Best Summer Garden Vegetables and Flower Varieties to Grow

By Deanna Talerico updated Jul. 26th, 2025, published Jan. 10th, 2023

Tomatoes, cucumbers, sunflowers, oh my! Are you looking for ideas and inspiration on what to grow in your summer garden? Here are some of the best summer vegetable varieties to grow, along with our top-choice annual flowers and herbs too! This post will explore the most popular warm season crops, including a list of our exact favorite varieties, photos, and why we love them so much.

I’ve been gardening for over 15 years now, and have grown hundreds of different varieties of veggies. While it’s fun to experiment with a few new-to-me cultivars each season, these are the best summer vegetable varieties that I always grow year-after-year. They’re the most dependable, productive, beautiful and delicious! I’ll update the list as we discover new “winners” too.

Jump straight to the list here

The center of a gravel pathway lined with pavers has raised beds along each side of the pathway full of sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, calendula, bachelor buttons, squash and pole beans. There are so many best summer vegetables to grow, your garden will be overflowing. — I love a good summer garden jungle!

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What are warm season crops?

As the name suggests, warm season crops are those that thrive in warm conditions – perfect for the summer garden! This includes tomatoes, peppers, beans, eggplant, cucumbers, melons, summer squash (e.g. zucchini), winter squash (e.g. butternut or pumpkins), along with tender annual herbs and flowers. These plants are generally not frost-tolerant, so they will require frost protection as needed.

In contrast, cool season crops include vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, radishes, peas, leafy greens, and more. These are best to grow during the spring or fall in most places. Garlic is a unique one. It’s planted in the fall but overwinters, resumes growth in spring, and is harvested the following summer. Some of our spring crops last into summer too.

RELATED: Don’t miss the best fall garden vegetables to grow, plus tips on exactly when to plant a fall garden.

An image of a garden harvest, many wicker baskets are huddled around each other with a bounty of fresh carrots, beets, summer squash, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, chard, lettuce, berries, figs, basil, and various flowers. — A colorful early summer harvest

Need summer garden seeds?

As you explore this list of summer vegetables to grow, you may notice that many of them are from High Mowing Organic Seeds – where we get the majority of our seeds these days. High Mowing is a fantastic small certified organic seed company that offers a wide variety of high-quality veggie, flower and herb seeds. Yet we like to spread the love and shop with a few other seed companies too. See a full list of places to buy heirloom and organic vegetables seeds here.

RELATED: If you’re new to growing from seed, visit our Seed Starting 101 guide for tips for success. But there is no shame in buying started seedlings! Learn how to choose the most healthy seedlings at the nursery.

Two flowering artichokes in the foreground with a number of raised garden beds beyond full of a variety of squash, carrots, melons, flowers, and a number of other vegetables. — Be sure to check out some of the more unique things we like to grow in our summer garden at the end of this list, including artichokes, potatoes, turmeric, and more. We always like to let a few of our artichokes flower for the bees… and beauty!

Choosing the Best Summer Vegetable Varieties

The goal of this post is to introduce you to our favorite summer vegetables, flowers, and herbs to grow – and perhaps help you narrow down your selection this season! Yet there are SO many interesting options out there, so I always encourage you to have fun and experiment too.

We’ve selected our list of the “best” warm season crop varieties based on years of experience and experimentation. They grow and produce reliably well in our garden, which is located in zone 9 on the temperate central coast of California.

Of course, every variety may not perform the same in every garden… yet many of our friends in different zones have success growing these same summer vegetable varieties in their gardens too! Similarly, High Mowing (where we get most of our seeds) is based out of Vermont, but their varieties grow exceptionally well in our California garden.

Remember to read plant descriptions carefully and choose things that suit your needs. For instance, we look for veggie varieties with natural resistance to powdery mildew – something that is otherwise rampant in our area. Folks with shorter growing seasons will especially want to pay attention to “days to maturity” and select varieties that will ripen faster.

Seed containers, packs of seeds, seed catalogues, and a planting calendar are littered across a walnut table. — Going through our seed storage boxes and catalogs to see what we’re going to grow this season

When to Start or Plant Summer Garden Crops

It’s best to start most warm season crops from seed indoors in late winter to early spring, while it’s still too cold for them to be outside. Then seedlings are planted outside later in spring, once the soil warms and risk of frost has past.

The exact time to plant your summer garden depends on the type of crop and your growing zone. Refer to the Homestead and Chill planting calendars to figure out the best garden planting schedule for you garden. We have calendars for every growing zone!

Learn when to plant seeds by using this planting calendar for Zone 9, it has many different vegetables lined up on the left side of the chart and all of the months of the year listed on the top of the chart. Each vegetable has different colored lines that correspond with when to start seeds inside, transplant outdoors, and plant seeds outside, along with corresponding last frost date and first frost date where applicable. The lines start left to right, showing what months you should do each particular task depending on the season and where you live. — Not sure when to start seeds or plant seedings in your garden? Get free seed starting calendars for EVERY zone here.

