established in soil that does not dry out.

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Oriental poppy is a bold, cold-climate perennial grown for its spectacular late-spring flowers: enormous cup-shaped blooms 3 to 6 in across in fiery orange, red, pink, purple, or white, each marked with a dramatic black center. Plants grow 2 to 3 ft tall from a clump of coarse, hairy leaves. A key quirk is that the foliage dies back and the plant goes dormant after flowering, with a fresh basal rosette returning in fall, so it is best sited among later perennials that hide the summer gap. It needs real winter cold and dislikes heat and humidity south of zone 7.

Yellow Doll is a compact icebox hybrid watermelon producing small 5 to 10 lb fruits with light green rind, narrow dark green stripes, and intensely sweet crisp yellow flesh. Yellow Doll is one of the fastest-growing watermelons at just 65 to 75 days, making it perfect for short-season gardens and small spaces (single-serving size, even).

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Broadleaf plantain (Plantago major) is the low, unassuming rosette of oval, strongly ribbed leaves found in virtually every lawn, path, and driveway crack around the world. From the center rise slender green flower spikes that ripen into tiny seeds. Far from a mere weed, it is one of the oldest and most widely used wild edible plants - the young leaves eaten as a pot green, and the plant put to many traditional uses. Tough, cosmopolitan, and nearly impossible to discourage, it is grown deliberately for a reliable supply of clean leaves and seed.

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Crenshaw is the spicy-sweet hybrid muskmelon with golden-yellow rind and dense fragrant orange-peach flesh. The flavor is mild floral and slightly spicy (some describe it as a cross of cantaloupe and honeydew with a hint of perfume), and the 8 to 10 lb oblong fruit is one of the most aromatic and flavorful melons in the home garden.

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Sweet violet (Viola odorata) is a low, fragrant, old-fashioned perennial for shade, forming spreading clumps of heart-shaped leaves studded in late winter and early spring with sweetly scented purple (or white) flowers on slender stems. Treasured for centuries for its perfume - the source of violet scent and of candied violets - it spreads gently by runners into a charming groundcover and is among the first flowers of the year for early bees. Both the edible flowers and the young leaves are used fresh in salads, as candied garnishes, and in syrups, and the plant has a soft traditional use too. Easy and shade-loving, it naturalizes happily under shrubs and trees.

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Mad-dog skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) is a slender North American perennial of moist meadows, stream banks, and wet woods, named for the small helmet- or cap-shaped blue flowers that line one side of its branching stems. Growing 1 to 3 ft tall, it is a refined, somewhat understated mint-family plant, harvested as the leafy flowering tops. It is happiest in cool, damp, partly shaded ground that mimics its native streamside habitat, and it draws bees to its summer flowers. Some patience is needed to start it, but an established stand returns reliably each year.

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Casaba is the winter melon: deeply wrinkled bright-yellow rind, sweet creamy white flesh with no muskmelon perfume, and an exceptional shelf life of 4 to 6 weeks. The melon ripens late in the season, takes 110 to 120 days from sowing, and is the best storage melon for southern gardeners who want fresh fruit through November.

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Lily of the valley is a beloved old-fashioned groundcover, treasured above all for the powerful sweet fragrance of its flowers - the scent of countless perfumes and of spring weddings. In mid-spring, between pairs of broad, upright green leaves, it sends up arching stems hung with rows of tiny, waxy, nodding white bells, followed sometimes by small red-orange berries. It thrives in shade where many plants struggle and forms a lush carpet of greenery. But it carries two important warnings: it spreads aggressively by underground rhizomes (pips) into dense colonies and is reported invasive in parts of the U.S. (notably Wisconsin and Arkansas), and every part of it is very poisonous. Plant it only where its spread is welcome and well away from where pets or children might eat it.

