Food Lover's Garden: Grow Your Own Desserts

I saved the best for last!

Desserts
Find all your sweet fixings right out back.
Roses: Use Tradescant red rose petals to make homemade rose water and give desserts a subtle floral flavor and a pink color. Make sure to purchase a fully grown bush and toss a banana peel into the bottom of the planting hole; it'll act as a fertilizer. Rose petals and leaves don't like to be wet, so water the plant at ground level only.
Tip:To make your own rose water, pour boiling water over a packed cup of petals; chill the water overnight and strain the petals in the morning.
Raspberries: Try the thornless Canby variety. Buy and plant a fully grown bush, clear four feet of space around it and you'll enjoy years of raspberry harvests. The first summer's yield will be just enough to use as a garnish, but the following year, the bush will produce enough berries for a pie. You'll know the raspberries are ready to pick when they come off the stem easily; if you have to tug at the berry, it's not ripe.
Strawberries: Small strawberry plants quickly start producing fruit early in summer. Try a non-runner type, like alpines, which won't take over your garden floor. Use straw or pine needles as mulch to keep berries off the soil.
Lemons: Meyer lemons taste like a cross between an orange and a lemon, so they're less acidic and good for sorbets or lemon curd. Dwarf Meyer lemon trees can be grown in a 12-inchwide container. Bring the tree inside during winter, and its fragrant flowers will continue to bloom. Be patient: The trees yield only about three lemons the first season but twice as many the following year.

Mint Plant chocolate mint -- it's unbeatable in mint ice cream. Mint isn't picky; it will grow in sun or shade, as long as the soil is moist. It's also an aggressive herb, so keep it in check with regular pruning.

Food Lover's Garden: Grow Your Own Cocktails

Cocktails
Mix up summer drinks with these fresh herbs and veggies.
Celery: Try Tall Utah celery, which grows easily in planters and will taste great in a Bloody Mary. Harvest just the outer stalks at first; the inner stalks will continue to ripen and will be ready to pick within 14 days.
Lavender: Hearty Hidcote and Munstead lavenders are well suited for containers. Muddle 1 to 2 tablespoons of lavender and mix an aromatic drink with vodka, elderflower liqueur and a splash of lemon juice (be sure to double-strain). Lavender needs no love -- you can use poor soil, forget the fertilizer and skip the water, and it will still thrive and bloom twice a season.
Cucumbers: Marketmore cucumbers make a refreshing, slightly sweet addition to summer drinks; muddle one into a gin and tonic, or simply drop a few slices into ice water. Cucumber plants are prolific producers. Start just one in a whiskey barrel with a trellis, and you’ll have plenty of cukes all summer.
Lemon verbena: Add fragrant lemon verbena leaves to simple syrup, or rub one or two around the rim of a cocktail glass for a burst of flavor. Pick lemon verbena leaves in the morning, when they have the highest concentration of oil and are the most flavorful. Water the plant well, and it will grow until the first frost. Hang-dry extra sprigs to use throughout winter.

Mint: Spearmint is ideal for mojitos; it's not candy-sweet like peppermint. Try adding whole leaves to pitchers of iced tea or muddling them in individual glasses for a more intense flavor. It's fast growing, so it's best confined to containers. A 12-inchwide planter of mint will yield a generous bunch every week.

Food Lover's Garden: Grow Your Own Stir Fry

Stir-Fry
Homegrown ingredients will make your wok really sizzle.
Bok choy: Plant baby bok choy, which grows quickly and has tender, sweet leaves that are tasty in a stir-fry. Bok choy is best grown from seed. Weed out seedlings that are maturing slowly to help the others sprout faster. Each seed will yield one bunch.
Eggplants: Japanese eggplants are virtually seedless and ripen a bit faster than the classic Italian variety. They're also less bitter, so you can throw them right into the wok without salting them first. They need a full season to grow; speed things up by skipping the seeds and starting with a well-formed plant.
Onions: Tender scallions are easy to grow and are ideal for quick-cooking methods like a stir-fry. You'll get only one scallion per plant or seed, so after you pick one, immediately cut off the white root end and set it back into moist soil: It'll regenerate within three weeks.
Peas: Plant sugar snap peas rather than traditional snow peas: Even after sugar snap peas are cooked, they retain a satisfying crunch, and they’re less stringy and papery than snow peas. Sugar snap peas grow to amazing heights, so outfit your plot with a six-foot-tall bamboo stake.

