Hot weather vegetables

Some vegetables grow well in heat and some grow well in cool. Many parts of the country have fluctuations in the summer that accomodate both. But some areas tend to get really hot in the summer. Here is a little information about hot weather vegetables -- and cool weather vegetables, too!

If you live where summers have both cool and hot weather, you can plant lettuce to grow all summer. But if you live in a hot summer area, you might want to wait until the end of the summer to plant it as a cool weather crop. In fact, lettuce seeds will not germinate once temperatures rise past the mid 70's. In high heat, lettuces will go to seed (send up flowering stalks) before they produce much edible foliage. Once those flower spikes start to form, the lettuce juice turns milky and the flavor of the leaves becomes bitter. Lettuce, like peas and cabbage, broccoli, and a number of other crops are best planted in the late autumn and grown as a winter crop.

Excellent vegetables to grow where summers are hot – or have mixed weather – are peppers, corn, squash, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, beans of all sorts (though many string bean varieties will not set fruit when temperatures go over 85’ F), garlic, eggplant and more. Try some of those less common vegetables that cost more in the grocery stores. Unusual colored tomatoes and peppers, heirloom varieties, pickling cukes, colorful winter squashes (grown in the summer), parsnip, multi-colored Swiss chard, pineapple tomatillos and many more are perfect to tempt the gardener.

By growing the best vegetables for your climate the easier it will be to have a successful vegetable garden. In mild climates grow hot weather vegetables in the summer and save the plants that don’t handle extreme heat for a second season of winter crops.