Crop Guides

Each crop guide below covers the real cultivation basics for that specific crop - sun needs, spacing, typical days to maturity, and whether it tolerates cool weather or needs to wait until after the last frost - and then lists its confirmed companion and antagonist relationships, each one linking through to a full explanation of the mechanism involved.

If you already know what you want to grow, start here. If you're planning a whole bed and haven't chosen your crops yet, the Layouts section and the Bed Layout Helper tool are a better starting point - they'll help you think about the bed as a whole before you commit to a specific crop list.

Crops are grouped loosely by family below - nightshades, roots, alliums, brassicas, leafy greens, cucurbits, corn and stalk crops, legumes, herbs, and companion flowers - since crops in the same family often share growing needs and, in a few cases (most brassicas, for instance), share disease risks that matter for rotation planning.

Why Family Groupings Matter

Family matters for two practical reasons beyond just growing habit. First, many pest and disease pressures are family-specific - flea beetles target brassicas broadly, and early and late blight move readily between nightshades like tomatoes and potatoes - so knowing a crop's family helps you anticipate what to watch for even on a crop you've never grown before. Second, crop rotation (moving a family to a different bed section each year rather than replanting the same spot with the same family) is one of the more reliably useful practices in vegetable gardening for managing soil-borne disease and pest buildup, and it only works if you can quickly tell which of your crops share a family.

Reading a Crop Guide

Every crop guide opens with a quick-facts card (family, sun needs, in-ground spacing, typical days to maturity, sowing method, and frost tolerance), followed by real growing detail specific to that crop, its confirmed companion pairings with the mechanism named, and a short FAQ. Nothing on a crop guide is templated from another crop - if two crops share a fact (say, an approximate days-to-maturity range), it's because that's genuinely true of both, not because one page copied the other.

Frost Tolerance at a Glance

Each crop's quick-facts card states plainly whether it's frost-hardy (safe to plant several weeks before your last frost date) or tender (damaged or killed by frost, needing to wait until the danger has genuinely passed). Roughly half the crops covered here fall into each camp, which is exactly why a single "plant after the last frost" rule of thumb undersells about half the garden - many roots, alliums, brassicas, and leafy greens can and should go in weeks earlier.