Crop guides

Vegetables

Vegetables are the fast-moving part of the garden. They ask for timely planting, consistent care, and regular harvest, then give feedback quickly.

Use these guides as practical references, then adapt them to your own climate, soil, water, and time.

Illustrated four-year crop rotation plan with leafy greens, fruiting crops, legumes, and root crops.
Start with season, then family, then spacing and harvest habit.

How to use these crop guides

Start with season. Warm-season crops such as tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, squash, and corn need warm soil and protection from frost. Cool-season crops such as lettuce, peas, spinach, kale, radishes, carrots, and beets can use the shoulder seasons when heat-loving crops are not ready or are already finished.

Then look at plant family. Family matters for rotation, disease carryover, nutrient demand, and pest patterns. A small garden cannot always rotate perfectly, but it can avoid putting the same crop family in the same bed repeatedly when problems are building.

Finally, look at spacing and harvest habit. A bed of greens behaves differently from a bed of trellised tomatoes. A root crop needs loose soil and even moisture. A fruiting crop needs support, airflow, pollination, and harvest access.

Imported vegetable catalog

The hand-written crop guides are still limited. The data layer is much larger.

The Rare Seeds import contributes hundreds of vegetable records here, including cultivar-level entries for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans, peas, cucumbers, squash, melons, greens, brassicas, roots, gourds, okra, corn, onions, and more. These records are not all full veggie.farm articles yet; they are normalized plant records for filtering, planning, calendars, spacing tools, and future guide pages.

Imported vegetable groups

Full crop guide table

These are the vegetable pages that currently have hand-written veggie.farm guides. The imported catalog above is broader than the article set; the next editorial work is to promote important imported groups into full guides.

Crop Family Season Planting window Typical spacing
Tomatoes Nightshade Warm season Start indoors 6-8 weeks before last frost; transplant after soil warms 18-24 in
Peppers Nightshade Warm season Start indoors 8-10 weeks before last frost; transplant into warm soil 18-24 in
Lettuce Aster Cool season Direct sow or transplant in spring and fall 6-12 in
Beans Legume Warm season Direct sow after soil warms 4-8 in
Cucumbers Cucurbit Warm season Direct sow or transplant after frost 12-18 in trellised
Carrots Umbellifer Cool season Direct sow in cool weather 1-3 in after thinning
Potatoes Nightshade Cool to warm season Plant seed potatoes in spring 10-12 in
Peas Legume Cool season Direct sow early spring 2-3 in
Beets Amaranth Cool season Direct sow spring and late summer 3-4 in
Onions Allium Cool to warm season Start from seed, sets, or transplants 4-6 in
Kale Brassica Cool season Spring and late summer 12-18 in
Radishes Brassica Cool season Short spring and fall successions 1-2 in
Bok Choy Brassica Cool season Spring or late summer 6-12 in
Mizuna Brassica Cool season Spring and fall 4-8 in
Swiss Chard Amaranth Cool to warm season Spring through midsummer 8-12 in
Zucchini Cucurbit Warm season Direct sow or transplant after frost 24-36 in
Winter Squash Cucurbit Warm season Direct sow or transplant after frost 36-72 in
Corn Grass Warm season Direct sow after soil warms, in blocks 8-12 in
Spinach Amaranth Cool season Early spring, late summer, or fall 4-6 in
Garlic Allium Fall-planted cycle Plant cloves in fall 4-6 in

Explore by growing habit

Warm season Fruiting crops

Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, and corn need warm soil, frost protection, airflow, and steady harvest attention.

 Cool season Leaves and stems

Lettuce, kale, spinach, chard, bok choy, and mizuna use the shoulder seasons and reward succession planting.

 Roots Below-ground crops

Carrots, beets, radishes, onions, garlic, and potatoes depend on soil texture, even moisture, and patient thinning.

 Legumes Beans and peas

Legumes help structure rotations, but they still need good timing, support when climbing, and regular picking.

Crop families

Crop families are not just botanical trivia. They help explain why some problems repeat.

Family Crops here Planning note
Nightshade Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes Watch disease carryover and avoid repeated planting in the same bed
Brassica Kale, radishes, bok choy, mizuna Flea beetles, cabbage worms, and clubroot risk can build
Legume Beans, peas Useful in rotations, but still need healthy soil and good timing
Cucurbit Cucumbers, zucchini, winter squash Needs warm soil, space, pollination, and mildew awareness
Allium Onions, garlic Long season; avoid repeating where allium pests or disease appear
Amaranth Beets, spinach, Swiss chard Cool-season greens and roots with different heat tolerance

What the guides still need

The current crop pages are useful starts, but many need more crop-specific detail. The next editorial pass should expand each page with variety selection, timing by climate, container notes, common failure patterns, harvest stages, storage, and specific field observations.

Field notes

The best crop plan is revised during the season. Record what germinated quickly, what stalled, what bolted, what needed more space, and what you actually wanted to eat. Yield matters, but usefulness matters too.