Tips for Growing Vegetables in High Temperatures

hey guys it has been a brutal summer and a lot of us have experienced heat in our gardens like we've never experienced before and a lot of times we're left with wondering what can i do to save my plants or when is it time to just let things go and so we have had about seven weeks of near 100 degrees or above 100 degrees temperatures here in arkansas plus the humidity plus a drought of like maybe a quarter of an inch during that whole time which is not like our temperatures and our climate in general so my garden like yours probably has been stressed in a way that it's never been stressed before and so i thought you know what this is actually a good learning experience because at least i know what will not work and i know what's a little bit more resilient than i thought so i thought today i would just take you through a few things in my garden and show you what has worked and what hasn't and hopefully it'll give you some tips on some things that you can do if you have to deal with any kind of heat in your summer garden in the future first things first here i have my tomatoes and cantaloupes growing in straw bales we're kind of at the end of the season so they don't look great but i will have to say the san marzanos have produced all season but they have not been without their challenges as you can see right here we've got some issues with blossom enrot and i think that has more to do with the drought and not being able to keep these bales watered very well i do have a drip line on them but it hasn't been enough and then when we walk down here i've got pink fang tomatoes that have done really well they did not have the blossom end rot and they produced really well another thing here is the cantaloupe you can see the cantaloupe climbing on the trellises it's done really well i've harvested so many cantaloupe in fact that one is ready to harvest now so cantaloupe amazing in the heat no problem at all zinnias you see there another thing that i did is a late planting of corn as long as you keep corn watered so far it's done really well in the heat it doesn't mind the heat at all but the watering is a big deal you can see i have a lot of mulch here that was from a cover crop that i knocked down so all of that is cover crop debris there so it's doing pretty well and then of course you've got the heat workhorse in the garden which is okra definitely need to start picking some of that but okra just loves the heat so if you have any kind of heat you will want to grow okra let's see those are ready to pick right there it's beautiful so yeah okra does well and then over here black eyed peas that has been another star of the show here the black eyed peas have loved this heat they are producing so well you can see you've got a couple here that i need to pick and then they're flowering and look at all of these insects here it's like so many bees and wasps not to deter you but the black eyed peas are doing really really well now in the midst of these black eyed peas i have amish paste tomatoes which i'm going to try to get a view here where you can actually see them the amish paste tomatoes are actually growing in these tomato cages that the black-eyed peas are growing on the outside so i planted the amish paste tomatoes in the middle and then i planted my black eyed peas on both sides and here's a tip that i feel like has done really well and it's kept these amish paste tomatoes alive and hopefully they'll start producing again when the temperatures moderate a little bit but the black eyed peas have given some shade to the amish paste which i think has been very helpful in trying to keep them alive in the heat another thing that's done very well is watermelon this one is ready to pick i need to pick that one i've already harvested one crimson sweet also peppers peppers do really well in the heat there's another watermelon right there so as long as you keep moisture to these plants peppers and melons are fabulous for the heat they've done really really well and in that back raised bed i do have some more bell peppers and some tomatoes that have done well let's move on here to my arch trellises and on this particular trellis you can see i'm growing tromboncino squash if you've never heard of tromboncino squash this is a squash that i grew because it's a little bit more resistant to the squash vine borer not that it's never been affected but i've never so far had a plant actually die from it but when it is mature it's more like a butternut winter squash so i'm leaving this on the vine to mature i'm leaving that one on the vine to mature when they're really young like 12 inches these are way too big when they're really young you can pick them as summer squash so if you've had trouble with squash bugs or squash vine borers tromboncino squash is a good one to grow when you pick it young you can use it as summer squash but then you can leave it as winter squash and it's kind of a double thing but it goes crazy in the heat it will go everywhere i have pruned this trombonzino squash and this is one plant okay one i have pruned it so many times it will go nuts in the heat and then over here in these two raised beds i have sweet potatoes planted and this one is actually growing really well and it's also growing up this arch trellis sweet potatoes love the heat that's another one if you want to or you know that you're dealing with heat sweet potatoes they can take it as long as of course like anything else they stay watered they can do well let's move over here on this trellis i have a planting of cucumbers