Cucumber

A low, ground-hugging warm-season annual legume domesticated in West Africa (around present-day Mali and Nigeria) and grown across the continent as a hardy indigenous pulse (GBIF). Trifoliate leaves rise on short, creeping stems, and after the tiny flowers are pollinated their stalks bend down and push the developing pods into the soil, so the crop ripens UNDERGROUND like a peanut. The round, hard seeds are remarkably rich in both protein and carbohydrate, making bambara groundnut a near-complete food and a staple where harsher conditions defeat other beans. It is famously DROUGHT-tolerant and productive on hot, poor, sandy soils, fixing its own nitrogen, but it is a FROST-TENDER, warm-season annual that needs a long, warm season for the underground pods to fill. RHS lists it as a tender, drought-tolerant warm-season annual pulse for full sun, its pods ripening underground (RHS). Outside the tropics it is grown as a summer annual, sown after the last frost once the soil is warm.

A biennial root vegetable grown as an annual for its swollen taproot (beets) or large leaves (chard - same species, different cultivars). Cool-season crop; tolerates light frost. Edible leaves + roots; chard is grown specifically for the dramatic colorful petioles + leaves. Wind-pollinated when flowering; rarely flowers as a garden plant.

A cool-season Asian leaf vegetable grown for its loose, non-heading rosette of dark-green leaves carried on broad, juicy white stalks - the spoon-shaped petioles that distinguish it from heading cabbages. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder records that the group spans varieties from 3 to 4 inches to 24 inches tall and is edible at every stage, from seedlings to small immature heads to large mature heads and even while flowering. The stems are mild and juicy while the leaves carry a cabbage-like flavor; like other brassicas it tolerates light frosts but bolts in summer heat.

A cool-weather leaf vegetable grown for its dense, edible head of tightly wrapped blue-green, red, or wrinkled (Savoy) leaves. A biennial almost always grown as an annual, it forms a 3-4 pound head in about 80 days and rarely flowers in cultivation. It shares its species with kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi, and grows poorly once daytime temperatures stay above 80°F.

An annual or biennial Apiaceae root vegetable grown for its orange (or purple, white, yellow, red) taproot. Foliage hosts black swallowtail caterpillars - the same Apiaceae specialist that uses parsley. NC State notes the wild form (Daucus carota subsp. carota, Queen Anne's lace) is the same species + interfertile with cultivated carrots; do not let cultivated carrots overwinter to seed in areas where wild Queen Anne's lace is also present.

Soybean grown as a fresh-shell vegetable - edamame - an easy warm-season annual in the bean family (Fabaceae), native to China and the Russian Far East. NC State Extension describes a columnar, dense, multi-stemmed mounding plant about 12 to 24 inches tall and 9 inches to 24 inches wide, with hairy compound leaves and small pinkish pea-type flowers that give way to fuzzy legume pods. Like other legumes it fixes nitrogen, and NC State recommends inoculating seed with a soybean inoculant for best results. Pods are picked young and green for edamame, or left to dry on the plant for dry soybeans.