Don’t let the idea of a trellis put you off. You can grow pole beans along a fence or railing or up some string or twine. The only caveat for having a continual harvest of beans is that you actually have to harvest them. If you leave them on the plant, it will stop setting more pods. The smaller tomatoes—cherry, grape, and pear, for example—are some of the hardiest varieties. They can be grown in the garden or in containers, staked or allowed to sprawl or hang. There’s no wrong way to grow cherry tomatoes. Plus you don’t even need to slice them—a low-maintenance bonus. OK, you do need to make sure your garlic gets watered and a little food, but seriously—that’s it. Animals don’t bother it. You don’t have to stake or prune. You can even save a few bulbs from your harvest to plant again in the fall so that you don’t even have to order more. Cutting off the garlic scapes to encourage bulb growth also gives you the bonus of a flavorful stalk to add to your cooking, used like a green onion. Salad greens such as lettuce, arugula, mizuna, and spinach can all be grown in the garden or in containers. Harvesting just a few leaves from each plant, known as the “cut and come again” method, will extend your harvest for several weeks. (You’ll get a much longer season if you succession plant.) Some salad greens will bolt in hot weather, but lettuce, mizuna, and arugula can be grown throughout the summer, especially in containers, if you provide some shade. The cooking greens—kale, chard, collards, and the like—just keep chugging along. Harvest the outer leaves, and the plants will fill right back in. Like fresh-eating greens, all they require is regular water and occasional fertilizer. This is another vegetable that is rarely bothered by pests or diseases. Hot peppers do well in containers, although they can get heavy when they are loaded with fruits and may need staking. Herbs do well in containers but can be tricky to grow indoors because they need a lot of sunshine and a container large enough for their roots to spread out. (And mint will spread like crazy, so you want to keep that in a container anyway.) You may have better luck indoors with perennial herbs, such as rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage. Tender basil, dill, and cilantro are easy to start from seed or seedlings but will require more water than hardy perennials. Chives will be fine indoors or out. You can grow parsley as an annual in a pot or in its own garden patch and let it reseed itself, as it’s a biennial. You will still get some leaves during its seed-setting year, but they’ll be more spiky than full and less numerous. Bay is most often grown in a container, started from seedlings rather than seed, as it’s a slow-growing tree.
