The Global Kitchen Garden: 25 Plants You Need to Grow (and Cook) Now

The classic kitchen garden is a fine thing, but you don’t need us to tell you that you should be growing heirloom tomatoes, basil, and zucchini. Whether you’ve got a raised bed or even a few patio pots, you can think—and cook—globally by planting a few of these vibrant ingredients at home.

If you’re only going to change up one thing in your kitchen garden, let it be herbs: They add tons of flavor without taking up much space. Best of all, most will grow like weeds.

PERILLA (shiso; Perilla frutescens) is a slightly minty herb common in Japanese and Korean cooking; the frilly purple variety (shown above) is interesting enough to grow as a foliage plant. It grows easily from seed, and makes a great wrapper for Korean lettuce wraps (aka ssam).

LEMONGRASS (Cymbopogon citratus) is a robust plant that’ll bring your Thai and Filipino cooking to life. Find it in garden centers, and take a cutting to bring indoors over winter in areas that get frost. Slice it up to add to your favorite tom yum recipe; smash and smear it onto pork chops.

VIETNAMESE CORIANDER (rau ram; Persicaria odorata) hates cold weather, but can be grown indoors. Buy it in the produce aisle at Vietnamese markets, sprout the stems in water, and add it to salad rolls and pho.

THAI BASIL (Ocimum basilicum ‘Siam Queen’) can be started from cuttings, but better-stocked nurseries also carry starts. It adds freshness to vermicelli bowls, spring rolls, and Thai curries.

MEXICAN OREGANO (Lippia graveolens) isn’t actually an oregano at all (it’s a verbena), but it grows lushly all over the Southwest, where it’s native. Add it to beans, pozole, and carnitas.

Melons, cucumbers, and squash (members of the cucurbit family) are easy to grow, and abundant at harvest. If you plant them in stages you’ll have a summer’s worth of crops to add to salads, pickles, and desserts. There are tons of interesting melons, cucumbers, and squash out there; all grow from vines and do best when trellised. Here are a few versatile varieties to consider.

‘WHITE SUN’ (Korean hybrid; Cucumis sativus) cucumber is a foot long with tender skin, great for slicing and pickling. Look for starts at Korean grocery stores or grow from seed. It’s a natural for making cucumber kimchi, but versatile enough to use in Russian salads and Indian raita.

CALABACITA (C. pepo) or Mexican grey zucchini (it’s really more a pale green) grows like any other zucchini: lavishly. Stew it with pork, saute with corn, or use it as a substitute for zucchini in savory Korean pancakes (hobak buchim). Grows easily from seed, or find starts at nurseries.

BURPEE’S ‘AMBROSIA HYBRID’ CANTALOUPE (Cucumis melo var. cantalupensis) is about the closest thing you can grow to the legendary ‘Yubari King’ melon, flavor-wise; that variety is prized throughout Japan but can only be grown in Yubari, Hokkaido. This is a deeply fragrant cantaloupe variety, heavenly in a salad with prosciutto and finely sliced lovage leaves.

CHAYOTE (Sechium edule) is a crisp, mildly flavored gourd. The fruit and shoots are both edible, lovely in South Asian curries and Filipino chicken tinola. Grow it by planting a store-bought fruit—just bury 4-6 inches deep with the pointy end angled up toward the soil surface.

SHISHIGATANI SQUASH (Cucurbita maxima) is an attractive and sweet heirloom-variety Japanese pumpkin; simmer it in dashi, fold it into custards, and use it in tempura. It grows readily from seed, and the leaves can be stewed for West African dishes like chibwabwa.

Onions and garlic are universally loved for improving the flavor of nearly everything they touch. With their grassy leaves and globes of lily-like blossoms, they improve every garden space, too.

GARLIC CHIVES (Allium tuberosum) have long, flat leaves that taste like a cross between garlic and chives. (They’re shown above; they’re the grassy plant at the front of the container.) Use the leaves in kimchi and savory pancakes, and use the mildly garlicky-sweet white blossoms as a garnish to make your food more beautiful.

‘CHESNOK RED’ GARLIC (A. sativum) originates in the Republic of Georgia. It’s fairly widely available in nurseries; plant cloves in the spring and fall. Its large heads and smooth flavor make it a superior roasting garlic, but be sure to try it in Georgian garlic chicken (chkmeruli).

ISHIKURA BUNCHING ONIONS (A. fistulosum) resemble scallions, but with much longer white stalks. Frost resistant, direct-sow seeds outdoors in spring and fall for year-round use in soups and oyakodon.

Adding sweetness and heat to a variety of dishes, chiles are a New World crop that have conquered the globe; most of the ones we eat are the same species: Capsicum annuum. For unusual varieties you’ll mostly have to start from seed, but fortunately there’s a variety suited to pretty much every region—and these here will grow well throughout much of the West. In colder climates, start them indoors a good 6-8 weeks before the last frost to give them a head start.

MAGYAR PAPRIKA PEPPER is a sweet Hungarian chile that can be dried and powdered for all your favorite gulyas and porkolt recipes. Grow it from seed, available online.

SHISHITO PEPPERS have the fun surprise of being mild except for the 1 in 10 that’s a firecracker. Find starts at nurseries, grill them over hot coal with a brush of oil, and hit them with salt (the classic Spanish preparation for the padron).

CHILE TEPIN (chiltepin) is a wild chile native to the Southwest and Mexico. They form rangy bushes, producing tiny, hot berries ready to stuff into jars of vinegar to make an easy (and potent!) hot sauce.

PIQUILLO is Spanish sweet pepper, typically roasted stuffed with brandade, cheese, or other delicious things to serve as a tapa. The chile itself is a fat, red cone, about four inches long.

