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.

Find a variety

Compare spacing, seed depth and germination across vegetable varieties. Use the crop guides below for care through the season, and check your seed packet for variety-specific instructions.

Choose a crop guide

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
Arugula	Brassica	Cool season	Short spring and fall successions	2-6 in
Turnips	Brassica	Cool season	Direct sow spring and late summer	2-4 in
Collards	Brassica	Cool season	Spring and late summer	12-18 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, mizuna, arugula, and collards use the shoulder seasons and reward succession planting.

Roots Below-ground crops

Carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, 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, collards, radishes, turnips, arugula, 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

Read the numbers in context

Each crop guide shows its curated growing profile and the available transcribed Extension facts. Open the source details to see the crop form, region and retrieval date. A spacing value for a supported plant can differ from a sprawling one; a maturity estimate may begin at sowing or transplanting. Check your variety before using either as a deadline.

Garden Today applies your frost dates and soil-temperature input to timing. What Grows in This Bed helps compare a particular space. Neither can recover a planting history you have not recorded.

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.