This episode is all about what to plant for the dog days of summer ... we're talking sweet versus hot peppers, and one of our favorites for beginners: beans! We’ll also discuss how to harvest sweet potatoes, pollinate your corn and the methods you can use to grow a hanging basket to keep your garden safe from your dog. Want even more home and gardening tips? Stream some of your favorite HGTV shows on discovery+. Go to discoveryplus.com/digit to start your 7-day free trial today. Terms apply.
This episode is all about what to plant for the dog days of summer ... we're talking sweet versus hot peppers, and one of our favorites for beginners: beans! We’ll also discuss how to harvest sweet potatoes, pollinate your corn and the methods you can use to grow a hanging basket to keep your garden safe from your dog.
Want even more home and gardening tips? Stream some of your favorite HGTV shows on discovery+. Go to discoveryplus.com/digit to start your 7-day free trial today. Terms apply.
Find episode transcript here: https://dig-it.simplecast.com/episodes/summer-crops-growing-in-hot-climates-sweet-vs-hot-peppers-beans
[MUSIC PLAYING] KELLY SMITH-TRIMBLE: Hi this is Dig It! I'm Kelly Smith-Trimble. I'm a master gardener and the author of Vegetable Gardening Wisdom. I'm also the senior editorial director at HGTV.com. Let's dig right into it. This episode is all about what to plant for the dog days of summer. We're talking sweet versus hot peppers, and one of my favorites for beginners, beans.
I really want to encourage you to grow beans in your garden. Because I love growing beans. You plant them from seeds, just like these. And they grow really easily and really quickly. You can plant them now, even in the middle of summer. I'm growing three different types of beans right now, pole beans, which are tall vines and need support, half runners, which are shorter vines than pole beans, but still need a little bit of support, and bush beans, which are short and don't need a trellis at all.
So, I saw a lot of questions from people who had green pepper plants that looked really good, but weren't putting out flowers or fruit yet. So, peppers really like hot weather. And they don't start producing flowers or fruit until the weather is consistently above the 70s, probably. So if your plant looks good, if it's green, it's got leaves on it, it's just not producing fruit or flowers yet, I think that's a good sign. You just need to wait and be patient until it's warmer.
I'm growing Ichiban eggplant, which is a Japanese variety. And I know when to harvest it when the skin is really glossy and they're to size, which is, for Ichiban, about seven or eight inches long. One pest that really loves eggplant is flea beetles. They're tiny little insects on the leaves of the plants, that hop around like fleas. And they will poke holes in the leaves of your eggplant. I've sprayed neem oil for mine. And I've also just picked them off every time I see them. And my plants have done OK, despite the flea beetle damage.
Here's a question about peppers. Heather said, my sweet pepper plants grew, but didn't make any peppers. The hot peppers grew well. And I didn't notice any pests. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. It could be that you've overfertilized them. It could be too much water. Or it could just be that it's too hot.
But generally, in my experience, sweet peppers just aren't as productive as hot peppers, especially the bell varieties. I grew a couple of varieties of bell peppers this year. And I got some, but not that many, not nearly as much as I get with hot peppers. In the past, I've grown some sweet banana peppers. And those are a lot more productive. So I suggest that you try those next year.
I've noticed that a lot of people are looking for info on how to grow and how to harvest sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes like really hot weather. They grow from slips, which are rooted cuttings. You grow them a lot like you grow regular potatoes. I'm growing some in a raised bed and some in a fabric bag that's meant for growing potatoes. The plant grows above the soil, and then you harvest the tubers that are growing below the soil. I'm going to know that mine are ready to harvest when the ends of the vine start to yellow. Or, I'll have to harvest them before the first frost comes.
Now, I want to show you my corn plants. I planted the corn in midsummer for a fall harvest. And it's a variety that actually only gets about four feet tall. So, corn is pollinated a little bit differently than most plants in your garden. It's pollinated in the field by wind. The male flowers on the corn plant are called tassels. And they're at the top of the plant. And the female flowers are called silks. And they're at the bottom of the plant.
When the wind blows, the pollen falls from the tassels to the silks, to help pollinate it. But in a home garden, that may not happen. So it helps to hand pollinate. You can do that by bending or breaking off a tassel or two when they're open and full of pollen. Then, shake or swipe the tassel over the silks on your plants. This will help you get fully pollinated ears of corn.
Next question, Susan said, I have 19 corn stalks. What can I plant in their spot after I harvest? It gets full sun all day. Would pumpkins work in that location? And she is in South Jersey. I think a good option there would be beans. And one reason that's a good option is because corn takes a lot of nutrients away from the soil, including nitrogen. But beans actually contribute nitrogen back to the soil. So it could be good to grow beans after corn in that spot. If you grow bush beans, you probably won't even need to add trellises in that spot. But if you want to, you could grow pole beans. And you could grow them up the dried corn stalks from your last harvest.
OK. Now, we have a question about tomatillos, from my friend and coworker, Patrick Decker.
PATRICK DECKER: Hey, Kelly. My husband I are gardening in upstate New York. And we planted some tomatillos this season. We did all right on height. And some of the plants have some fruit coming in on them. But we noticed a couple of weeks ago that some of the leaves started getting really dark. Their turning really dark green. They're curling in on themselves. And we've got some bugs and some eggs laid on the underside of the leaves. Any ideas what we can do to help them out?
