Common bean

Aji pepper is the South American chili species behind aji amarillo, Lemon Drop, Bishop's crown and Brazil's dedo-de-moça - one of the five domesticated chili peppers, and a different plant from the familiar garden pepper (Capsicum annuum) and the habanero (Capsicum chinense). It is a perennial shrub native from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru through Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina and central and southern Brazil, and where it can live for years it grows taller than most garden peppers, up to about 6.6 feet. Its white to cream flowers are typically marked with green or gold, and its fruits, which usually hang down in cultivated forms, come in an unusually wide range of shapes, from long tapered pods to the crown-shaped Bishop's crown. Heat runs from nearly heatless types to hot ones; aji amarillo is rated around 30,000-50,000 Scoville units. It is frost tender, so outside nearly frost-free climates it is grown as a warm-weather annual.

A warm-season annual vine in the cucumber family grown for its sweet, aromatic netted melons - one of the six broadly accepted edible groups of the polymorphic Cucumis melo. Stiff-haired, rough-textured trailing stems climb 6 to 9 feet with the help of unbranched tendrils, carrying funnel-shaped yellow flowers that draw bees. Native to the Old World (Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, New Guinea, and Australia) and intolerant of frost, it is grown as an annual on the ground or on cages and trellises.

A lax, branching nightshade from South America grown for tart-sweet golden berries, each wrapped in a papery, lantern-like husk. Despite the name it is unrelated to true gooseberries: the "Cape" is usually traced to its early cultivation at South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and it is also known as goldenberry, Peruvian groundcherry, and poha. Taller and longer-lived than the ground cherry, it reaches 3.3 to 4.9 feet with velvety heart-shaped leaves and nodding yellow flowers marked with chocolate-brown centers. It is a reliable perennial only where frost is absent and is grown as a summer annual or a greenhouse plant everywhere colder. Only the fully ripe fruit is eaten - the husk, leaves, stems, flowers, and unripe fruit are poisonous - and it has become invasive in Hawaii and on other Pacific islands.

A warm-season annual vegetable in the nightshade family, grown for fresh summer fruit. Tomatoes need full sun, consistent moisture, slightly acidic soil, and night temperatures above 50°F. Larger fruits like beefsteaks can struggle in extended hot southern summers because flowers drop without setting fruit.

An Andean grain crop grown for its small, protein-rich seeds, which ripen in dense heads of white, red or black at the top of an upright annual usually 3.3 to 6.6 feet tall. Quinoa is a pseudocereal, not a grass: it belongs to the amaranth family (the goosefoot genus was formerly placed in Chenopodiaceae), is related to spinach, and shares its genus with the garden weed lambsquarters. The seeds carry a bitter saponin coat that must be soaked and rinsed off before cooking, and the young leaves are eaten cooked like spinach. A true annual sown each spring, it does best where summers are cool and may not produce seed where temperatures run too hot.

A tall, warm-season annual grass grown for its sweet kernels - one of the largest crops in the home vegetable garden at 4 to 5 feet. Corn is wind-pollinated, so it must be sown in a block of several rows rather than a single line for the tassels to set a full ear. A heavy feeder that wants full sun, fertile soil, and steady water; some sweet-corn types are spoiled by cross-pollination from other corn varieties, so isolation and harvest timing matter.