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Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) is a tall, hardy, somewhat rangy mint-family perennial with distinctive deeply lobed, almost palm-like lower leaves and tiered whorls of small pink flowers wrapped in spiny calyxes up the square stems. Reaching 3 to 5 ft, it is an old cottage-garden plant - its very name, and the species epithet cardiaca, reflect a long folk tradition, and it is harvested as the flowering tops. It is extremely tough, drought-tolerant once established, and self-seeds enthusiastically, so it is best sited where it can naturalize. Bees work the flowers, though the prickly seed heads can catch on clothing.

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Galia is the perfumed Israeli hybrid melon with thick netted rind that turns golden-yellow at ripeness and tropical-sweet pale green flesh with a honeyed musky aroma. The variety is sweeter than honeydew (13 to 15 Brix at harvest) and combines the best of cantaloupe and honeydew: musky perfume, dense crisp flesh, and an unmistakable fruity tropical note.

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Persian buttercup (Ranunculus asiaticus) grows from a clawed tuber into 1 to 2 ft plants bearing densely petaled, rose-like flowers in a brilliant range of colors on long, strong stems. It is one of the most coveted cut flowers for its layered blooms and long vase life. Semi-hardy in zones 8 to 10 and injured below about 28 F, it is planted in fall in mild climates or early spring elsewhere, blooms in late spring, and goes dormant in summer heat.

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Kumquat is the small oblong citrus you eat skin and all: the sweet tender peel balances the sour-tart pulp inside for a flavor unlike any other citrus, often eaten whole as a sweet-sour candy. The compact tree (4 to 8 ft) is naturally cold-hardier than most citrus and one of the most container-friendly fruits for cold-climate gardeners.

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Self-heal (Prunella vulgaris) is a modest, creeping perennial in the mint family, found in lawns, meadows, and woodland edges across the Northern Hemisphere, with short spikes of two-lipped violet flowers that bees and other pollinators love. It rarely tops 6 to 12 in. and spreads gently by creeping stems into a low mat, which makes it both a tough little groundcover and a no-mow lawn flower. Its very name reflects a long folk tradition, and it is gathered as the flowering tops. Easygoing and adaptable, it grows almost anywhere and tolerates mowing and foot traffic.

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Freesia is a tender, corm-grown plant famous above all for its powerful, sweet perfume, carried on arching, one-sided spikes of funnel-shaped flowers in white, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, and blue. Plants reach 1 to 2 ft and are treasured as cut flowers, especially in wedding work. Hardy only in zones 9 to 10, freesia needs a frost-free climate to grow outdoors year-round; elsewhere it is grown in pots and forced for winter bloom, or planted out for summer and lifted for storage.

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Calamondin is the Philippine cooking citrus, a small evergreen tree producing marble-sized round fruits that turn from green to bright orange. The juice is intensely sour with a sweet aromatic peel; calamondin is the classic flavoring for Filipino cuisine, kalamansi juice, and marmalade. The plant is ornamental, bearing flowers and fruit year-round, and is one of the most container-friendly citrus.

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Hops (Humulus lupulus) is a vigorous, fast-climbing perennial whose annual bines surge 15 to 25 ft each summer from a hardy overwintering crown, dying back to the ground each winter. The female plants bear the papery green cones (strobiles) that brewers prize for bitterness and aroma, dusted at the base of the petals with golden, fragrant lupulin; the same cones have a long traditional use too (the classic hop pillow). It is a fast, dramatic vertical plant - a single crown can cover an arbor or screen in a season - and it returns bigger each year, easy to grow given sun, rich soil, and something tall to climb.

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Poppy anemone (Anemone coronaria) grows from a small knobby corm into a tuft of ferny leaves topped by brilliant poppy-like flowers 2 to 3 in across in jewel reds, blues, purples, pinks, and white, most with a striking dark center. It is one of the great cool-season cut flowers, with a long vase life. Hardy in zones 7 to 10, it is planted in fall for late-winter and spring bloom in mild climates, or in early spring where winters are harsh, and it goes dormant by summer.