I asked Patrick to look a little bit more closely at the plant, to see if he saw any insect pests. And he did find insect eggs and the insects on some of the leaves. And we think that those are potato beetles. So even though they're called potato beetles or potato bugs, they can actually affect any plant in the nightshade family, which includes potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos.
Patrick and Steven are going to remove those insect eggs and any insects they see on the plant. And then, they're going to treat it with neem oil to see if that helps. It's also really important, when a plant is under attack from an insect pest, to make sure to keep it really well watered and fertilized. And that will keep the plant healthy so it can defend itself.
S William said, I planted pole green beans a week before Memorial Day weekend. I live in the Boston area. This year, the plants grew with a lot of leaves. And as of August 1, no flowers and no beans. This has never happened before. I am baffled. It's possible that your soil has too much nitrogen, maybe from added compost or from too much fertilizer. That would cause your beans to grow really tall and really lush, with lots of leaves, but no flowers or no beans. So next time, just lay off the fertilizer and compost. Beans really don't need very rich soil.
We also had a lot of questions about gardening in extreme heat. Here's one, Chantal asked, what do you recommend planting for areas that can get up to 120 degrees? A few vegetables that really love hot weather are eggplant, peppers, melons, sweet potatoes, okra, and several types of beans. So when you're looking for varieties, try to look for ones that are labeled heat tolerant or drought tolerant, if you're in a really hot and dry area, like Southern California, as opposed to a hot and humid area, like Southern Alabama.
You may also want to use some shade cloth over your plants to try to lower the temperature around them. You want to use any kind of light filtering white cloth. But what's best is row cover cloth or gardening shade cloth. Make sure that you suspend it over your plants, rather than laying it on them. Row cover cloth can also be handy when you're planting fall seedlings. It shades the vegetables from summer heat. And it also protects them from animals, like rabbits.
I recently planted some broccoli, cabbage, kale, and brussel sprouts. And I'm planning on covering them until the weather cools down a bit. There are fancier systems available. But I use these metal hoops, covered with cloth, and then secured with clothespins. I remove the cloth to water, and then put it back over the plants to protect them.
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Now, I want to show you one summer crop that I still have in my garden. It's field peas, which are also called cow peas or southern peas. Black-eyed peas are the most well-known type. They grow best in warm climates. And I planted mine in mid-summer. You can harvest them for eating fresh peas. Or you can let them dry and store the peas for eating later. I like to do both. This crop is so easy to grow. And I highly recommend that you add it to your list for next year.
What summer veggies can I still plant? So a lot of summer veggies, like tomatoes and eggplant, take a long period of time to grow. So it's probably too late to start those now in most zones. But there are a few things that don't take long to produce, that you can definitely start now. A few of my midsummer favorites are peppers, beans, and onions.
Start your peppers from transplants, and they'll likely produce in late summer and on into fall, same with onions. You can start your beans from seed easily right now. And they'll grow and produce into fall. If you're growing pole beans, just be sure to give them a trellis to climb. And if it's really hot where you live, be sure to keep these plants well watered.
Michelle asked about ways to grow vertically, to keep her dog out of her plants. She says, are there any tall hanging methods that would work for zucchini, tomatoes, and herbs? There are hanging methods for growing tomatoes and other vegetables, including just using regular hanging baskets. To grow with hanging baskets, you'll want to choose a really small tomato variety. There are even small cherry tomato varieties, called tumbling, that are great for hanging baskets.
You may also see upside down hanging planters for tomatoes, where the plant grows out from the bottom of the planter. This method can be a fun novelty. But it's not really great for the plants. If your goal is just to get your plants up out of your dog's reach, I suggest looking at elevated planter beds. This is a really great solution for anyone with limited mobility too. Because you don't need to bend down to work in your garden.
Sandy asked, what could be eating my green beans? They have huge holes in the leaves. So bean plants can have a lot of different pest pressures. But the holes in the leaves really sounds to me like cucumber beetles. They especially like to munch on young seedlings. So one of the best ways to keep them off your plants is to cover with row cover cloth until the bean plants get a little larger. If you're bean crop is already too far gone, you can take up those seedlings and plant another round of beans.
When we're talking about summer crops, a lot of people want to know about raised beds as well as grow bags, and if they actually make a difference. I've used grow bags for sweet potatoes and have had a lot of success. Grow bags are a really good option for growing regular potatoes and sweet potatoes. I carefully dug up the sweet potatoes and trimmed off the vines. These are curing right now in a warm, dry, dark spot for a couple of weeks. And then, I'll be able to move them to storage, where they can stay for a couple of months.
Amy says, I'm growing eggplants for the first time. I live in a warm climate and planted them last November. They're very developed, but look really long and skinny. I do not know the variety. Any guidance would be appreciated. So it sounds like Amy lives in a very warm climate. Because eggplant likes really hot weather. So if she's growing it now, she must have really hot weather. So there are two types of eggplants. There's Italian eggplant, which is more of the rounded eggplant. And then, there are Asian types, which are long and skinny. So it sounds like Amy is growing an Asian type of eggplant.
So you'll know when to harvest eggplant when it is to its mature size, which for an Asian eggplant, not knowing the variety, is probably about five or six inches and when the skin is glossy. When the skin of an eggplant starts getting dull, that means it's past its prime. For more gardening info, tips, and hacks, check out hgtv.com/dig-it. I'm Kelly Smith-Trimble, happy gardening.
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