Best Summer Vegetables to Grow

Without further ado, here a full list of our favorite summer vegetable varieties to grow, along with annual flowers and herbs to follow. I’ve also included quick growing tips or links to helpful resources in each section.

I’ve also included a handful of my favorite spring vegetable varieties at the end of list too! If we’re lucky (and choose heat-tolerant varieties) many of our spring crops will last into summer here.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are arguably one of the most popular summer vegetables to grow, and for good reason! They’re versatile in the kitchen, fairly easy to grow, and taste like summer. Tomatoes also come in many fun colors, shapes and sizes!

As you browse the tomato varieties below, note that we grow mostly indeterminate (vining) tomatoes on a trellis, but usually grow a couple determinate (bush) varieties in large DIY tomato cages as well.

Our favorite tomato varieties:

Sakura. These extra-large cherry tomatoes (1 oz fruit, more like saladette) are prolific, delicious, and resist cracking. They performed SO well for us last year! Indeterminate.
Pink Boar. Beautiful, petite (2-4 oz) wine-colored fruits with metallic green stripes that grow consistently well – even in challenging climates. Indeterminate.
Mountain Merit. Excellent classic red slicing tomato with firm flesh and 8-10 oz fruit. Productive and highly disease resistant. My favorite determinate variety of tomato!
Granadero. Our go-to Roma style tomato variety, good for fresh eating as well as preserving and homemade tomato sauce. Large plum tomatoes 4-5 oz in size. Produces abundant and continued yields throughout the season. Offers high disease resistance. Indeterminate.
Mai Tai. Gorgeous yellow beefsteak tomatoes with red and orange blush. Exceptionally juicy and flavorful with good disease resistance. Indeterminate.
Green Zebra Tomato. This tomato variety is SO pretty, with a unique sweet and tangy flavor. The 4-5 ounce striped green fruit stay green, but turn slightly yellow-green as they ripen. Indeterminate.
Plum Regal Tomato. Another great high-yielding plum paste tomato (Roma-type). The 4 oz. fruits that are excellent for sauces and canning! Good natural disease resistance. Determinate.
Costoluto Tomato is one of our new favorite tomatoes to grow. The deeply ridged, lobed red fruit are so unique and beautiful! These indeterminate plants grow well in hot and mild climates alike. Great for fresh eating or easy roasted tomato sauce.

RELATED: See our Tomato Grow Guide for our top tips for success. Or, visit this post to learn 7 ways to support, train, and prune tomatoes – including our awesome DIY tomato trellis system!

A variety of tomatoes are lined up in rows in order of tomato variety and color. Large red tomatoes, smaller yellow tomatoes, red and green blush, to smaller red and orange cherry tomatoes.

Two raised beds each have a large A-frame tomato trellis support structure sitting on the top of the beds. Green plants stakes are spaced evenly and in a vertical fashion with a plant at each stake. The tomato plants have almost reached the top of the 7 foot support structure. Basil plants and zinnia are planted in the foreground of the tomatoes. — Our DIY tomato trellis system (tutorial here).

A hand is holding a large red tomato with fluted edges. Below are two wicker baskets full of a variety of red tomatoes. Tomatoes are a quintessential summer vegetable to grow. — Pretty Costoluto tomatoes

Summer and Winter Squash

Despite the potentially misleading name, winter squash is a warm season crop too. It’s planted in spring and grown during the summertime – just like zucchini. In fact, winter squash is one of my favorite summer vegetables to grow! It’s simply called winter squash because it stores for a long time post-harvest, but it’s not frost tolerant.

Summer Squash

Dunja Zucchini. Our go-to green zucchini variety. The plants are beautiful, prolific, and naturally resistant to powdery mildew!
Goldy Zucchini. Long and slender bright yellow zucchini fruit that resists greening.
Green Machine Squash. A prolific classic green zucchini with exceptional disease resistance.
Stardust Zucchini. Another productive green zucchini variety with pretty lightly speckled fruit.
Butta Squash. A very prolific straight summer squash, aptly named for its smooth creamy texture and light yellow color. A repeat favorite summer vegetable to grow for many, many years – but it’s been more difficult to find seeds lately.

Winter Squash

Nutter Butter Butternut. Our go-to classic butternut squash variety, which produces delicious and abundant medium-small fruit. One year we harvested 28 squash (over 50 pounds) from just TWO Nutter Butter plants! It’s described to “reliably mature in regions that have trouble ripening butternuts”.
Delicata Squash. With it’s edible thin skin, delicata squash is one of the easiest to cook and enjoy! I love a good classic delicata variety. These vining plants produce oblong striped fruit with superbly tender, sweet flesh. You can also grow more compact Bush delicata too.
Autumn Frost Butternut Squash. This specialty butternut has a unique frosted appearance and rich earthy flavor. It has been highly productive in our garden, and is naturally resistant to powdery mildew!
Sunshine Kabocha Squash. A classic bright orange squatty kabocha squash. This variety is more productive than some other kabocha varieties, growing many deliciously-sweet and nutty fruit on compact semi-bush plants.
Winter Sweet Squash. This is a unique and beautiful pale gray-blue kabocha squash variety. It has an exceptionally long storage life, and has a sweet complex flavor that improves in storage. The one downside is that these guys only produce about 2 squash per plant.

