Summer vegetables like tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers give you a boost of fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants to support your health. Choosing in-season produce may improve flavor, lower cost, and help maximize nutrient intake.
In the summertime, shopping for in-season vegetables helps ensure that you’re getting nutritious, delicious, and cheap produce. So, whether you’re planning a backyard barbecue, looking for a healthy snack, or simply putting together a quick weeknight meal, these six summer vegetables deserve a spot in your grocery cart over the next couple months.
Zucchini
, or green summer squash, is low in calories and rich in vitamin C, potassium, fiber, antioxidants, and more. This vegetable offers a tender texture and mild flavor, particularly when you purchase them during the summer months and choose smaller, more slender zucchini.
How to add them to your diet: Zucchini are easy to use in many dishes—you can eat them raw, grill them, roast them, or use a spiralizer to turn them into zucchini noodles.
Tomatoes
With over 25,000 varieties of colors ranging from red and orange to green and purple, tomatoes are heat-loving produce that reach their peak in the summer.
Tomatoes deliver vitamin C, potassium, and lycopene, an antioxidant that may help protect against heart health issues and other chronic diseases. For even greater benefits, cook or pair tomatoes with a healthy fat to boost the amount of lycopene your body can absorb.
Bell Peppers
—which come in orange, yellow, red, or green colors—deliver crunch, natural sweetness, and only about 24 calories per pepper.
They’re also a great source of essential micronutrients—one medium bell pepper offers over 100% of the recommended daily value (DV) of vitamin C for adults. Plus, bell peppers contain vitamin A, vitamin B6, multiple minerals, and antioxidants that help protect cells from damage. Try adding them to salads, fajitas, sandwiches, or stir-fries.
How to store and preserve them: If you want to stock up while peppers are in season, freezing is one of the easiest ways to preserve them (though they will lose some crispness). Pickling is another option.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers consist of about 96% water, so they can provide extra hydration in the hot summer months. Though they’re not as nutrient-dense as some other vegetables, cucumbers deliver small amounts of vitamin K, potassium, and magnesium. They’re also rich in antioxidant and anti-inflammatory plant compounds and are fantastic for maintaining healthy skin.
Okra
Okra is more of a classic vegetable in Southern cooking and less well known around the rest of the country, but that doesn’t mean okra should be overlooked. It tastes similar to eggplants and is a nutrient-rich addition to meals. It offers vitamin C, vitamin K, and calcium, along with small amounts of protein and fiber. These nutrients help lower cholesterol and blood pressure levels, fight IBS, and potentially fight some cancers.
Corn
Fresh corn is a summer staple for backyard barbecues. With a sweet flavor and crisp texture, corn delivers health-boosting nutrients, such as fiber, B vitamins, vitamin C, and potassium. It also contains lutein and zeaxanthin, which are antioxidants that support eye health. Its nutrients support heart health, a flourishing gut microbiome, and weight management, making it a healthy addition to your diet. While many people enjoy corn on its own, it tastes great added to salads, salsas, soups, grain bowls, and dips.
Why Choosing In-Season Vegetables Is Best
Whether it’s from a farmers’ market, a grocery store, or your own garden, eating produce that’s in season can be a great way to meet your nutritional goals. That’s because in-season produce has some specific benefits:
Greater Nutrition: Produce loses some of its vitamins and minerals over time, so the closer you can eat something to when it was harvested, the more nutrient-dense it should be.
Lower Cost: When a certain fruit or vegetable is in season, it’s more widely available and the price subsequently goes down.
Better Taste: Produce grown during its natural season usually spends less time being transported to your local grocery store, and its taste and texture are more consistent.
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