Plant library
Know what your plants need
Use structured growing information to match plants to your location, space, soil, and schedule.
Vegetable
Tomatoes
Warm-season plants with practical planting, spacing, sun, soil, and harvest guidance.
Vegetable
Peppers
A guide to starting peppers, choosing a warm site, and keeping plants productive through summer.
Vegetable
Carrots
Practical guidance for sowing carrots directly, preparing loose soil, and timing successive crops.
Vegetable
Lettuce
Cool-season planting and harvest guidance for crisp lettuce in beds and containers.
Vegetable
Cucumbers
Learn when to sow cucumbers, how much room vines need, and how to keep harvests steady.
Vegetable
Beans
Warm-season legumes that fix much of their own nitrogen and start producing pods about two months after sowing.
Vegetable
Peas
A cool-season crop for early spring and fall, grown up a trellis or as a self-supporting bush type.
Vegetable
Spinach
A fast cool-season leafy green for spring and fall beds, containers, and repeated small sowings.
Vegetable
Broccoli
A cool-season brassica grown for its central head and the smaller side shoots that follow it.
Vegetable
Zucchini
A fast warm-season squash that produces heavily, so one or two plants are usually enough for a household.
Vegetable
Kale
A hardy leafy green that tolerates frost, improves after cold nights, and keeps producing for months.
Vegetable
Radishes
One of the fastest crops in the garden, ready in under a month in cool weather.
Vegetable
Onions
A long-season bulb crop whose size depends on daylight, so the right type for your latitude matters most.
Vegetable
Garlic
A fall-planted bulb that spends winter rooting and sizes up fast in spring.
Vegetable
Potatoes
A cool-season staple grown from seed potatoes and hilled up as stems grow.
Vegetable
Beets
A two-for-one cool crop with sweet roots and edible greens, ready fast in spring and fall.
Vegetable
Eggplants
A heat-loving nightshade that produces glossy fruit through the hottest part of summer.
Vegetable
Sweet corn
A block-planted warm-season grass that needs numbers, not a single row, for good pollination.
Vegetable
Arugula
A peppery cool-season green ready for baby leaves in about three weeks.
Vegetable
Asparagus
A perennial crop that produces spring spears for 15 or more years once established.
Vegetable
Brussels sprouts
A long-season brassica that rewards patience with sweet sprouts after autumn frosts.
Vegetable
Butternut squash
A long warm-season vine whose hard-skinned fruit cures for months of winter storage.
Vegetable
Cabbage
A cool-season brassica grown for dense heads that keep well in storage.
Vegetable
Cauliflower
The fussiest common brassica, rewarding steady cool growth with tight white curds.
Vegetable
Celery
A long, thirsty cool-season crop that needs an early indoor start and constant moisture.
Vegetable
Leeks
A slow cool-season allium grown for long white stems that sweeten with frost.
Vegetable
Okra
A heat-loving crop that produces pods daily once summer temperatures climb.
Vegetable
Parsnips
A slow root crop that sweetens after frost and keeps in the ground into winter.
Vegetable
Sweet potatoes
A sprawling warm-season vine grown from slips, with roots that cure into sweeter storage.
Vegetable
Swiss chard
A forgiving leafy green that tolerates both frost and summer heat and harvests for months.
Herb
Basil
A simple basil guide covering warmth, pinching, watering, and repeated harvests.
Herb
Parsley
A slow-starting biennial herb grown as an annual, with leaves ready about three months after sowing.
Herb
Chives
A hardy perennial onion herb that returns each spring and asks for little beyond occasional dividing.
Herb
Cilantro
A fast cool-season herb for fresh leaves, best grown in short repeated sowings before it bolts.
Herb
Dill
A feathery annual herb grown for fresh fronds, flower heads, and pickling seed.
Herb
Oregano
A hardy perennial herb for sunny beds and containers, with stronger flavor in lean soil.
Herb
Thyme
A low, woody perennial herb for hot, dry, well-drained spots and the sunny edges of beds.
Herb
Rosemary
A woody Mediterranean perennial for hot, dry spots, grown as an annual or container plant in cold climates.
Herb
Sage
A hardy perennial kitchen herb with gray-green leaves that handles drought and cold equally well.
Herb
Mint
A vigorous perennial herb best grown in a container, since its runners colonize open beds.
Herb
Fennel
A tall, anise-flavored herb grown for fronds and seed, or as a bulb vegetable under another planting schedule.
Herb
Tarragon
A cool perennial herb prized in French cooking; buy plants, since true tarragon rarely comes true from seed.
Herb
Lemon balm
A lemon-scented mint-family perennial for tea and pollinators, nearly indestructible once planted.
