Have you ever found yourself giving up on your garden in the face of super high temperatures? Don’t! We’ve got you covered with 9 techniques that will help keep your fruit and vegetable garden healthy and productive throughout the summer season.
We’ll talk about techniques ranging from succession cropping to selecting strategic vegetable varieties to proper watering and even how to make shade anywhere in your garden.
Let’s get into it!
Great Seed Companies to Find Early Maturing Varieties:
Johnny’s: https://www.johnnyseeds.com
Migardener: https://migardener.com/
Tomato Supply Company: https://tomatogrowers.com/
#gardening #homesteading #growyourownfood
28 Comments
Great tips! Here in our tropical climate we deal with two real seasons. Hot and dry (8 months) and hot and wet. I grow most food in-ground but have about 20% in pots. Thanks
You are seriously quickly becoming one of my new fave YouTube gardeners- your videos are so helpful esp because i live in the high desert extreme climate of Eastern Washington and most gardener channels do not have the no rain extreme sun, even this video gave me some tips i have never heard before & ive been gardening for years! Thank you thank you thank you for representing us hot gardeners 😅
Mulch question for you- my yard has no trees for leaves, all i have is plenty of dead arborvitae around. Would that work as a mulch? Ive tried searching it up and noone has seemed to have tried it 😮
I live in NE Alabama, zone 7b. We only occasionally hit triple digit temps. I have always pruned the bottom leaves off my indeterminate tomatoes. It hasn't stopped blight. To change up this year, I am planting an early crop of determinate tomatoes. Then, I am growing an indeterminate crop later.
Your comments are extremely useful and sensible. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise. I live in a very hot country and was pruning my tomatoes as suggested in other videos. Now I know this is wrong, or at least it depends on other factors. Your tips are truly amazing, my friend.
Thanks for this great video full of suggestions that are clearly based on experience and not just received wisdom. I live in Northern California where we get literally zero rain or afternoon cloud cover June thru September, temps routinely in the 90s and sometimes 100s. I really resonated with your suggestions about the different "seasons" of summer, about watering, about how people underestimate just how much mulch they need, about watering slowly, and about how "full sun" might actually mean "partial shade" for your climate. My southerly neighbors have giant trees and no part of my garden gets more than 7 hours of sun even at midsummer, way less in March or September. Still growing plenty of "full sun" plants.
Some of my own learnings:
– I no longer plant in containers or even raised beds. This is a luxury that not everyone has, I know, but I find that all of my plants are more resilient in the ground. We have quite clay-rich soils so that helps a lot, too.
– Seed selection for heat- and drought-tolerant varieties. For example, I had almost no luck with lettuce until I discovered "Freckles", which I can grow into June with very little supplemental water and very limited pest issues.
– Growing perennials where possible. Anything that has more then one season to develop a robust root structure will be more heat- and drought-tolerant in future years. For example, I grow garden sorrel for leafy greens year-round and even in August I'm only watering once every 1-2 weeks.
love seeing the ground cherries at 6:42! one of my favorite underrepresented crops
Re: Shade for full sun plants–i'm experimenting with growing some more sun-tolerant vines on tall stakes on the western ends of my tomato rows to provide increasing afternoon shade as the season grows hotter. I'm trying it with malabar spinach this year given their high heat tolerance, but if they don't do well I may also experiment with pollinator attractants like sunflowers for the same purpose.
Re: breaking up the soil in your newer beds–would you be able to sow a winter crop of hardy root veggies like daikon radishes to break up soil while getting a crop? I'm assuming given your excessively hot summers you have at least somewhat mild winters.
100% on mulching containers. Growing peppers in Southern California, it was never necessary as it never got all that hot. We moved to Western Maryland, and holy cow! I'd water in the morning and they'd be droopy by 2pm. I also used to mix in perlite for tomatoes and peppers in SoCal, but no longer do that in MD
It's too late for me this year, I can't afford more seeds, but I'm definitely going to be looking for some early producers for next year in every category. We get a LOT of days over 100 here and are already into a week straight of low to mid-90s, and I always struggle with that mid-season die-off/dormancy/flower drop in a lot of my plants.
I do have some shade cloth, but I'm with you on it being a pain, plus I don't have quite enough for everything that needs it and more hasn't really been in the budget. I'm hoping I can make it work for my tomato bed this year, if I can figure out how best to mount it on my horse-shoe shaped single line PVC trellis, though. And I planted all my peppers where they should get afternoon shade from one of my pea/bean trellises, so here's hoping. (Trying to comment on all your vids as they come out since I think that helps the algorithm? Y/N?)
I have used sheer curtains and fabric remnants from local rummage sales as shadecloth , using clothespins to secure them to baling twine rigging. Our local school is using shredded office paper as deep mulch around some of the more mature vegetable plants and it seems to be quite effective. Thanks for sharing what you have learned with the rest of us!
This is excellent advice for a gardener like me in Atlanta, GA, but I am from Minneapolis, MN, so I have no frame of reference to garden here.
Get to know your growing space. Early afternoon shade from the house is perfect for my salad greens.
Just had to relocate my most beautiful rhubarb plant out of the heat and it was only getting morning sun!
Rocking !
We are southern hemisphere Mediterranean and have 4 growing seasons, lovely mild spring Sep-Nov, scorching dry summer Dec-Feb, mild dry autumn Feb-May, cool wet winter with no frost June-Aug. Northern gardening advice based on one growing season and planting out after the last frost is just such a misfit for us. Within our country there are also different rainy seasons. Not surprisingly I struggle to find gardening advice on youtube, online or in our local library that gives accurate recommendations for when to sow and plant out and deal with our own little niche climate.