A wicker basket full of butternut squash, a couple vines from the plant are hanging over the raised garden bed and are bordering the basket. Two pairs of boots, one blue and one green are standing next to the basket. Even though butternut squash is called winter squash it is a great summer vegetable to grow. — About half of the Nutterbutter butternut squash we harvested last year. The vines were so prolific!

Three raised garden beds are shown overflowing with various vegetable plants and flowers. The main plant that is center stage is a zucchini variety squash plant, it is quite large and has white or gray molting on its leaves. Various squash fruit are growing, poking their flowered ends towards the sky. The other beds contain onions, basil, kale, and beans, along with marigolds, zinnia, calendula and borage. — Dunja zucchini – prolific, PM-resistant, and beautiful naturally variegated leaves.

A hand is holding out a harvested winter squash that is orangish brown in color. Beyond, is a raised bed with many harvested winter squash inside of a wicker basket as well as squash lined up on top of the raised bed and soil. — Autumn Frost Butternut, plus a few blue-grey Winter Sweet kabocha in the background

Beans

Beans have slowly become one of my favorite summer vegetables to grow over the years. Who doesn’t love a fresh snappy homegrown green bean? Plus, garden trellises look so magical dripping with long pole beans in the summer!

Quick tip: soak bean seeds in water for several hours before direct-sowing them outside for a speedy germination. Pop over to our bean grow guide for even more tips, and be sure to come back and try our easy pickled dilly green beans later!

Pole Beans: Pole beans (vining) usually take longer to grow and bear fruit than bush beans, but produce more and over a longer season. My favorite are Northeaster Pole Beans: a long, flat, tender, early-maturing Romano variety with great texture and buttery flavor. They stay tender even if they’re left on the vine to get super long! I also really love to grow these pretty Blue Coco Pole Beans. The purple adds a special pop to your harvest basket.
Bush Beans are great for succession sowing for extended harvests all season long. I also like to tuck bush beans between larger summer garden vegetables to fill empty spaces. In addition to classic green beans (like Provider or Jade bush beans), we’re particularly fond of beautiful purple and white Dragon Langerie, red-streaked Borlotto, tender Gold Rush Yellow Wax, and flat tender Roma type bush beans.

An outstretched arm has four long pole beans splayed out from their elbow to their palms to illustrate the length of the bean. Pole beans are a great summer vegetable to grow. — Northeaster pole beans. They stay incredibly tender and crisp, even when they’re this long!

DeannaCat is standing underneath an arch trellis of pole beans. She is holding a wicker basket full of green and purple beans that have just been harvested.

Eggplant and Peppers

Eggplant and peppers are both part of the nightshade family. These summer vegetables grow well in hot conditions, in containers, and can even be overwintered as perennials with the right care! We eat a lot of fresh eggplant in the summer, and love to preserve peppers many ways: fermented hot sauce, refrigerator pickled peppers, homegrown chili powder, and more.

Eggplant

Little Finger. An early and prolific eggplant variety that produces clusters of 3 to 6 inch slender dark purple fruit with wonderfully thin skin.
Ping Tung Long. An Asian variety of eggplant that produces long and slender fruit 12-14 inches long with thin skin and bright lilac color. Ping Tung is my favorite type of eggplant for stir fries and sautés.
Piccolo. Modest 3 to 5 inch ovate (egg-shaped) eggplant with stunning purple and white variegated striping. They’re so pretty! The plants are very productive variety that will bear fruit over a long season.
Diamond Eggplant. An early-maturing, highly-productive eggplant variety with slender 5 to 6 inch fruit that grows in clusters. Tender creamy flesh, no bitterness. Ideal for shorter growing seasons or cooler climates.

Peppers

Black Magic is my favorite jalapeño variety! They grow so well for us, producing a TON of large dark green peppers. Black Magic is less spicy compared to other jalapeño varieties, perfect to grill and add to meals without excessive heat. I also like to make Cowboy Candy with them.
Red Ember is a type of Cayenne pepper. The slender long red fruit offer a delicate heat, great for using fresh, in cooking, or making homemade chili powder.
Glow is my top-choice bell pepper. The big beautiful orange peppers are so fruity and sweet.
Shishito peppers are always a must-grow summer vegetable for us. They’re SO good pan-blistered!
Cornito sweet peppers, which come in red (Rosso) or orange (Arancia). These slender bell peppers are incredibly flavorful, sweet, and prolific.
Red Picnic is a great little sweet mini bell pepper. Perfectly snackable!
Aji Rico is one of Aaron’s favorites. It’s a medium-hot chili red pepper with thin walls and sweet citrus-like notes.
Primero Red Habanero – another top pick from Aaron. This high-yielding red habanero is extra flavorful but with only a third of the heat of classic habaneros, perfect for fermented hot sauce.
Banana peppers or Hungarian Wax peppers usually make it to our summer garden too. They make excellent pepperoncini-style pickled peppers.