now a lot of people are noticing that their cucumbers aren't doing well in the heat and these are actually doing really well as you can tell i need to harvest those but the reason is because this was a late planting my first planting of cucumbers they already died they produced and then they started looking bad and then they died and i've learned to just expect that with cucumbers and so i plant succession plantings of cucumbers this one in particular is producing a lot as you can tell and it's been 100 degrees for like seven weeks and it's still doing well now at some point it's gonna start looking bad too so i'm gonna plant another succession planting of cucumbers so that's a way that you can kind of get around the heat and be able to get quite a bit of cucumbers out of your garden because it's a quick grower and a quick harvester moving on over here i've got this raised bed is full of peppers i'm growing for spices i have a cayenne pepper here which this is a new one for me but this is a huge cayenne and it's producing really really well in this heat and then over here i've got alma paprika that isn't it's not looking as healthy but these fruit if you've never grown almo paprika the walls are very thick so they actually make quite a bit of spice when you dry them so this is actually going to produce quite a bit of paprika for us to use in our household and then over here is the amazing two chili peppers that's what they're called and amazing two peppers and i use these for chili powder when they ripen up to red i will pick them and then i will dehydrate them and then i will grind them for chili powder for the season so peppers again whether you do spice peppers or bell peppers they don't mind the heat at all and they are really thriving in this heat a lot of times with peppers it's just a matter of being patient because they will eventually start producing when the temperatures get hot now over here has been a little bit of a frustrating thing because i did a second planting of bush beans and i covered them and as you can see insects still were able to get in the crawling ones i'm not really sure how but over here i have a second planting of squash and i've covered that one because we have the squash vine borer and i wanted to get another planting of squash and it's actually done very well in the heat i do have to go in and hand pollinate underneath the insect netting but otherwise if i hadn't have covered it in the middle of the year it would have definitely succumbed to the squash vine borer so it doesn't look pretty but it's productive as you can see right here there's the squash that i hand pollinated a couple of days ago so it's definitely to me it's worth it to be able to do this small little thing every morning to get a little bit more squash in the middle of the season what i have found though is that squash when it gets over mature and it gets really hot it doesn't tend to produce as well the younger ones will produce a little bit better so this is a succession planting and that's what again like the cucumbers i would recommend if you deal with a long hot summer succession plant some of these crops because they tend to produce a little bit better when they're younger over here has been a very disappointing year these were bush beans and it just got too hot and they dropped their flowers and then they got assaulted with pests and maybe even disease i don't know they look terrible i just haven't had a chance to to get them out i haven't gotten a single thing out of these so that was a complete crop fail as was the rest of these beans have not done well either that are on my a-frame trellis but because they are pole beans i am holding out some hope that maybe when the temperatures come down they'll start flowering and producing pods again that's the thing about a lot of these beans is that they will not produce flowers and they'll produce very few of these pods and even when they do they don't grow very fast and so i'm hoping that these will kind of come back to me but i mean they're just not doing great this all of these are black beans and i have gotten a year's supply of black beans from this side of the trellis before and i haven't harvested a single one yet so that has definitely been a fail here with these beans i've got my experimental corn patch over here i'm not sure it's going to do very well just because i don't have good irrigation over here i have some but it's not great and i don't really have a whole lot to pollinate well so i'm trying to come over here when i see the silks and just shake it to try to get some pollination going but i don't know that that's going to work well and then over here i have another planting of cucumbers this is the arkansas little leaf and if you want to tip on that these have done really well in the summer again these were a succession planting so i planted them a little bit late these are pickling cucumbers and you can see them there one thing that i really like about the arkansas little leaf is that they are parthenocarpic which means they will produce fruit on their own they don't require a pollinator so if you have trouble getting your cucumbers pollinating then this might be a variety for you to choose i think the biggest takeaways from this big garden as i walk you back to my container garden in my raised bed over near the house is that number one succession planting is a big deal don't be afraid to take out crops that are not producing for you anymore such as the squash and the cucumber bush beans they come to harvest all at once so if they come to harvest and it's too hot