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Yuzu (Citrus junos) is among the most cold-hardy of all true citrus, a thorny evergreen tree bearing small, lumpy, bright-yellow fruit with an intensely aromatic rind and very sour, seedy juice. It is treasured in Japanese and Korean cooking, where the fragrant zest and tart juice flavor sauces, ponzu, marmalade, hot baths, and drinks rather than being eaten out of hand. Its hardiness, tolerating roughly 10 to 15 F once established, lets gardeners grow citrus in climates far too cold for sweet oranges.

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Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) is a tall, somewhat sprawling legume, 3 to 5 ft high, with pinnate leaves and spikes of small pale-blue to violet pea flowers, grown for the sweet, woody roots and runners that are the source of true licorice flavor - far sweeter than sugar thanks to the compound glycyrrhizin. A deep-rooted, sun-loving perennial of warm riverbanks and valleys, it takes patience: the roots are not dug until the third or fourth year, when they have grown long and thick. It spreads by underground stolons into a colony, fixes its own nitrogen as a legume, and rewards the wait with a genuinely home-grown spice and confection root.

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Common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) is a small, hardy bulb just 4 to 10 in tall that is one of the earliest flowers of the year, often blooming through late-winter snow. Each stem nods a single white bell marked with green. It naturalizes easily by bulb offsets and self-seeding into spreading drifts, making it a beloved choice for woodland gardens, lawns, and the ground beneath deciduous trees, where it blooms and fades before the canopy leafs out. It tolerates the juglone of black walnut and is deer resistant and bee-friendly.

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Finger lime (Citrus australasica Rainforest Pearl) is a thorny, slow-growing Australian citrus, naturally an understory shrub or small tree, grown for slender, finger-shaped fruit. Inside, the pulp is made of tiny, firm, juice-filled spheres that spill out and pop like caviar, releasing a sharp lime flavor, which has made it a celebrated garnish for seafood, drinks, and desserts. Rainforest Pearl is a popular pink-blushed selection. Compact and container-friendly, finger lime is also notably tolerant of the citrus greening disease (HLB) that devastates other citrus.

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Elecampane (Inula helenium) is a magnificent, statuesque perennial that towers 5 to 6 ft, with huge basal leaves and branching stems topped by shaggy, bright yellow, daisy-like flowers in mid to late summer. An old monastery-garden plant native to Europe and Asia and naturalized in North America, it is grown for its thick, aromatic root - dug in the second or third autumn. Its bold size and sunflower-like blooms also make it a striking back-of-border ornamental that pollinators adore.

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Flower Record is a large-flowered Dutch crocus, a selection of Crocus vernus that opens deep glowing purple cups around a ruffled bright orange center, one of the very first flowers to break a late-winter garden. It is actually a corm rather than a true bulb, standing just three to four inches tall, and it naturalizes freely in lawns, rock gardens, and bed edges to form sheets of color in early spring. The flowers close at night and on dull days and open wide in sunshine, when they draw the first bees of the year. Note this is the spring crocus, not the unrelated and highly poisonous autumn crocus (Colchicum).

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Pomelo (Citrus maxima Chandler) is the largest of all citrus fruits, with very thick rind and pith surrounding mild, sweet, only lightly tart flesh that lacks the bitterness of grapefruit, its hybrid descendant. Chandler is a UC-bred variety with pink flesh and good flavor. The tree is large and spreading, reaching up to 30 ft, evergreen, and well suited to warm, humid subtropical climates. The fruit is usually peeled and eaten segment by segment, the firm juice vesicles separating cleanly.

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Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) is a native North American perennial of wet meadows, marsh edges, and ditches, growing 2 to 4 ft tall with distinctive perfoliate leaves - opposite leaves so joined at the base that the stem appears to pierce through them. From midsummer to fall it carries broad, flat clusters of fuzzy white flowers that are a magnet for bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects. It has a long traditional use as a fever and cold herb, harvested as the flowering tops. It is an easy, hardy, pollinator-friendly choice for damp ground and rain gardens.

