If you want an early win in the vegetable garden, peas are hard to beat. They thrive in cool weather, they can go into the ground while the soil is still chilly, and they reward you with sweet pods before…
There’s something quietly satisfying about walking out in the cold, pulling back a blanket of straw, and tugging up a crisp orange carrot. Carrots are one of the best vegetables for the cold season. Cold nudges them to turn stored…
If you want a vegetable patch that still looks alive in January, kale is the plant for the job. It’s tall, tough and slow-growing, and it keeps giving for weeks or even months when most other crops have finished. Learning…
There is something quietly satisfying about pushing a few large, wrinkled beans into cold autumn soil and then more or less forgetting about them. Broad beans (also called fava beans) are one of the hardiest vegetables you can grow, and…
Spinach is one of the most rewarding crops you can grow when the weather turns cold. It germinates in cool soil, tolerates frost better than most leafy greens, and often tastes sweeter in winter because the plant produces extra sugars…
Garlic is one of the most forgiving crops you can grow, and it’s also one of the few that works with the cold instead of against it. Plant cloves in autumn, let them settle in through winter, and they’ll reward…
If you have an empty patch of soil in late summer and want something to fill it, radishes are hard to beat. They sprout in a few days, many varieties are ready in about a month, and they take up…
Kale is one of the most forgiving vegetables you can put in the ground as summer winds down. It likes cool weather, shrugs off light frost, and keeps producing for weeks, even months, once it gets going. If you’ve been…
If you’ve only ever grown carrots in spring, a fall crop can feel like a revelation. Carrots that mature in cool weather tend to taste crisper and sweeter, and the garden is usually less crowded and less frantic by the…
If you’ve only ever grown spinach in spring, fall may be the season that changes your mind about it. Spinach loves cool weather, and as days shorten and temperatures drop, it grows sweet, tender, and far less likely to bolt…