An eggplant plant is hanging over the edge of a raised bed due to the weight of the fruit that is growing on it. Long and slender eggplants are hanging from its branches. — Prolific **Ping Tung Long** eggplant

A flat lay image of a wicker basket full of a variety of sweet peppers which vary in color and shape from orange, to light and dark green, to red. A large wooden bowl is next to it with a variety of hot peppers varying in color and shape, some of them are purple, green, and red.

A hand is holding a small eggplant fruit that is a mottled white and purple. Below is a wooden bowl full of harvest eggplants from long and slender with deep purple hues, to long and slender fruit that is lighter purple in color, to smaller, more oblong eggplant that is molted purple and whit in color. — Pretty **Piccolo** eggplant

A close up image of a jalapeno chili plant with many dark green to black chilis hanging from the plants branches. Peppers of all varieties are a great summer vegetable to grow.

Melons and Cucumber

I figured I’d lump these two juicy warm season crops together as well. Cucumbers and melon are part of the same cucurbit family and have fairly similar growing requirements. Learn how to grow cucumbers here, including our favorite cucumber trellis ideas! Melon plants require more space than cucumbers, but can be grown up trellises too. Just be sure to support the hanging fruit with little hammocks or nets.

Melon

Blacktail Mountain Watermelon. Dark green round 6-10 pound melons with crisp, sweet flesh that ripen well even in cool or short seasons. Despite our coastal climate and cool summers, these grow very well in our garden! Learn when to harvest watermelon here.
True Love Melon. A high-sugar, cantaloupe-like melon with great texture that produces later in the season. High powdery mildew resistance.
Sugar Baby Watermelon. Perfectly round juicy and sweet melons that weigh 6-12 lbs with solid green rind and dark red flesh. Great for short seasons and smaller spaces.
Sivan Melon. Another cantaloupe-type musk melon variety, which bears super sweet personal-size fruit. Great resistance to powdery mildew – a huge plus for us!

Cucumber

Manny. Our favorite cucumber variety, both for taste and production! The vining plants produce thin-skinned 5-7 inch crisp fruit. Early maturing, high yielding, and good disease resistance. Self-pollinates.
Tasty Green. An Asian burpless variety that produces super long 9” fruit with thin skin and sweet flesh. Produces heavy yields. Best results when trellised and grown with other cucumber varieties for cross-pollination.
Sashimi. Another high-performing Japanese variety with a wider harvest window as fruit can be harvested anywhere from 8-12″ long. Sweet fruit with small seed cavities. The plants have good natural resistance to powdery mildew.
We’ve tried several varieties of pickling cucumbers over the years, but none of them have wowed us. What is your go-to pickling cucumber variety? Let us know in the comments below!

A raised be is fully of watermelon plants, their long vines are taking up much of the space while there are 4 or 5 baby watermelons growing amongst the vines. In the middle of the bed is a zinnia flower growing tall amongst the vining melon plants. — A bed of Blacktail Mountain watermelon with zinnia, marigold, and calendula interplanted.

Aaron is holding a freshly harvested baby watermelon amongst raised beds full of a variety of flowers and vegetable plants. Melons are a great summer vegetable to grow! — Mr. DeannaCat lookin’ mighty fine with his big melon

Annual Flowers

I love planting annual flowers in our raised beds mixed amongst the summer vegetables. They add a beautiful pop of color, draw in pollinators, and some even deter pests! Learn more about companion planting here, and a full list of our top 23 plants for pollinators here.

