Comments on: Heat-Tolerant Vegetables and Herbs You Can Grow All Summer Long https://gardenbetty.com/heat-tolerant-vegetables-herbs/ Gardening made easy, life made simpler. Sun, 15 Jun 2025 22:58:37 +0000 hourly 1 By: Ginger https://gardenbetty.com/heat-tolerant-vegetables-herbs/comment-page-1/#comment-75255 Sat, 14 Jun 2025 20:59:33 +0000 https://gardenbetty.com/?p=61587#comment-75255 Thank you, Garden Betty!

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By: Dan Hemenway https://gardenbetty.com/heat-tolerant-vegetables-herbs/comment-page-1/#comment-75253 Sat, 14 Jun 2025 15:39:57 +0000 https://gardenbetty.com/?p=61587#comment-75253 Nice one. In areas that receive light or no frost, there are a whole battery of perennial vegetables. I was still learning about some when a health event occassioned out move to my daughter’s place in Vermont. Several, in this newsletter, are perennial, as you know, and you mentioned others lately. A number of perennial vegetables such as peppers and lima beans have been annualized by plant breeders for the tropics. I found it useful in north-central Florida to interplant annual temperate zone vegetables in moringa. I grew biennials such as broccoli over winter and accommodate herbaceous tropical perennials such as Gynura procumbens (a viney plant used as a potherb) as understory for summer harvest. I’m surprised that you did not include Lima bean in the list. (One of the annualized tropical perennials. ECHO in North Ft. Meyer Floria was distributing a vining variety called something like “Seven Year”, which retained perennial habit, and may still do so. Cacti in the Opuntia genus are a perennial vegetable (tuna or tona) and also produce edible fruit and can serve as a living fence. There are species that are native in North America as far north as the Dakotas–J L Hudson Seedsman offered it at one time–the current owner may still know of a source of seed. He offers only one species this year–from Texas. Vacationing in the Florida Keys, my daughter picked a gallon or two of fruit which my wife utilized as an ingredient in in a sort of key lime pie (possibly sour orange, which we had in abundance). The pie was delightfully purple. Prickley pear (Opuntia spp. fruit) are an excellent source of dietary potassium. Eric Toensmeir’s book Perennial Vegetables has a number of perennial temperate zone candidates that handle heat. (In general, except for interplanting specific annual vegetables, it is wise to keep the perennial garden separate from the annual garden, due to the need for different soil management strategy options. One other thought, Anna, a student in my online permaculture design course living in South Africa, interplanted winter vegetables in the lanes between grape trellises. (Winter was their rainy season.) It now occurs to me that somewhat drought & heat tollerant vegetables could be interplanted with her grapes in the South Africa hot, dry summer. The vines would provide beneficial shade. Vegetable crops would need to be harvested before it is time to harvest grapes. One would need to do trials to see how/if the vegetables affect grape yields, especially considering the dryness of the summer. Possibly removable containers would be optimal, elimating disturbance of the grape roots. Now I’m thinking that growing a buckwheat crop in the lanes between grapes could be cut, Fukuoka style (in full bloom), to provide high phosphorous mulch with heat tollerant vegetables in containers on top.

Sorry. I get thinking about this stuff and can’t stop.

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