Bell peppers: Red, orange and yellow bell peppers are sweeter than the usual green variety. And they're a relative bargain: At the grocery store, brightly colored bell peppers are often much more expensive. Like eggplants, bell peppers take all summer to mature. To jump-start the process, avoid seeds and purchase small plants.

Food Lover's Garden: Grow Your Own Snacks

Snacks
Preserve your produce at the end of summer and nibble on pickles all winter.
Dill: Fernleaf dill plants are more compact than the grocery store variety and last longer into the growing season. Keep dill separated from other herbs, especially fennel; it tends to cross pollinate, resulting in wacky hybrids.
Carrots: Scarlet Nantes carrots are sweet from top to tip and have barely any core, so they're ideal for pickling. They grow to about six inches; to get uniform-size carrots, sow seeds in a tightly packed line. Once the seeds sprout, weed out the stragglers, leaving one carrot every five inches.
Green beans: Haricots verts, the skinny French green beans, fit perfectly into standard canning jars. Wait until evening temperatures are solidly in the 60s before sowing these seeds, which won't withstand cold nights. Once it's hot out, the beans grow quickly.
Cucumbers: Versatile medium-size Kirby cucumbers are great in most dill or bread-and-butter pickle recipes. Pick cucumbers during chilly morning hours (hence the saying "cool as a cucumber"), and make sure to harvest when they're uniformly green, before they turn yellow on the vine.

Green tomatoes: Evergreen tomatoes are medium size, firm and considered to be the best-tasting green tomato around. They’re also delicious fried or on a sandwich. As with all tomato plants, you should use a six-foot wooden stake for support.

Food Lover's Garden: Grow Your Own Tacos

Lettuce:Plant romaine, which is nice and crunchy in tacos and surprisingly easy to grow. Just position the lettuce near tomatoes or other tall-growing plants to provide some shade and to keep the leaves from wilting in warm weather. And be sure to keep the soil evenly moist.
Chiles: Jalapenos are a gardener's delight: Given full sun, a single pepper plant will produce a bumper crop. They don’t need a lot of space; they tend to grow in small, tightly knit formations. If you plant hotter habaneros, wear gardening gloves when tending and picking: The oils can burn your skin and eyes—ruining a perfectly nice day in the garden.
Cilantro: Slow Bolt cilantro withstands heat better than typical cilantro. The herb grows quickly from seed and goes to seed just as fast -- about three weeks. It won't last long under a hot summer sun, so sow a few seeds or plants each week.
Tomatillos: Sweet green tomatillos are great for salsa verde: Broil a few, chop, and mix with onions, garlic, adobo sauce and cilantro. You’ll know they’re ready to harvest when
the papery husks split open.

Growing tip: Unless noted, all plants need 6 to 8 hours of sun each day and a thorough watering every 3 to 4 days.

Food Lover's Garden :Grow Your Own Pizza

Pizza
Finish a homemade pizza with toppings straight from your backyard.
Chives: Once planted, chives return year after year, so you'll always have some to sprinkle on pizza come summer. Garlic chives add nice, subtle garlic flavor. The plant’s white flowers are also edible.
Basil: The newer compact basil Summerlong doesn't get as leggy as the traditional Genovese variety. Snip off any flower buds before they bloom to keep the leaves tender.
Tomatoes: Grow romas instead of the classic beefsteak variety: They're sweeter and better for making tomato sauce. And plant some Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, too. They'll add color to your garden -- and your pizza. Avoid buying plants that already have flowers or fruit: They're too mature and might not adjust to your soil.
Arugula: Plant the Sylvetta variety, which has extra-peppery flavor. Like all arugula, it grows easily from seed; the first batch will be ready to harvest in about 35 days. Don’t waste time picking it leaf by leaf -- cut off the top two-thirds of the plant, and new leaves will appear in two weeks.

Oregano: Try the spicier Greek type: It thrives in a dry, sunny location. The plants will keep growing until the first frost and sometimes even into winter. One or two plants will produce more than enough herbs for the season.