Calendula, my favorite flower and medicinal herb to grow. See: “All About Calendula: How to Grow, Harvest, Dry & Use Calendula Flowers” to learn more. Resina, Strawberry Blonde, Orange King, and Pacific Beauty are go-to calendula varieties in our garden.
Marigolds. Did you know these repel root knot nematodes? We love to grow classic French marigolds along with these adorable Tangerine Gem marigolds.
Sunflowers. Evening Colors, Lemon Queen, Goldy Double, Mammoth, Strawberry Blonde, Velvet Queen and Autumn Beauty are some of my favorite sunflower varieties. We enjoy a lot of branching, multi-headed types.
Zinnias are a close runner-up to calendula, and a monarch butterfly favorite! Our zinnia seed collection includes Giant Coral, Purple Prince, Giant Yellow, Benary’s Giant Salmon Rose, Queen Red Lime, Oklahoma Carmine and Gold, and many more.
Nasturtium. In addition to attracting pollinators, both nasturtium leaves and flowers are edible! They taste peppery like arugula. Compact nasturtium varieties (like Alaska Mix) are great as companion plants in the raised beds. Vining varieties like this Nasturtium Blend look amazing trailing down the outside of a bed, as sprawling groundcover, or trained up a trellis.
Cosmos bring such a cheery vibe to the garden, and our resident goldfinches love to eat the seeds! My favorite cosmos varieties include Double Click, Seashell cosmos, Cupcake, Apricotta, and Sensation blend.
Chamomile. We grow an entire raised bed full of chamomile to make ultra-healing and hydrating calendula-chamomile face oil for our shop, including classic German Chamomile, Zloty Lan, and Bodegold varieties.
Other Flower Favorites: Bachelor’s buttons (Polka Dot Bachelor Button and dwarf Jubilee Gem), Opopeo Amaranth, Lion’s Mouth snapdragons, Goldilocks Rudbeckia, and Roggli Riesen strawflowers.

For cultivation tips on all these beauties, see: 7 Best Easy Annual Flowers to Grow from Seed

A purple flowering statice plant is in the foreground while a raised bed of artichokes, sunflowers, and cosmos are beyond. — Statice is in the foreground (perennial here) with annual cosmos, sunflowers, bachelor’s buttons and marigolds in the beds beyond.

A bachelors button plant and a zinnia on the other side line a walkway in the garden, almost covering it. Beyond is a trellis with some green beans growing on it. There are so many plants that can be the best summer vegetable to grow. — Companion flowers everywhere

A raised bed full of annual chamomile plants with many yellow and white blooms. — Cheerful chamomile. Learn how to grow, harvest, dry and use chamomile in this guide!

A close up image of a salmon pink color zinnia with a number of fluffy flowering heads in full bloom. — Salmon Rose Giant Zinnia

Annual Herbs

We already have many established patches of herbs that grow as perennials here, including sage, rosemary, oregano, bay laurel, lemon balm, mint, and thyme. That means the only annual herbs we usually plant are basil, dill, and cilantro including:

Dill Delight and Bouquet dill – ideal for adding to homemade pickles. They self-seed in our garden, so we rarely have to plant more!
Cilantro is always nice to have on hand for fresh homegrown summer salsa, tacos, and more. If allowed to go to seed, cilantro will also self-sow and keep coming back… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!
Basil: We usually grow a couple classic Genovese types (such as Prospera Italian Large Leaf and Rutgers Devotion) along with pretty purple basil.

We always grow at least 6 to 8 basil plants so we can stock up the freezer with enough Besto Pesto for the whole year, along with dried basil leaves for the pantry. Learn how to grow bushy basil to harvest all season long here. (Hint: pruning young seedlings and routinely cutting back established plants are key!)

A dill umbel is being held to show the top portion of the flowering seed head. — Bouquet dill umbels, ready to spice up a jar of homemade pickles!

Aaron is holding a large bowl of freshly harvested basil that is both green and purple in color. Basil is one of the best summer vegetables to grow.

Spring Vegetables: Brassicas, Root Veggies and More

As I mentioned earlier, we grow the vast majority of our cool season crops in our fall-winter garden. Yet I like to plant out a handful of cool season crops in the spring too, specifically choosing ones that I know stand a chance to last through early summer. For instance, certain varieties of kale or Swiss chard are more heat tolerant (less likely to bolt) than some of our other favorite leafy greens.

Root Veggies

Remember, it’s best to direct sow root vegetable seeds rather than start them indoors! Root veggies don’t take kindly to transplanting.

Carrots. We always grow several different varieties of carrots including Dolciva, Cosmic Purple, Naval, Scarlet Nantes, Bollin, and Bangor. Get tips on successfully growing carrots in our beginner’s guide.
Beets. My favorite beet variety is Boro beets, by far! They’re super sweet, produce excellent leafy greens, and can be harvested anywhere from 2 to 6+ inches, perfect to gradually harvest as you need them over time! Learn how to grow beets here.
Radishes are another spring garden staple. Some of our top-choice varieties include purple Bravo daikons, attractive and reliable Pink Beauty, and juicy, mild White Daikon radishes. This post will teach you about growing radishes from seed to table.

DeannaCat is standing next to a raised bed full of growing carrots and beets. She is holding a large bunch of freshly harvested carrots by their greens. — Harvesting carrots in the early summer garden

A hand is holding up three large red beets with their greens still attached. — Boro beets, my current favorite variety.