Backing you… your hot weather tips very good and real based on experience !.. In our odd climate, northern full sun is our semi to light shade, or placing beds to get sun for a few hours in the morning only. I line all my raised beds with plastic or they would desiccate, as they are 30cm high. Sunk in-ground beds rather than raised beds gave me my first successful season of leaf vegetables (chard). I dug out the beds, and placed the soil on the paths. The bed was in the shade of a building most of the day, but with open sky overhead in high summer. In winter it was a bit too dark. Grow a lot of subtropicals, south Asian and meso American plants. If you are in a slightly colder area treat them as annuals if they die off in winter when you go below 50 or 40 F. Grow most of your food in wicking beds or partially waterproof beds of some kind with a water reserve in the bottom. Use your grey water. Grey water lines from my kitchen and bathroom into the grow beds changed the face of my garden and turned the hot season scorched garden into a lush summer jungle and I can grow summer rain African vegetables like sorghum. Grow as many perennial food plants as possible whose deeper root systems can make the plant more resilient. Hedgerows keep off drying winds. Grow native food plants… of course… they will be able to cope with everything your local weather throws at them. Mulch deeply. Water on demand rather than with an irrigation system. This trains roots down into the soil. I have a website where I explore the peculiarities of growing in our odd climate. It's called greenidiom.
Thank you for your informative reply. We only have rain in winter. If we're lucky ! In my childhood it would pour for weeks on end. Now no longer. likely to rain from April through to September, our winter. Thus far we have a shower or two per week. That is sufficient to stop having to water !
Great info! I am zone 9b south Texas on the Gulf. July and August are brutal.
I grow my cool crops in part shade. Morning sun, afternoon shade, then late evening sun. It works for me.
Me again. Living mulch. Annuals such as calendula, nasturtium, sweet alyssum
Perennial Mulches comfrey , oregano,
rhubarb, thyme and white clover. I even use some native weeds here as a living mulch and purposely spread them. Dealing with such a massive area. Retains moisture, these flower so great for the pollinators, ediple flowers, keeps something in the ground and can be mowed or chopped down for mulch elsewhere or put in the compost pile.
Another recommendation for those dealing with extremely hot conditions and perennial vegetables or fruits. I have some 6L water jugs that I get from my neighbors. I drill a hole in the lid and stuff a cotton t-shirt through the hole and I usually cut it in four strips. I cut off the bottom of the water jug or just leave it kind of like a flap to cover it in case you have mosquito problems. These jugs generally dont dry up for between 3 days To 5 days at least depending on how big or small I made the hole in the lid. I bury this jusg about 10-15 cm in the ground. Each end of the old cotton t-shirt goes near a plants roots. I plant my eggplants for example really close together with this self-watering container in between them. As the plants grow they shade out the ground and require less water overall. I know it's easier to see with pictures and video but hopefully that gives somebody a good idea. There are some store bought ones but I like making my own.
Man I’m in NC and it’s been COLD! It’s end of May and cold!! Wtf!?
I'm glad i left my Bell peppers alone and not prune it. I figured it's hot right now in Phx and it will only gets hotter. My Peppers needs their leaves to helps with shade i just take off the dead leaves. I thought about using a white bedsheets for shade i am not sure if that will be effective lol
I work in a garden center in the SW desert. I constantly see people who have moved from other parts of the country and try to garden in the same way they used to. They’re perplexed when everything dies. “Full sun” is one of the common misconception of planting in our climate. In general “full sun” means morning sun/afternoon shade. In areas with full sun, I use 50% shade cloth or patio umbrellas placed to provide afternoon shade. Many plants can take the heat but not the intense UV light and end up with severe burns of foliage and trunks. Another product I like is IV Organics paint for tree trunks. It can be diluted and used as a foliage spray. It acts as “sunscreen” for your trees and plants.
Zone 10b here and a tiny balcony with like 2-3 hours sometimes 4 of morning sun and 3 hours of hot afternoon sun ☀️ Would love to see more videos on types of things that would thrive hot humid weather. Didn't know I could plant squash in shade if it's hot?!? All these "full sun" labels are throwing me off because it's so hot 🥵 in Florida 😅
Also remember to lean into growing things that thrive in heat. During a time when my tomatoes stopped producing because it was so hot, my tomatillos and peppers were going crazy and loving it.
I recently started shredding cardboard and adding it to some of my soil. Do you have any experience with this?
Great video. I am in AZ and have been contemplating shade cloth, but can't find one made in the USA, and kind of don't want the maintenance (I tried fabric scraps and the sun just bleached the crap out of them). So, I started planting under trees, or under arched trellises used around the edges of the garden instead of used as walkways, and planting more things that love the sun and grow tall to provide some mid-day shade for the plants that need it (like moringa). I wish seed packets had more complete full sun instructions, as full sun in AZ is not the same as full sun in other areas. They should define full sun as no more 6-7 hours in hot climates, otherwise you might as well be planting under a Fresnel lense. 😅 That would have saved me a lot of heartache when I was new to gardening. I am also trying to plant as many perennials as possible, I have a tree kale that survived the summer, looks really terrible, but hoping it will bounce back this winter. It has brought a lot of lady bugs into my yard by attracting aphids. LOL. I water using food grade perforated hoses by water right, have it on a timer for short periods four times a day. Longer watering did not work as well for me. I also use small clay pots with the holes plugged with bees wax, fill them part way with sand, and and an inverted juice jar as my makeshift combo/hybrid olla/water globe for my plants in containers. Hope this helps. I love your videos so far. God bless!