The term “hard” greens refers to leafy vegetables that are heartier in texture and flavor than “soft” greens like lettuce and spinach. They are usually of the Brassica family, which includes cabbage, mustard, kale, collards, bok choy, and spigarello. Although they can be eaten raw, hard greens are usually more appetizing cooked.

The term “soft” greens refers to leafy vegetables that have a more tender texture and milder flavor than “hard” greens like cabbage and kale. Soft greens include escarole, Swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, mizuna, tatsoi, arugula, and the young leaves of beets and turnips. Such greens are usually eaten raw or cooked very briefly

The term “summer squash” refers to the more than 600 squashes like zucchini, pattypan or scallop, and yellow straightneck and crookneck. They differ from their thick-skinned, hard-as-a-rock winter squash cousins in that they have thin skins (often easily pierced with a fingernail), tender flesh, and a light, slightly sweet vegetable taste that is delicate and takes well to fresh herbs, butter, good-quality oils, and other light seasonings.

Here at the Urban Edge, we grow several varieties of “stone fruit,” so-called because they contain single hard pits. Stone fruit include peaches (we offer white, yellow, and donut varieties), nectarines, apricots, cherries, plums, and pluots—a cross between a plum and an apricot. White-fleshed peaches are much sweeter and less acid than their yellow counterparts. And all stone fruits are fragrant, juicy, and utterly delicious when fully ripe and in season!

Winter squashes cover hundreds of varieties, such as acorn, butternut, buttercup, Carnival, cushaw, Honeynut, kabocha, hubbard, marrow, turban, spaghetti (including the personal-size Angel Hair), winter crookneck, and pumpkins. These squashes weigh from 1 to 50 pounds and come in astonishly diverse shapes and colors. But they all share in common a thick, outer rind and dense, dry flesh that allows them to be stored far longer than their summer squash cousins.