17 Vegetables You Can Grow When It’s Hot

If it is really hot where you live, there are still a ton of things that you can grow in your garden. So today I'm going to tell you my favorite heat loving plants for this summer garden so that you don't have a bear garden this summer. And I don't either. If we haven't met yet. My name is Nicole Johnsey Burke. I'm the owner of Gardenary. We're on a mission to get everybody gardening, including you, even if it's really hot where you live. So listen, when I started my business, I was in Houston, Texas. And I don't know if you've ever been to Houston, Texas in July, but it's hot, it's very hot, and it's also extremely humid. When I first started gardening there, I thought I would never, ever garden in the summer. In fact, when I started my business in 2015, I met with another business owner and I said, so you pretty much don't work in the summers, right? You just kind of close up everybody's garden. And he looked at me and was like, of course not. We are running a business here. We plant everybody's gardens every summer. And I was like, wait, what? So he kind of like put the challenge down, right? Like I couldn't like close up all my clients gardens if he wasn't closing his. And so I started learning how to grow even in the most extreme temperatures. So inside my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival, I call this the hot season. The hot season is when the temperatures, the average high temperature every Single day passes 85. In fact, it's up in the 90s every single day. And here's a trick. Your low temperatures are rarely coming below 70 degrees at night. So it's not just hot during the day, it's actually still warm at night. So a lot of people, a lot of gardeners try to grow what we call quintessential plants, quintessential garden plants in the middle of the hot season. And then they think it's all their fault and they don't have a green thumb because none of those plants work. That was my case as well. I tried to grow tomatoes my first summer in Houston and it was a big fat fail. So I learned the hard way. And maybe you have too. But in this episode, I want to tell you some plants that love it when it's hot. So if you live in a climate where you get really, really hot weather in the middle of the summer, it doesn't mean you have to close up the garden. It means you have to switch your plants so the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the beans, the squash, the zucchini. The cucumbers. Did I say cucumbers twice? The beans. Did I say beans twice? Let's start that list if we're good. Okay. So the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the beans, the squash, the zucchini, all of those quintessential garden plants, they will not thrive in a hot season. They need the nighttime temperatures to come down into the 60s, and they also need the day temperatures not to be in the high 90s for a long period of time. You may still have green living plants from those plants and during the hot season, but they will stop fruiting and flowering. Trust me, I know this firsthand. So instead of trying to push your luck and bring in shade, cloth and water, water, water to keep those plants alive when it's super hot, you want to switch your garden to a new kind of plant. When it's so hot in your garden, you want to be sure you're going to have at least 60 to 90 days in that hot season for it to be worth it. Otherwise, you just kind of hang on in like the two or three weeks when it's super hot, and then those quintessential warm season plants will pick back up and keep growing. But if you got a significant portion of your summer where it's going to be two to three months of really hot weather, then you'd want to consider completely switching your garden over to these plants instead. Now, if you know my garden method, I love to categorize plants this way. Leaves, then roots and then fruit. And so we're going to do that for the hot season garden as well. So first, let's talk about the leaves. The leaves that grow really well when it's hot outside are first, herbs. You've got all of your typical mint plant family herbs. You've got rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage, and of course, basil. So all kinds of basil. Literally, any basil you want to grow is going to thrive in the middle of a really hot season. So all those herbs are a. Yes, you can grow them. You don't need to over water them, and they will thrive in a hot summer. They actually all originated in the Mediterranean, so they're used to hot climates. They're used to not having a ton of water. So all those herbs are a big guess for the hot season. Now, what about salad greens? Because most salads that we know, they love cool weather, right? So it's going to be a little bit harder to find some greens that will grow for you in a Hot season, but there are plenty to go around. So first up is arugula and mizuna. These are both in the kale, the brassica plant family. And even though they love to grow when it's cool, they also will still grow under shade when it's hot. So if you've got tall plants growing, and I'll get to those in just a second, you can have arugula and mizuna growing right underneath