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Caladium (Caladium bicolor) is a tropical, tuberous plant grown not for flowers but for its spectacular large, arrowhead-shaped leaves splashed and veined in white, pink, red, and green. Reaching 1 to 2 ft, it lights up shady beds, borders, and containers with a lush, tropical feel where flowering plants struggle. Hardy only in zones 9 and warmer, it is grown as a summer annual or container plant elsewhere, with the tubers lifted and stored over winter. Its tiny flowers are insignificant.

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Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa) is an extremely cold-hardy, fast-growing shrub cherry, 6 to 10 ft tall, native to Asia and hardy to about minus 40. In early spring it is smothered in fragrant pink-budded white blossoms, followed in early summer by masses of small, bright-red, sweet-tart cherries about the size of a large pea. The fruit is excellent fresh and outstanding in jam, jelly, pie, syrup, and wine. The shrub is short-lived but quick to bear, drought tolerant once established, and makes a fine flowering and fruiting hedge.

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Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria) is an upright, gently old-fashioned perennial of meadows and hedgerows, sending up slender 2 to 3 ft spires lined with small, scented, star-shaped yellow flowers - the look that earned it the country name churchsteeples. After bloom the spikes set little burred seeds that hitch a ride on passing clothes and fur. The whole leafy flowering top is the part harvested, with a long tradition as a gentle astringent herb and, historically, a yellow dye plant. It is easy, hardy, and unfussy, with soft divided leaves and a faintly apricot scent, and bees work the flower spikes.

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Ornamental sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) is the same species as the edible sweet potato, but these cultivars are bred for bold, colorful foliage rather than tubers. Fast-trailing stems carry heart-shaped or deeply lobed leaves in vivid chartreuse, near-black purple, or variegated pink, white, and green, reaching 3 to 5 ft or more in a season. It is the classic spiller for summer containers, hanging baskets, and window boxes, and also makes a quick groundcover. Grown as an annual outside frost-free zones, it roots and grows fast in heat. Its tubers are not bred for eating.

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Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas) is a large shrub or small tree in the dogwood family, grown for both ornament and fruit. In late winter, before almost anything else, it lights up with masses of tiny bright-yellow flowers on bare branches, an important early nectar source. By late summer it ripens glossy, oblong, cherry-red fruits - not a true cherry but a tart, astringent-when-unripe dogwood fruit that becomes sweet-tart and richly flavored when fully soft, excellent for jams, syrups, sauces, and traditional liqueurs. It is exceptionally tough, long-lived, and nearly free of pests and diseases. Plants are partly self-incompatible, so two for cross-pollination give the best fruit set.

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Wild lettuce (Lactuca virosa), sometimes called bitter or opium lettuce, is a tall, imposing biennial relative of garden lettuce that can shoot up to 5 or 6 ft in its second year, with prickly-edged blue-green leaves and a haze of small pale-yellow flowers. When any part is cut it bleeds a bitter, milky white sap (lactucarium) that dries to a brown latex - the substance behind its long folk reputation. It is a robust, weedy, easy plant for a wild corner, grown for its leaves and that milky sap. The first year is a low rosette; the towering flower stalk comes the second.

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Torch is the classic Mexican sunflower, a 1951 All-America Selections winner that rockets to 4 to 6 ft and erupts in brilliant red-orange single daisy blooms all summer. Heat- and drought-loving, it thrives in poor soil and is one of the top butterfly and pollinator plants for the garden.

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Beach plum (Prunus maritima Premier) is a hardy, salt-tolerant native shrub of the Atlantic coastal dunes, 4 to 8 ft tall (taller inland), that covers itself in white blossom in spring and ripens small, round, purple-to-blue plums in late summer. Tart-sweet and superb for jam, jelly, and preserves, the fruit has a devoted regional following. Premier is a heavy-bearing selection with larger fruit. The shrub is exceptionally tough, thriving in lean, sandy, windswept, salty sites where most fruit fails, and it also grows and yields more heavily in better inland soils.

