A Guide Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables: When is the Best Time to Grow Your Produce?

A garden can keep you busy all year; you must plan, cultivate, plant and then harvest your garden. For the best possible gardening experience, learn to use each season efficiently. This will improve the quality of your vegetables, extend your growing season and keep your green thumb intact.

Match your crops to the appropriate season and you’ll have fresh produce all year round.

Match Crops to Seasons

Vegetables can be divided into two groups, cool-season and warm-season crops, and you can grow both kinds no matter where you live; all you have to do is utilize timely planting and succession gardening. With these methods you can plant cool-season crops early in the year, warm-season crops in the summer and then replant cool-season crops in the fall and winter.

Cool-Season Vegetables

Plants like lettuce and cabbage thrive in cool climates; temperatures between 40 and 75 degrees farenheit are good for cool-season vegetables. Plant them two to four weeks before the last spring frost in your area; they’ll stop producing in early summer. If the nights in your region are cool, you can continue making small, successive sowings of these cool-season vegetables all summer long, but if your summer weather is hot don’t replant them until fall. 

Vegetables for Spring Gardens:

Arugala

Beet

Broccoli

Beet

Cabbage

Carrot

Chard

Kohlrabi

Lettuce

Mesclun

Mustard

Onion

Parsley

Parsnip

Peas

Potato

Radish

Spinach

Radish

Spinach

Onion

Start these vegetables indoors and transplant in mid to late spring:

Artichoke

Celery

Eggplant

Pepper

Tomato

Warm-Season Vegetables:

Warm-season vegetables include tomatoes, pepper, corn and okra. Frost will kill these vegetables and they don’t germinate or produce well if temperatures fall below 50 degrees farenheit. If you’ve planted these vegetables in the summer and you want to sustain them through the fall, you need to protect them with cold frames, row covers or something similar. A cold frame is a box with a translucent cover; place it over your vegetables to let sun in and keep cold and wind out. Build your own cold frames using recycled wood and some type of translucent material like corrugated fiberglass or thick plastic.

Vegetables for Summer Gardens:

Basil

Beans

Cantaloupe

Corn

Cucumber

Okra

Peanut

Pumpkin

Squash

Watermelon

Transplant these vegetables to your garden in late spring:
Eggplant

Globe Artichoke

Pepper

Tomato