Best Summer Garden Vegetables and Flower Varieties to Grow

Last Updated on January 8, 2024

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.

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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.

We grow the vast majority of our cool season crops in our fall-winter garden, though I like to plant some in spring too. If we’re lucky (and choose heat-tolerant varieties) many of our spring crops will last into summer here. So, I’ve included a handful of my favorite spring vegetable varieties on this list too!

Related: How to Start a Fall Garden: Best Cool Season Crops to Grow

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 organic and heirloom garden seeds here.

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 pick the best seedlings at the nursery here.

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.

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! 

Starting seeds indoors or buying nursery seedlings provides several weeks (or even months) head start on the growing season, which means you’ll be harvesting sooner too! However, some summer garden vegetable crops grow best when their seeds are directly-sown outside, such as beans and root vegetables.

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.

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.
• 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!

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.

Related: Zucchini & Summer Squash Grow Guide, How to Grow Winter Squash and Pumpkins, 28 Best Winter Squash and Pumpkin Varieties, and how to hand pollinate squash to prevent end rot.

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. 

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.
• Black Beauty Eggplant. A high-yielding Italian eggplant with bell shaped 5 to 6 inch fruit that is deep purple in color. This classic variety of eggplant is ideal for cutting into thick slices to grill or bake, including eggplant parmesan.

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!
• 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.
• Banana peppers or Hungarian Wax peppers usually make it to our summer garden too. They make excellent pepperoncini-style pickled peppers.

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.
• 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!

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

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!) 

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.

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. 

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.

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:

• Seed Starting 101: How to Sow Seeds Indoors
• How to Design & Build a Raised Garden Bed
• How to Fill a Raised Garden Bed: Build the Perfect Organic Soil
• Transplanting Seedlings Outside: Best Practices for Success
• How to Fertilize & Amend a Raised Garden Bed Before Planting (or Between Seasons)