those in the shade. You will have to replant every 45 or so days because they'll start to bolt as it gets hot. But you will get those greens. More greens are kale and Swiss chard. These plants are biennials, which means they like to last in the garden for two years, which means they don't want to die, which means they will keep growing even when it's hot, just because they do not want to die. And so kale and Swiss chard are two greens that I've seen last for years in my clients gardens in Houston. In fact, all throughout this book, you're going to see lots of pictures of kales and Swiss chards that made it through a summer. In fact, this particular garden on the back of my book, Kitchen Garden Revival, this Swiss chard, these kales, this was May of 2019, and I had planted these plants in January of 2018. So literally, a year and a half later, all the same plants are still thriving. Kale and Swiss chard, not the little lettuces, but the kale and Swiss chard was still there. You can also grow some like, I don't know, like, not as typical greens, things like Malabar spinach, that's a vining green. The taste is, shall we say, acquired. But it is beautiful to grow and it is very nutritious. It also has these little berries on it that are very nutritious. It's like a succulent kind of lettuce, or not lettuce. It's not a lettuce, let's be honest. But it kind of has a succulent feel to it and taste to it. But you can cook it down, put it in smoothies, you know, you can use it. We're being flexible here. There's also something called longevity spinach. It's not spinach at all, but it is a lettuce that will last even when the temperatures are a little bit or a lot warmer. So those are the greens, those are all the leaves, all the herbs, and then all of those lettuces are like, I should say less than, like abnormal or no. Not abnormal, creative kinds of greens. All right, so they're not really lettuces, but they're creative ways to get our greens in. I forgot to mention chives, too, when I was talking about herbs. Chives are another herb that will do fantastic through the hot season. And also bay laurel. So bay is grown as a tree or a bush, and bay loves warmer temperatures. So if you want to grow that as a bush in your landscape or in a pot, you could have bay all hot summer long. So those are the leaves. Let's talk about the roots. So the roots you can grow throughout the hot season are things like sweet potatoes and ginger. And I believe turmeric probably would last through the summer, too. Sweet potatoes originated in really hot climates, and so they absolutely can last through the hottest climates that you have the hottest summers. Sweet potatoes can be started by just literally taking a sweet potato and burying it in the soil. Or you can grow slips, and that's just putting a sweet potato in water and letting little leaves grow off the sides of that sweet potato, slicing down the side. Bring the root and the leaf with you, and then plant those out, and they'll each become sweet potato plants that'll grow 5, 6, 7 sweet potatoes each right in the dirt, even when it's super hot. Ginger is similar. Ginger needs a really nice, long, hot summer. So you can either start it indoors or you can put it out as a plant when summer's starting for you, and then it's going to love that really long, hot day. That's the kind of weather that ginger thrives in. So you will dig up the rhizomes at the end of the summer, right before you hit frost or it gets colder. You're going to let that grow all throughout the hottest part of the year. So those are the leaves and the roots. Oh, by the way, sweet potatoes make leaves as well. And so you can actually eat the leaves from your sweet potatoes and use those in salads and sautes, things like that. So it's like a multipurpose plant. You get the root and you get the leaf. But finally we've got fruit, and there is still fruit. There's fruiting plants, so not really tomatoes, but there are other plants in that same family that we can eat when it's hot. So hot peppers. The name fits. I don't know what it is, but it's like spicy stuff likes hot weather. That's kind of crazy and weird, but it's true. Spicy stuff likes hot weather, and spicy peppers love hot weather. In fact, they thrive in it. So all kinds of hot peppers just, I mean, if you, you know, if you're that kind of guy, that girl who just loves like the ghost pepper challenge, then you're gonna, you could just fill your garden with ghost peppers and they'll love, love, love it when it's so hot, when you feel like you're going to die outside, that's when your peppers are happiest. So peppers. Another one is eggplants. So eggplants are in the same family, the Solanaceae family, and they love it when it's hot, too. Another plant that loves it when it's hot is tomatillos. So instead of tomatoes, you're going to switch over to tomatillos. These are going to vine and grow like that as well. And they, where they just are so beautiful, they can cover a trellis. You need to have at least two tomatillo plants in the garden at once because they fertilize, they pollinate one another. Not fertilize, they pollinate one another. You would need that cross pollination between plants. So