Growing Guides

Crimson Sweet is the watermelon most people picture: a big, round melon with a pale green rind and dark stripes, packed with firm, sugary red flesh. Averaging 15 to 25 pounds, it ripens in about 85 days and rewards you...

Honeydew is the sweetest of melons when it is grown right, prized for its smooth pale rind and juicy green flesh. It needs a long, warm season of about 90 to 100 days, and it rewards the patience with an...

Canary Yellow is a striking, easy-to-grow melon named for its brilliant canary-yellow rind. Inside is sweet, mild white flesh with a pleasant tang, ready in about 85 days, and it keeps well on the counter after harvest. Here is what...

Boston Pickling is the classic heirloom cucumber for crisp homemade pickles. The vines are heavy producers of small, blocky, medium-green fruit with lightly warted skin, ready in about 55 days. Pick the cucumbers young for jars of dill and bread-and-butter...

Sugar beet is the one to grow when you want serious sweetness from your garden. Instead of the familiar round red root, it forms a large, tapered white beet packed with an exceptionally high sugar content. Gardeners have grown it...

Cherry Belle is the classic round red radish, an All-America Selections winner prized for its speed and reliability. It produces smooth, cherry-red globes with crisp, mild white flesh in just three weeks, making it one of the fastest crops you...

Daikon is a large Asian radish that produces long, white, cylindrical roots often a foot or more in length. Milder and sweeter than salad radishes, it is a staple of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cooking, delicious grated, pickled, or simmered...

French Breakfast is an heirloom radish with an elegant oblong shape, rosy-red skin, and a crisp white tip. Milder and slightly sweeter than round red types, it has long been enjoyed sliced on buttered bread as a French morning snack....

Champion is a large, round radish with bright-red skin and crisp, mild white flesh. It grows a little bigger than most salad radishes yet stays tender and mild well past the point where others turn hot, making it forgiving for...