Herb
Marjoram
A tender perennial grown as an annual, sweeter and milder than its close cousin oregano.
Herb
Lovage
A towering hardy perennial with a concentrated celery flavor in its leaves, stems, and seeds.
Herb
Chamomile
A cool-season annual whose small daisy flowers dry into the classic tea herb.
Herb
Lemon verbena
A tender shrub with intensely lemon-scented leaves, grown in containers where winters freeze.
Herb
Sorrel
A hardy perennial with lemony leaves, among the first greens ready in early spring.
Herb
Borage
A fast annual herb with cucumber-flavored blue star flowers that bees work constantly.
Herb
Summer savory
A slender annual herb with a peppery bite, the traditional partner for beans.
Herb
Catnip
A hardy mint-family perennial grown for cats, tea, and clouds of small pollinator blooms.
Herb
Lemongrass
A tropical grass grown for lemon-scented stalks, treated as an annual or container plant in cold climates.
Herb
Garlic chives
A hardy perennial with flat, garlic-flavored leaves and white late-summer flowers bees love.
Herb
Bay laurel
A slow evergreen tree that supplies bay leaves for years, best grown in a container in cold climates.
Herb
Anise hyssop
A hardy mint relative with licorice-scented leaves and purple spikes that pollinators mob all summer.
Fruit
Strawberries
A perennial fruit crop that bears for several seasons when beds are mulched, thinned, and renewed.
Fruit
Blueberries
A long-lived shrub that demands acidic soil, then repays the preparation for decades.
Fruit
Raspberries
A perennial cane fruit that bears on first-year or second-year canes depending on the type you grow.
Fruit
Watermelons
A sprawling warm-season vine that needs heat, space, and a long frost-free window.
Fruit
Cantaloupes
A netted muskmelon for hot gardens, easier to ripen than watermelon in moderate seasons.
Fruit
Apples
A deciduous fruit tree for yards with room to grow, needing a pollination partner.
Flower
Zinnias
Easy annual flowers for sunny beds, cutting gardens, and long summer color.
Flower
Marigolds
Reliable warm-season annuals for beds, borders, and vegetable garden edges.
Flower
Sunflowers
Tall annual flowers grown for blooms, pollinators, and seed harvests in full sun.
Flower
Cosmos
Airy, fast-growing annuals that bloom for months with very little attention.
Flower
Lavender
A fragrant perennial for hot, sunny, well-drained sites and dried-flower use.
Flower
Coneflowers
Long-lived perennial flowers that bloom through summer heat and support pollinators.
Flower
Nasturtiums
Easy annuals with edible flowers and leaves, thriving in lean soil where others struggle.
Flower
Petunias
Long-blooming annuals for beds, borders, and containers in full sun.
Flower
Snapdragons
Cool-season spikes for spring and fall color and long-lasting cut flowers.
Flower
Dahlias
Tuber-grown showstoppers that bloom from midsummer to frost and reward staking.
Flower
Sweet peas
Fragrant cool-season climbers for trellises and cutting, best started very early.
Flower
Calendula
A cool-season annual with edible orange and yellow blooms that keeps flowering until hard frost.
Flower
Pansies
Cool-season flowers for spring and fall color in beds and containers, tolerant of light frost.
Flower
Cornflowers
Old-fashioned cool-season annuals with true blue blooms, also sold as bachelor's buttons.
Flower
Morning glories
Fast warm-season vines that cover trellises and fences with trumpet blooms by midsummer.
Flower
Foxgloves
Tall biennial spires for the back of part-shaded borders. Every part of the plant is toxic.
Flower
Hostas
Shade perennials grown for bold foliage, filling the dim corners where flowers struggle.
Flower
Impatiens
The standard shade annual, blooming nonstop in low light from spring until frost.
Flower
Daylilies
Nearly indestructible perennials that bloom for weeks and divide easily into more plants.
Flower
Garden phlox
Midsummer perennial clusters with a sweet scent, worth the airflow they demand.
Flower
Peonies
Long-lived perennials with huge late-spring blooms, often outliving the gardeners who plant them.
Flower
Sedum
Succulent perennials that bloom in fall, shrug off drought, and feed late-season pollinators.
Flower
Daffodils
Fall-planted bulbs that bloom reliably each spring and are ignored by deer and rodents.
Native plant
Black-eyed Susans
A tough native wildflower that blooms from midsummer into fall and feeds goldfinches over winter.
Native plant
Butterfly weed
A tidy native milkweed with orange summer blooms and a top host plant for monarch caterpillars.
Native plant
Bee balm
A native perennial with shaggy midsummer blooms that pulls in bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.