It is hot people! I mean seriously the heat around these parts is absolutely awful! It’s not JUST the heat but the humidity offers little help to the situation. The garden is moaning and groaning just the same as we are. Many of our spring crops have died or became unproductive and have been pulled. Others succumb to disease and you know they had to go! So our garden beds look a bit bare after weeding. It can be a bit discouraging. We are in those dog days of summer where it’s so hot that many plants just will not grow – so what do you do? Over the next few weeks we will be exploring this topic by sharing with you what we have done to work with the summer heat.
Plant Heat Tolerant Plants
Believe it or not there are plants that flourish in the summer heat and humidity. We got smart this year and anticipated a need for summer lettuces and we researched just what would grow in ninety plus degree weather. We found many options out there! This does take a moderate amount of planning since waiting till the heat is upon you is simply too late. We planted several heat tolerant leafy greens in the spring with everything else and they did all right I guess you could say until the weather hit eighty-five degrees. At that point these plants just took off! Making it clear that heat is what they love.
Among other heat tolerant plants are beans. We planted so many varieties of beans this year from Oriental Yard Long Beans to Garbanzo beans! We were more impressed with some than others but the key is that they grew in the heat!
We also planted lots and lots of okra. Of these we planted three different types and all are holding up very nicely to the dog days of summer!
Finally we planted lots of herbs and many have held their own against the summer heat such as our five varieties of Basil, Cilantro, Thyme, and Rosemary.
Check back with us next week as we continue our series on working with the summer heat. Till then stay hydrated and try not to get discouraged – we can do this!