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Different Seasons, Different Crops
Beginning gardeners may have a problem when it comes to growing vegetables. Especially if they want to plant everything at once hoping to have the resources of a grocery store growing in their yard. They might want tomatoes, carrots, lettuce and a few radishes all available at the same time so they can put a nice salad together for the dinner table. And wouldn't it be nice to have a big, firm cabbage head, fresh from the garden, for a crisp, cold coleslaw for a 4th of July celebration.

Sorry, that's not too likely although you might get to put a salad together in the fall, if you're lucky. Grocery stores stock their produce department from around the world where the climate varies. What isn't growing in California in the dead of winter might be growing in Mexico or further into South America. The vegetables get harvested, packed and shipped to market. Often it's the produce in the grocery store that looks like it had been on the back of a truck for a few too many days that makes you want to grow your own fresh vegetables.

You can grow vegetables in a Tucson garden but you need to know what to grow and when to sow seeds or transfer transplants into the garden. Keep in mind vegetable gardening takes rich, healthy soil and regular applications of water. And water is quickly becoming a precious commodity these days as Tucson's population continues to grow, drought persists, and water supplies dwindle. If that's not enough to discourage the new gardener, then there are plenty of insects, wildlife and plant diseases that can hinder success. But then that's another story.

Here we'll focus on what and when to plant. To make it simple, there are two kinds of crops: cool season and warm season. The cool season runs from the fall through the winter and into spring. The warm season goes from spring through summer, and into the fall. Different crops have different environmental requirements for growth. While some vegetables can tolerate a frosty morning or two, others need constant warmth. Some plants thrive in the long days of summer, while others survive the shorter days of winter. The gardener needs to know which is which if he or she is going to have a chance at harvesting fresh vegetables from the garden.

The Cool Season
Lettuce, onion, radish, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, beets, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, parsnips, turnips, garlic, and other similar plants are considered cool season crops. There's somewhat of a pattern here: leafy crops and root crops grow best in the cool season. These are cool season crops, not cold season. Temperatures that get too cold will hinder the plant's growth or even kill the plant. Plant these vegetables so they grow in the heat and you won't get much of a crop. Lettuce will bolt sending up a stalk that wants to flower and produce seed. Radishes might produce lots of leaves but very little root. Broccoli will have small, loose, flowery heads.


From left: broccoli head; a basket of leaf lettuce, green onions, champion radish, broccoli, Italian and curly parsley; a daikon oriental radish. All of the above winter crops were harvested or photographed on January, 25, 2006.

The Warm Season
Tomatoes, peppers, bush beans, summer and winter squash, melons, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, pumpkins, gourds, okra and other similar vegetables help make up the warm season crops. Another pattern has developed. Seems like vine forming plants and bushy plants seem to grow best in the warm season.


From left: summer squash, cherry tomatoes and hot peppers.

These are warm season crops, not hot season. They can weather the really hot weather but they are more in a survival mode. Weather that's too hot, like one of Tucson's 100 plus degree summer days, can stress plants, hinder growth and cause plant damage whether it's sunburn to the leaves or burn on the vegetable.

Deciding What to Grow
Now that you have a general idea of what will grow best in what season, you need to decide what to grow. Keep in mind some of the plants, like melons and cucumbers and some of the winter squash, can take up a lot of room in the garden as their vines grow. Different vegetables have different maturity dates meaning some will take longer than other vegetables to produce a mature crop. Where some radishes may mature in 30 days, garlic planted at the same time can take nine months before harvest. These are all things to consider when you plan your vegetable garden, whether you plan to grow in containers, raised beds, or prepared soil.

The seed catalogs and the locally available seed packages you find on seed racks list the number of days to harvest. For some crops, like tomatoes and corn, you want the quickest maturing because you want to get as much from your plants as you can, before summer heat sets in.

In the winter I don't grow cabbage because of the amount of space it takes up in the garden. Plus I don't eat that much cabbage. The purple cabbage that I add to my salad greens comes from the grocery store just as do the carrots I use.

I've grown sweet corn both spring an fall, but again, the amount of space for the number of ears produced doesn't justify the space in my garden. In addition, corn can have problems with ear worms and ear development due to poor pollination. And once the rodents (round tail squirrels) discover the corn it's difficult to keep them away. It's not much fun to harvest bare cobs. (2006)

Different Season, Different Crops continued on page 2