Brassicas

Cabbage: We like to plant Expect cabbage in late winter for an early summer harvest. It grow dense, uniformly round green heads and has notable heat tolerance. I also like to plant Caraflex cabbage in spring. The unique petite conical (pointed) heads can usually beat the heat since they mature in only 68 days!
Broccoli. Belstar broccoli is a trusty broccoli variety we seem to come back to year after year. It matures fairly early and then continues to produce decent little side shoots after the main head is harvested.
Kohlrabi. I love this alien-like veggie! It’s so uniquely cool-looking, and delicious too! Kohlrabi tastes like a super sweet, crisp, juicy inner portion of a good broccoli stem. Kordial, Kolibri, and Kossak kohlrabi are a few varieties we often grow.

Leafy Greens

Lacinato kale. Dazzling Blue lacinato is our go-to slow-bolting variety of kale… and it’s darn beautiful!
Swiss Chard. I have yet to find a chard I love more than Peppermint swiss chard (named for its candy-striped stalks, not flavor!) but we also grow this gorgeous yellow-stemmed Sunset Chard every season too. Both are fairly heat tolerant; they grow year-round here.
Joi Choi Bok Choy. Our powerhouse and number 1 favorite green to grow (and one of our top crops to grow, period!) The big thick juicy stalks and open heads are perfect for cut-and-come-again or perpetual harvesting. It doesn’t love hot weather, but is far more slow-bolting than most varieties of bok choy.

A hand is touching a large green cabbage that is growing, it is close to harvest time. If the temperatures aren't too high, growing cabbage is a great summer vegetable to grow. — Expect cabbage. Check out our cabbage grow guide here!

A raised bed full of swiss chard and celery is in the foreground with a number of raised beds in the background with a variety of plants growing in them from eggplant and tomatoes to onions and cabbage. — Peppermint Swiss chard always grows right through our temperate summers!

Other Fun Crops to Grow

Sugar Snap Peas are always growing in our spring and early summer garden! If you need an easy and inexpensive trellis for growing peas, beans, or any other vining plant, pop over to our DIY trellis tutorial.
Potatoes. We always pre-order several different varieties of seed potatoes from High Mowing, which generally ship out during the spring. We love growing potatoes in large durable fabric grow bags, which means we can always find some space for them! Interested in growing your own spuds? Learn how we grow potatoes in containers here.
Onions. I love onions! They’re one of my favorite spring or summer vegetables to grow. Walla Walla, Rossa Di Milano red onions, and Calibra Spanish onions are a few varieties that do well for us. When growing onions, it’s crucial to choose the right variety for your latitude – short day, long day, or intermediate day onions. I prefer to start from seed or seedlings rather than sets. Visit our onion grow guide for more info and tips for success.
Artichokes. We have several established Wonder artichokes growing in our garden. Artichokes can grow as perennials in zones 8-11, and as annuals in lower zones. Learn about growing artichoke plants, and don’t miss our delicious easy baked artichokes recipe with garlic, lemon and herbs.
Turmeric. We love to grow our own turmeric, which is easy to do in containers in any zone! Learn more here. Turmeric needs a nice early start (late winter to early spring), grows all summer through fall, and is harvested before the first winter frost.

Aaron and DeannaCat are standing next to each other, each is holding a large wooden bowl of freshly harvested potatoes of differing varieties. Potatoes are a great summer vegetable to grow. — Our 2022 spud harvest. This was early September, and we we’re still enjoying them in January!

Dozens of hands of freshly harvested turmeric rhizomes are lined up along the edge of a concrete patio with their greens still attached to the top. Beyond is a large wooden bowl with more harvested rhizomes that have had their greens cut off. Even though turmeric is harvested before frost hits, it's a great summer vegetable to grow. — Homegrown turmeric harvest, grown in wine barrels

DeannaCat standing next to a raised bed full of freshly harvest onions that are still laying on the soil. She is holding three large onions with their greens still attached in each hand. — So many beautiful onions harvested! We started these seeds in January, transplanted in late February, and harvested in September to cure and store (though some were ready earlier, we also harvested many to enjoy throughout the summer too)

A garden plot plan drawing with rectangles for raised beds with letters written inside of each bed as well as a key at the bottom with A-Z and a corresponding vegetable next written to it. — Making a plan in advance helps SO much come transplanting day, and also helps me guide just how much seed to start of each thing. I also keep these for future reference and crop rotation. Get your own printable plot plan templates in our Free Garden Planning Toolkit here!

And that concludes this list of our favorite summer vegetables to grow.

Decisions, decisions… Sometimes the seemingly endless options of plants and varieties can feel overwhelming, but I hope this helps you narrow down your selection! I also hope you found a few fun or new warm season crops to try this year. Please let us know if you have any questions in the comments below, and thanks for tuning in today. Cheers to a bountiful season ahead!

Other Useful Resources to Explore:

26 Comments

Savannah

January 24, 2023 at 8:17 am Reply

Hi there! Im originally from WA and we are stationed in Texas, San Antonio to be exact, in an HOA subdivision that is not my jam. But we don’t have other options right now. I have a 4×10 raised bed, it’s all we can fit in our yard. It was so hot last year we had little growth of anything until October!