AJI AMARILLO (Capsicum baccatum) is a fruity, golden-orange chile grown all over Peru. It’s hard to find them in the U.S. (typically only jarred paste is available), so if you want to try making real aji de gallina at home, you’ll have to grow your own. They need a long, hot summer.

Besides the raised beds, consider adding a flavorful tree or shrub. We all love a good chestnut or hachiya persimmon tree (hoshigaki for days), but here are a few other unexpected candidates.

CURRY LEAF (Murraya koenigii) is a shrubby tree (shown above) that will make your curries a transformative experience. It’s a tree that prefers warmer climates, and can be grown in a container from seed or root suckers; find them at nurseries.

HASKAP (honeyberry; Lonicera caerulea) is a shrubby, cool-climate honeysuckle that produces odd-looking, cylindrical blue berries that are used in Russian and Japanese cooking. (Haskap cakes are a specialty of Hokkaido.)

MAKRUT LIME (Citrus hystrix) makes a lovely container plant (the best option for areas that get frost; bring it indoors in the fall), available in better-stocked nurseries. It’s basically like Southeast Asian bay leaf: add leaves to flavor Vietnamese and Thai soups and curry pastes.

SICHUAN PEPPER (Zanthoxylum schinifolium and Z. simulans) is an airy shrub that produces the dry berries responsible for the mala (“numb-spicy”) taste of mapo tofu. Close relative Z. piperitum (sanshō) is used in Japanese and Korean cooking.

Cruciferous greens are winter-hardy, tasting best after cold temps while offering a jolt of nutrition when we’re coming out of the wintry carb fog (truly, there’s nothing like saag paneer with fresh garden greens). These varieties all grow easily from seed (order online).

BOK CHOY (Brassica rapa ssp. chinensis) and its close cousin taku choy (tatsoi) are fairly similar, with leafy greens and wide, pale stems that will hold dirt like you won’t believe (scrub them!). These are great in hotpots and braises (they’re cooked two ways, above).

GAI LAN (B. oleracea) has longer, crisp-tender stalks, making it and its kin yu choy and choy sum better for stir frying with garlic and sesame oil or steamed with oyster sauce.

NAPA CABBAGE (sui choy; B. rapa ssp. p kinensis) is a staple ingredient for kimchi and innumerable stews, but why not grow the stunning magenta varieties ‘Red Scarvithta’ or ‘Scarrossa’ for a change? They’re just as sweet as regular Napa, and their compact growth means they can be spaced loosely to maximize yield.

Whether you call it pesto, pistou, green curry, or gremolata, you can make a green sauce from whatever’s in the garden, no recipe needed.

Here’s the gist: Throw 4 or 5 cups of herbs into the food processor with 1 or 2 tablespoons of something pungent (e.g., garlic, cheese, shallots, chiles, shrimp paste); 2 to 4 tablespoons of some fat (olive oil, coconut oil, nut/seed oil, or even warm bacon fat); 2 tablespoons of something acidic (lemon/lime juice, white wine/sherry/sugar cane vinegar); and a few fat pinches of salt. Blitz it up. If you want a little more body to the sauce, add some seeds, nuts, or more cheese. This basic formula will carry you around the world, depending on what flavors you use. Makes about 1 cup.

Eastern European-ish: parsley/cilantro/dill + garlic/shallot + sunflower seed oil + lemon juice + walnuts = sauce for grilled vegetables, kebabs, and flatbread.

Southeast Asian-ish: Basil/mint/cilantro +  shallot/garlic/chile/fish sauce + lime juice + palm sugar (just a tablespoon) = sauce for grilled pork vermicelli bowls.

Most Russians spend their summers in a country cottage called a dacha, and no dacha is complete without its own ogorod, or kitchen garden. Here they grow enough food to preserve for the rest of the year; potatoes, cabbage, pumpkins, peppers, carrots, melons, berries, and everything they need for pickles are grown in these plots. Even in the U.S., heading out to the vegetable garden is part of a Russian’s DNA; in her cookbook, Kachka, A Return to Russian Cooking, Portland-based Bonnie Frumkin Morales recalls her childhood, going out to farms in the suburbs of Chicago to pick vegetables for pickling. ‘Purple Russian’ and ‘Black Ethiopian’ are wonderful Ukrainian heirloom varieties for pickling and canning.

Recipe: Pickled Green (and Red) Tomatoes

This recipe, also from Bonnie Frumkin Morales, features sorrel for a bright, green twist on borscht.

Recipe: Green Borscht

In Russia, not all vegetables get used in salads—in this recipe, horseradish adds a kick to vodka.

Recipe: Horseradish-Infused Vodka

The nursery isn’t the only place for seeds and plants. Here’s how to source seeds, hack the spice aisle, and grow from the grocery store produce section.

Seed Sites

For really specific or unusual specimens, seed sites will still be your best bet. The other benefit to buying seed is that you can do it anytime, and start them indoors if you want to get a jump on the growing season in colder climates. You can use a complete kit with grow lights or a basic domed seed tray in a sunny window. Here are a few seed sites we love:

Kitazawa Seed: best for East Asian fruits, herbs, and vegetables.

Seeds from Italy: best for Italian heirloom variety vegetables like agretti and borlotti beans.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: best overall for international heirloom variety fruits and vegetables.

Asian or Latin Grocery Stores

Sometimes smaller mom-and-pop stores have a little rack of plant starts out front in the spring. Just take them home and plant them right in your containers or garden beds.

Spice Aisle And Bulk Bins

You already buy whole-seed spices like cumin, coriander, and fenugreek for South Asian and African recipes. (Find them in the bulk section for the best prices and freshest stock.) You can plant these seeds as though they came out of a tiny, expensive paper envelope. You can also do this with your favorite dry beans.