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Shenandoah is a premium named selection of the pawpaw (Asimina triloba), North America's largest native fruit and the only temperate member of a mostly tropical family. The tree has a pyramidal shape and large, drooping, tropical-looking leaves, and in fall produces big green fruits whose soft, custardy yellow flesh tastes like a blend of banana, mango, and melon. Shenandoah was selected for large, mild, sweet fruit with relatively few seeds and a smooth texture, making it one of the best varieties for fresh eating. Pawpaws need cross-pollination, so a second, genetically different cultivar must be planted nearby for fruit to set.

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Trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) is a vigorous, woody, deciduous vine native to the central and eastern United States that climbs 30 to 40 ft by clinging aerial rootlets. All summer it bears clusters of large, orange-red trumpet flowers that are a magnet for hummingbirds. It is rugged, fast, and easy almost anywhere, but that vigor is also its drawback: it suckers profusely from underground runners and self-seeds freely, so it can overwhelm a small space and must be sited and controlled with that in mind.

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Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) is a much-loved low perennial for shade, forming clumps of rough, oval leaves boldly spotted with silver-white, above which clusters of funnel-shaped flowers open pink and age to blue in early spring - often both colors at once on the same plant. Among the first flowers of the year, it is a vital early nectar source for bumblebees. The spotted leaves gave rise to its name, and the foliage is the part traditionally gathered. It is a hardy, easy, weed-suppressing groundcover for the damp, shady spots where many plants sulk.

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Dwarf Cavendish is the most widely grown home banana, a 6 to 8 ft selection of the Cavendish group that is better adapted to cooler subtropical conditions than most commercial types. Its short stature makes it easy to wrap or shelter from wind and cold and lets it fit a courtyard, raised bed, or large container. A banana is a giant herb, not a tree: each fleshy pseudostem grows for about a year, flowers once with a hanging purple bud, sets a heavy bunch of sweet golden fingers, then dies back while suckers (pups) from the same underground rhizome carry on the planting. Grown well it yields bunches of 25 to 40 lb of true dessert bananas.

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Star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), also called Confederate jasmine, is an evergreen twining vine grown throughout the South for glossy, dark green leaves and, in late spring, masses of small, creamy-white, pinwheel-shaped flowers with a rich, sweet, jasmine-like fragrance. Despite the name it is not a true jasmine. Trained to a support it climbs 3 to 20 ft; left on the ground it makes a dense, sprawling groundcover. It is evergreen and handsome year-round in mild climates.

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Common or high mallow (Malva sylvestris) is a pretty, bushy, short-lived perennial or biennial, 2 to 4 ft tall, smothered through summer in mauve flowers boldly veined with darker purple. A close relative of marshmallow and hollyhock, it shares their mucilage and their entirely edible nature - leaves, flowers, and the little round seed pods (the "cheeses") are all eaten. It is an old cottage-garden plant, easy from seed, quick to flower, and beloved by bees. Cheerful and undemanding, it self-seeds and reappears readily, making a reliable patch once introduced.

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Smooth Cayenne is the pineapple that built the Hawaii pineapple industry - the standard commercial and home variety across the Islands and the type behind generations of canned and fresh Dole and Del Monte fruit. Its leaves are nearly spineless (smooth-edged), which makes the plant easy to handle, and it bears a cylindrical 5 to 6 lb fruit with pale-yellow to golden flesh that is high in both sugar and acid, giving the bright, tangy-sweet pineapple flavor most people picture. It was bred and selected for productivity and for shipping and canning, but it grows just as well in a home garden and is a dependable, vigorous performer in full sun. Like all pineapples it is a perennial bromeliad: one main fruit per stalk, then ratoon crops from the suckers that follow.

