Vegetables, herbs, fruit, and nut trees are the “Garden of Eatin’” part of creating our Garden of Eden. There’s nothing like enjoying the culinary benefits of your garden, even if that garden is in large patio containers!

We can grow something to eat 12 months out of the year, but it is better to think of our region as having four distinct growing seasons: a short spring, a long, blazing hot summer (May through mid-October), a short fall, and a short erratic cool season with mostly mild weather interrupted by a few significant freezes.

When it comes to most warm season vegetables, varieties with short to medium days-to-harvest intervals are usually best to reach harvest before the blazing heat shuts down the spring garden or the first frost/freeze shuts down our warm season crops in our brief mild weather of fall. There are some relatively unknown heat lovers that should be more common in our summer gardens.

Choose deciduous fruit varieties based on their chilling hour requirements, which range from 350-600 chill hours in the greater southeast Texas region, depending on your location and the weather in a given winter. Gamblers can try their hand at citrus, avocados, and bananas (especially in areas toward the coast) but should be ready to go to great lengths to protect them when a hard freeze is forecast.