Growing Guides

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...

Buttercrunch is the beloved award-winning butterhead, forming a small, loose head of thick, smooth, buttery leaves with a sweet, mild flavor that never turns bitter when grown well. It is quick, forgiving, and a little more heat-tolerant than most butterheads,...

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is one of the fastest, most rewarding cool-season greens you can grow, going from seed to salad bowl in about six weeks. This guide covers how to grow spinach from seed start to finish: when to sow,...

Kale is one of the easiest and most generous vegetables you can grow, and a single planting can hand you tender leaves for months. This guide covers how to grow kale from seed across the whole family, from frilly curly...

Pepperoncini is the mild, wrinkled pepper famous from the Italian and Greek pickle jar. Its slender, crinkled pods are picked young at light yellow-green and offer a tangy, only faintly warm flavor at just 100 to 500 Scoville heat units....