Growing Guides

Garden cress (Lepidium sativum), the frilly curled kind sold as curled cress, is about the fastest, most beginner-friendly crop you can grow. Seeds sprout within a day or two, and you are snipping peppery green leaves in roughly a week,...

Mizuna (Brassica rapa var. niposinica) is a Japanese mustard green with feathery, deeply cut leaves and a mild, gently peppery flavor. It is one of the fastest, easiest greens you can grow: baby leaves are ready in about three weeks,...

Mache (Valerianella locusta), also called corn salad or lamb's lettuce, is a tiny, remarkably cold-hardy salad green that grows in low rosettes of tender, spoon-shaped leaves. Its mild, nutty, buttery flavor has none of the bitterness of chicories, and it...

Mustard greens (Brassica juncea), like this heirloom Southern Giant Curled, are one of the fastest, most rewarding greens you can grow. Big frilly leaves with a bold peppery bite go from seed to harvest in about 45 days, thrive in...

Learning how to grow Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla) gives you one of the most forgiving greens in the garden. A relative of the beet, chard shrugs off summer heat that makes spinach and lettuce bolt, and the family...

Romaine, also called cos, is the tall, upright lettuce behind every Caesar salad, with sturdy dark-green leaves and a sweet, crunchy central rib. It is one of the more forgiving heading lettuces, tolerating a little more warmth than iceberg and...

Iceberg is the crunchy crisphead everyone knows, forming dense, round, pale-green heads of crisp, watery, mild leaves. It is the fussiest lettuce to head up because it needs a long, steady stretch of cool weather, but the payoff is that...

Cimarron Red is a striking heirloom romaine with deep bronze-red leaves and a crisp, sweet crunch. Its color intensifies in cool weather and full sun, and it is a little quicker and more heat-tolerant than green romaine while keeping that...

Oakleaf Green is a tender loose-leaf lettuce with distinctive oak-shaped, lobed leaves and a mild, sweet flavor. It is slower to bolt than many lettuces and perfect for cut-and-come-again harvesting, so you can pick tender outer leaves for weeks from...