tomatillos, eggplant and hot pepper, all from the Solanaceae family. Those all go together. Then you can also grow okra. Okra loves it when it's hot and it thrives and it will grow and grow and grow some more. So if you like okra, I do like pickled okra and I also like okra and gumbo, so there's that. So if you can find a place in your heart for okra, then okra will love to find a place in your garden. Now, there are still some better fruits. I mean, okra is not bad. I don't mean to, you know, offend her. But there are also some sweet fruits that love the hot weather. And one is cantaloupe, or I think it's called musk melon. So muskmelon will thrive in the heat. It's amazing. But you plant it by seed or by plant on the edge of your bed, it will vine and just cover the ground. And it really doesn't mind it when the, when the temperatures grow up. There's also another plant in that same family in the gourd family called Armenian cucumber. So this is when we stop growing just normal cucumber, but you can grow Armenian cucumbers and they're a little bit longer, a little bit bigger, and they've really adjusted. They're able to keep going and growing during the really hot weather. And there's a couple of other gourds as well. So your thing you're looking for is a type of fruit that can last, that looks. That says it's able to produce fruit even when the temperatures are in the high 90s. And then there's also this bean that we grow when it's really hot. It's called the yard long bean. Others are known as, like, a Thai bean, I think is a name I've seen. And this is basically. I think it originated in, like, Southeast Asia. But it's a bean that literally is long, like a yard long. I don't think it's actually a yard, but it's at least a half a yard, like, 18 inches long. You guys, this is a really cool plant to grow, and it actually thrives and loves it when the temperatures are hot. One more is the BlackBerry. So in Houston, this was my revelation is like, the blackberries in Houston were so delicious. In fact, I used to bring my kids to this little farm right in the city, and this guy just had rows and rows and rows of blackberries growing in his backyard, and they were the most delicious thing. So I started growing these for clients, too. And, man, I don't know if I've tasted blackberries better than those that I picked right in the middle of the summer in people's backyards in the heat of Houston, Texas. So if you're looking for something that's a little bit more tasty than okra and that maybe your kids or your family or people be a little bit more excited to eat, BlackBerry is the thing. You need to grow these as vines and as plants. You can put them up along a panel trellis. And each and every year that you'll get new canes growing up the trellis, and those new canes will be what produces fruit for you. And then the next year, new canes will come up. And that was just a magical moment to see how delicious that fruit could be coming even in such a hot time. My kids were, like, panting and just dying and sweating to death. But then we just sat in the car and ate buckets and buckets of blackberries. It was pretty magical. So don't close up your garden this summer, all right? Just because it's hot outside, just because you don't want to be outside doesn't mean there aren't a ton of plants that want to be out in your garden and growing. The worst thing you can do for your garden this summer when it's really hot is let it go bare. That is going to completely ruin your garden soil. Your garden soil is going to dry up, it's going to lose its nutrients, and there's a high chance that weeds are going to come in later. So don't have a bare garden this summer. Fill it up. Worst case scenario, plant the whole thing with basil. Next case scenario, plant the whole thing with sweet potatoes. Final scenario, just plant the whole thing with cantaloupe or musk melon. Whatever you do, don't leave your garden bare this summer, even when it's hot. Protect your garden. If you want to be inside, then protect your garden soil. That stuff is worth gold. It's so important to your garden, so you don't want to let it be bare when it's so extreme with the temperatures outside. All right, if you love this episode, you're going to absolutely love the Gardenary Calendar. Because in that we tell you when to plant everything in your garden. Go to gardenary.com calendar. You can download it for free. You're going to put in two dates and then we tell you all the rest. So this will help you know when to plant what and when to know when your hot season is on its way. If you want to learn more about Growing the Gardenary Way, you can check us out@gardenary.com and on all the socials at Gardenary Company. Thanks so much for listening and watching the Grow youw Self Podcast. If you want to go deep, get both my books Kitchen Garden Revival to set up your garden and leaves, Roots and Fruit to plant it full of leaves, roots and fruit. No matter the season. I'll see you next time on the Grow youw Self podcast. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered on Apple podcasts on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more, you can go to gardenary.com podcast.