and they're not setting they probably won't set again but pole beans will so hang in there with them don't be too quick to rip out the pole beans because i've had a lot of harvest in september and october once those temperatures come down they'll start they'll start fruiting again so that's one thing to consider also look at shading my big garden has some dappled shade with my trees that are around it and it actually kind of helps a little bit so i don't really add a lot of shade cloth back there i will with fall crops but for my summer crops i don't need to because of that dappled shade but if you are growing in an area where you have a lot of like full sun then i would recommend you know considering some shade cloth for your crops like tomatoes even peppers that they don't mind the heat but they sometimes can have a problem with sun sculpt so i would recommend that as well so let's take a look at the containers because they've been a big challenge just for reference you may recall from an earlier video that i grow slicing tomatoes in grow bags the tomatoes in the main garden are for processing and preserving but i like to have some slicing tomatoes on occasion and i have a couple left from my original planting and on this side i have golden jubilee and on this side i have dr wishes yellow and i also did a costuluto fiorentino which is here i pruned it back very heavily because it was not producing well at all i don't know if i got a single fruit off of that one just because it shut down in the heat but it's got some flowers here i'm just giving it a little bit another another chance we'll just try it and see if it can redeem itself it did not like the heat i also have a sun gold that i took a sucker off another sungold and it's doing well and then i have a costuolito fiorentino that i took a sucker off of the original plant and you can just see the curling of these leaves it is not liking the heat at all and then over here i have the golden jubilee which you're going to see in a minute has been my star because the golden jubilee has done amazing this and this are the same age i got suckers off of those two plants at the same time rooted them at the same time transplanted them at the same time and you can see a difference in that golden jubilee compared to the costuluto fiorentino and i think it's because the golden jubilee is just so much more heat resistant if you look over here the dr wishes yellow it has also not produced well at all i'm leaving it just to give it another chance but we'll see but the golden jubilee i have gotten so many off of this all summer long and this area has had zero shade it definitely probably could have used some shade but i've had zero shade and that golden jubilee has continued to produce shout out to cali kim she sent me the seeds for this and i've been growing it for several years it's definitely a star and then the sun gold here this is my first time to grow sun gold but the sun gold is continuing to produce continuing to ripen even in 100 degree heat so to me the stars of the container plants here are the golden jubilee and the sun gold but i am hoping for maybe a later fall harvest with some of these others that i'm starting again once the temperatures come down a little bit and one last thing i have an experiment going here in my greenhouse where i'm growing sweet potatoes in this planter and i thought you know if anything can survive not only the heat of the summer but the heat of the greenhouse in the summer which i think i saw like 140 degrees it was in here it would be sweet potatoes my biggest challenge has been to keep them watered if you see a little bit of crisping there that's because i maybe didn't get them watered in time but i'm actually pretty hopeful that okay i could actually utilize my greenhouse in the summer and get something like sweet potatoes and like i said it's an experiment but so far so good one final piece of advice here is don't let the heat discourage you this has been a crazy year if you have been one of those who have had to deal with the heat more so this year than others but use it as a learning opportunity learn what worked well what you might want to do differently how you might want to prepare if this happens next season and hopefully by watching my garden it's been able to give you some information that might be helpful for you in your garden in the future and don't let it discourage you to the point where you don't tackle fall gardening the fall garden is a welcome reprieve from the summer garden and in many cases it's actually a little bit more enjoyable you're able to enjoy gardening in the coolness of autumn and then depending on your climate i mean i harvest almost all year round but especially up through december and there's nothing like harvesting from your garden in the cold of the winter when nothing is green except maybe your broccoli and your cabbage and your arugula and your carrots and i can just go on but don't let it discourage you if you just want to throw in the towel let me encourage you plant something in a fall garden and you will be glad that you did thank you for joining me and i hope this was helpful for you like and subscribe for more videos like this to help you grow more food in your garden and if you're a podcast listener be sure to check out my podcast the beginner's garden podcast where we have even more tips on how to grow your fall garden

Channel: Beginner's Garden - Journey with Jill

Views: 4,104

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Id: CFPtKNzDBWg

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022