I want to do a salad garden, and some melons, I can’t get my cucumbers to stop getting sick and I can’t tell what is going on with them. Ultimately I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, so then I get overwhelmed and give up.

Is there a garden plan for a simple single raise bed? And what is successful in pots? I was thinking cucumbers in a pot this time around since I planted a spring one and fall and both got covered in something and no one could figure it out.
Help??:)
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 25, 2023 at 8:47 am Reply
  
  Hi Savannah, with San Antonio being extremely hot, you may have different times of the year which will offer the best chances of growing food. It looks like the hardiness zone in San Antonio is between 8b and 9a, check out our planting calendars to see when to plant and grow certain vegetables for your zone. Cucumbers should do fine in pots but they can suffer from a variety of plant diseases from bacterial wilt to powdery or Downey mildew, if you know what disease is prevalent in your area, look for varieties that are resistant to that disease and that variety which will have a better chance of doing well. We struggle with powdery mildew here so we are always looking for powdery mildew resistant varieties of squash, cucumbers, melons, and tomatoes.
  
  As far as a garden plan for a single bed, you just have to decide on what plants you want to grow. Since you have minimal space, you have to think about what you would most like to grow and the space requirements of each plant. If you want a salad garden, you need to be starting seeds now so you can get the lettuce plants out and growing before you summer heat starts to kick in as lettuce does not like heat at all so you will likely only be growing lettuce for a couple months. We have an article on Growing Lettuce: How to Plant, Protect and Harvest Lettuce. Melons are great but depending on the variety, they can be vining types that like to sprawl, we had 3 watermelon plants in one 4×8 foot bed last year and they took up most of all the space.
  
  We also have a lot of different articles under the beginner basics section under our the Garden tab on our homepage. Reach out if you have any questions and have fun growing!
GK

January 18, 2023 at 8:53 am Reply

Love this post! I must try a few of your seed suggestions even though I’m in central MO so am excited to place an order! Looks like High Mowing is in Vermont so maybe they will work for me. I am especially interested in the zucchini that are powdery mildew resistent. I also found yellow squash at High Mowing that is powdery mildew resistent. My mom (in FL) loves squash but for some reason all of their squash seem to get PM and then die. My mom is about to give up on summer squash but I’m going to send her a few seeds from the PM resistent varieties at High Mowing to see if she has any luck.

I especially love to see your raised beds with the flowers mixed in. I would know more about timing or spacing for adding flower plants/seeds to vegetable beds or how you get that to work without one choking out the other. Your beds are always so beautiful and I just need to know how to execute that!

Thanks for all of the information and beautiful posts. I always look forward to seeing how your garden grows!
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 20, 2023 at 8:55 am Reply
  
  Hi GK, thanks for the kind words and growing varieties that are resistant against certain plant diseases that are prevalent in your area is definitely the way to go. As far as mixing flowers amongst vegetables, we just kind of go for it and try and give most plants if they are typically smaller, closer to 2 feet of spacing, yet our beds usually get overgrown and crazy and sometimes a plant will choke out another one and we usually go with it. If you want to keep the plant that is getting taken over by another, you typically would have to cut back the offending plant to give the other one more space. If you haven’t checked out our Planting Calendar or our Free Garden Planning Toolkit if you subscribe to the site which comes with plot plans that can help plan out your garden. Hope that helps and have fun growing!
Mariangela

January 16, 2023 at 3:58 pm Reply

Am working on my seed spreadsheet and eagerly reviewing your 2023 varieties. Just curious why you seem to now exclusively use High Mowing Organic Seeds? There are so many interesting seed companies including ones for specific varieties (Wild Boar Farms for tomatoes, Cucumber Shop for cukes, Experimental Farm Network, Seed Savers Exchange among others) and you previously had a post listing at least 12 seed sources.
- DeannaCat
  
  January 17, 2023 at 8:06 am Reply
  
  Hey Mariangela! Well… because that’s where we’re getting the majority of our seeds these days! I love the quality, and I’ve gotten to know some of the folks who work there, they’re really great too. We still get a few things here and there from Adaptive, Johnny’s, Botanical Interests, etc (and no longer support Baker Creek, they’re problematic) – several things on this list aren’t from High Mowing. I do still have that article for 12 places to buy seeds from (linked here) 🙂 But as busy people, if I can easily get all my seeds in one place, pay just one shipping cost, etc, then that works for me! But obviously there are so many amazing options out there. Thank you so much for reading, and happy growing!
donna

January 16, 2023 at 9:37 am Reply

I have a few questions?