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Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens) is a native evergreen twining vine of the Southeast and the state flower of South Carolina. In late winter and early spring it covers itself in fragrant, bright yellow trumpet flowers, with a lighter rebloom sometimes in fall, against fine, glossy, dark green leaves that bronze in winter. Trained on a support it climbs 10 to 20 ft; unsupported it makes a billowing groundcover. It is easy and beautiful, but its serious drawback is that the entire plant is highly poisonous.

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Common flax (Linum usitatissimum) is one of humankind's oldest crops, a slender, fine-stemmed annual about 2 to 3 ft tall topped in early summer by delicate, sky-blue (sometimes white) five-petaled flowers that open in the morning and drop by afternoon. It is grown for two ancient products: the small, glossy, omega-3-rich seeds (flax or linseed) pressed for oil and eaten for fiber, and the long, strong stem fibers spun into linen. Quick, easy, and pretty enough for an ornamental drift, it runs from a spring sowing to ripe seed in about three to four months and self-sows where happy.

Kona Sugarloaf (also sold as White Sugarloaf) is the pineapple Hawaii gardeners grow for themselves. The 5 to 6 lb cylindrical fruit has white to pale flesh, low acid, and an exceptionally sweet, mild flavor, plus a tender core soft enough to eat right along with the rest of the slice - no hard middle to cut out. Because the ripe fruit is delicate and does not ship or store like Smooth Cayenne, you almost never find true Sugarloaf in a mainland store, which is exactly why it is a backyard treasure in Kona and across the Islands. The plant has smooth (spineless) leaves and grows like any pineapple in full sun and well-drained soil, rewarding patience with one of the sweetest fresh pineapples you can grow.

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Climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris) is a woody deciduous vine that climbs by clinging aerial rootlets to walls, trees, and sturdy structures, eventually reaching 30 to 60 ft with an almost shrub-like layering of lateral branches. In early summer it carries large, flat, lacy clusters of fragrant white flowers, and in winter its peeling, cinnamon-colored bark adds interest. Its great virtues are shade tolerance and toughness; its one drawback is patience, as it can be slow to establish and may take several years to begin flowering.

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Early meadow rue (Thalictrum dioicum) is an airy, delicate native perennial of moist woodlands, growing 1 to 2 ft with lacy, blue-green foliage that looks much like a columbine or maidenhair fern and dangling, tassel-like greenish flowers in spring. Male and female flowers are borne on separate plants, the males prettiest with their drooping clusters of pale stamens. It is grown mainly as a graceful, fine-textured ornamental for the shade or woodland garden, where its ferny foliage softens bolder plants. Like others in the buttercup family it has a minor folk-medicinal history, but its garden role today is essentially ornamental.

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Red Lady is a Mexican-type papaya bred for the home grower: a dwarf, fast plant that begins fruiting low on the trunk within the first year and keeps producing as it grows. Each oblong fruit can reach about 5 lb with firm, sweet, red-orange flesh, and the variety carries useful tolerance to papaya ringspot virus, the disease that cuts short most backyard papayas. Best of all it is self-pollinating (hermaphroditic), so a single plant sets fruit with no second tree needed. Papaya is a short-lived, fast-growing soft-stemmed plant - it can fruit heavily for a couple of years and is often replanted, or treated as an annual in cooler zones.

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New Dawn is regarded as one of the best repeat-blooming climbing roses ever introduced - in fact it was the first plant ever granted a United States plant patent, in 1931. It climbs 8 to 12 ft, clothing a trellis, arch, or fence in glossy dark green leaves and producing fragrant, pale blush-pink double flowers about 3 inches across from late spring to frost. It is exceptionally tough, more shade-tolerant than most roses, cold hardy, and notably disease resistant, and it finishes the year with small red hips. A dependable, low-fuss climber for pillars and walls.