We live in Montana….. a zone 4. We are going to follow your raised bed instructions except they will be taller 30″ as I am 80 yrs old and can no longer bend my knees due to a disease. Therefore,upon completing the beds, I want to put some periennels in them, however, we have been told by very knowable people here, that the roots will freeze itf we grow them in raised beds. My question is because there is no bottom on the raised beds, would the periennels still freeze? My next question is the same but regarding berries, can they be grown in raised beds?
My last questions is, how many sunflower seeds do you put in your raised beds. We tried growing them in pots last year. The started out good then about half way into the season they just stopped growing and died. I think I put too many seeds in. What kind of sunflowers are best for raised beds.

My husband and I thank your for sharing your raised bed info and your videos of your land. When it is gloomy and spring looks far away, I can just go to your website and enjoy all the flowers you have. It brings hope that May will get here soon. Our growing season is very short. June to October if we don’t get an early frost!!

God bless you and keep you,
donna
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 17, 2023 at 9:33 am Reply
  
  Hi Donna, it’s so great to hear that you and your husband are going to be building a raised bed garden for yourselves. In colder areas like Montana, I believe the general recommendation is to plant annual flowers and vegetables in raised beds as any plants that are left to overwinter such as perennials or berries, their roots will freeze too quickly, whereas when planted in the ground, they will freeze gradually which helps let the plants know when to shift to dormancy.
  
  As far as growing sunflowers go, you can either plant those in raised beds or possibly even directly in the ground assuming you get enough rain during the summer to keep them happy. Sunflowers get big so they need some space when they grow, if you grew sunflowers in containers last year, they should have been thinned down to 1 plant per container assuming that your container wasn’t a half wine barrel or whiskey barrel where you can likely grow two sunflowers per container. Most plants do best with proper spacing to grow best, the bigger the plant, the more spacing that is needed. We typically don’t put more than one sunflower plant in a raised bed as we typically have many other plants growing in the same bed so we like to mix it up a bit. We are so glad to hear that you and your husband enjoy the website and videos and we greatly appreciate your support, feel free to reach out with any other questions if you have any. Hope that helps, good luck, and have fun growing!
Virginia

January 16, 2023 at 8:44 am Reply

Great article. There’s a photo of you two enjoying a beverage on a patio. There’s a lovely black scalloped arch. Can you tell us where you found it? Thanks!
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 16, 2023 at 10:58 am Reply
  
  Hi Virginia, thanks for checking out the article, unfortunately we don’t know where the arch was found as it was here when we acquired the property. Looking online, most arches are more rounded and I didn’t see any that had the same scalloped shape, sorry we couldn’t be of more help.
Liz

January 16, 2023 at 6:55 am Reply

I hope you love the delicata squash as much as I do! Super easy to grow and very prolific, even in my challenging high desert climate (zone 6b, New Mexico). One of the best tasting squashes, in my opinion. What a fun list- I might need to order a few.
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 16, 2023 at 8:13 am Reply
  
  Thanks so much for sharing Liz! After we had such success growing the Nutterbutter butternut squash last summer, we figured we needed to devote more space to vining hard squash. Hopefully you find a few new varieties to grow this season and have fun in the garden!
Alli

January 15, 2023 at 7:34 pm Reply

Love it! I am in zone 5/6 so quite a ways behind you, but absolutely itching to get started again this year. I thank you for the inspiration and sharing your knowledge!
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 16, 2023 at 8:03 am Reply
  
  Thank you so much for the kind words Alli! Your time to get started will be here soon enough, good luck once you can start seeds and have fun growing!
Brenna Saxton

January 15, 2023 at 12:33 pm Reply

I love your idea for pollinators and companion planting around your fruit trees! We have a small orchard on our timber farm, and I’m hoping to convince the rest of my family to start crafting tree guilds also. What’s better than increasing the health of existing plants while also getting a secondary harvest? I look forward to seeing more progress on those to come!
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 16, 2023 at 8:44 am Reply
  
  Hi Brenna, I think your idea making tree guilds is a great idea and I think your orchard would greatly benefit from it. We will keep you posted on our new project as it gets underway, we have a lot of work and preparation to do before we can get to any planting just yet but hopefully by some point in the summer we will have it completed.
Andrea

January 15, 2023 at 9:09 am Reply

You’re new garden is beautiful and coming along so nice! Thank you for taking the time out to come and share everything with us!
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 16, 2023 at 8:19 am Reply
  
  Thank you so much for the kind words Andrea and we greatly appreciate your support!
Jenny

January 15, 2023 at 7:42 am Reply

Oh I so hope you do a grow guide for that popcorn! I’m in NH and I know that corn is such a big crop up here but something about it intimidates me! High Mowing’s Curly Rioja curly kale was an incredible crop for us last year with big “DeannaCat-sized plants!”
- Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
  
  January 15, 2023 at 8:22 am Reply
  
  Hi Jenny, it’s great to hear you had such success with the kale last year, that sounds like a nice variety! We will let you know about the corn, we typically have just grown it in the past for fun but never have had that big of ears or harvests, the Popcorn Gem variety does look beautiful though. Enjoy the rest of winter and have fun starting seeds for your garden when the time comes!