How to Garden in a Heat Wave: Resilient Garden TOUR | no dig, organic polyculture with microclimates

Daily temperatures are reaching 100° F but our no-cost planting strategy is keeping our garden thriving. I’ll show you the amazing results of using microclimates so you can know how to grow vegetables in a heat wave too!

June/July 2024, Zone 8a of the American Southeast.

#microclimates

[Music] [Music] [Music] here in Northeast Georgia we are going through a summer swelter of record temps well into the upper 90s even getting into the 100s here it hasn’t rained for 2 weeks and the only things doing great in the garden are native perennials and any drought resistant varieties like these but we’re going to be talking about the vegetable garden and how I’ve used microclimates uh to extend the growing season and produce a better crop so let’s take a tour and let me show you what experiments I’ve been doing here the first thing I want to show you is this kale which I started growing in March and it lasted all the way through June this was my first experiment with a microclimate and It produced beautiful results I planted my kale in a microclimate by planting it where it was sheltered from Southern Exposure by the Children’s Playhouse and Western exposure by taller perennials I’ll show you four different microclimates I’m using this summer in the garden but first let’s see what’s growing well in full sun and do a little harvesting we usually wait until early evening before we Harvest anything at this time of year but it’s been in the 80s even late in the day and nighttime temperatures stay in the upper 70s we had an early spring and it feels like The Heat Of Summer has come a month too soon but at least my onion crop is fully dried out and I can Harvest it all of the crops in this area of our garden are in full sun exposure and the carrots seen in the beds behind me and in front of me are still doing great and the further back beds are a variety of sweet peppers and hot peppers which are also thriving in the heat like the corn our peppers are only just starting to come into full production so I’ll have to save a harvest of these for a later video this is our first year growing sto’s Evergreen corn it’s an heirloom variety it’s very sweet going to eat all the corn do you know where the corn is we are growing 200 stocks of corn which will hopefully be enough for us to save seed for the next year and to absorb the nutrients and digest corn properly you’d have to put it through a process called nalization which is what traditional cultures used and we’ll do this in the future so stay tuned our 4-year-old learned to dress herself but she doesn’t last too long in those long sleeves so that’s everything growing in full sun and for other crops I’ve been using the micro climate planting strategy the first thing I want to show you is the seed lettuce which is doing phenomenally well at 99° f up to 100° temperature not even wilting I never ever thought I could have lettuce growing this late in the season in the South and it’s all because of a microclimate where it’s sheltered from the Southern Exposure by a tall bed of corn and it actually really likes shade if you compare this to my other bed you see what I need I’m doing an experiment this year by growing my tomatoes in an Alleyway sheltered by corn on the east and west sides of the garden now this might sound like a crazy idea but in our climate the Summers get so intensely hot we can get well above 90° in the summertime and tomatoes really don’t do well above an 80° Fahrenheit temperature so this is an experiment this year to see how these tomatoes do in an alley way where they’re sheltered from that really intense afternoon sun and comparing that to my tomatoes that are growing in 100% full sun all day long they’re about the same types of varieties they’re all heirloom tomatoes which typically won’t do as well as the hybrids but so far they’re looking pretty good so far the results of the corn and tomato microc climate have been great to show you this tomato plant they all look like this in this microclimate and it is 97° out here right now it is really really hot and it’s not even wilted another thing I like about this is I can trellis my tomatoes up The Corn stocks now let’s head over to the full exposure garden and show you how the tomatoes are doing there we have a lot of tomatoes growing here and they’re in 100% full sun except for this part that has the micr for sunflowers um and compared to the ones that are in the corn alley they are definitely suffering from heat Scorch a lot more often in our shaded microclimate the tomatoes don’t have any signs of heat Scorch or stress and in the full exposure you can see that the leaves are curling from the Heat and the plants aren’t doing as well we still don’t know yet if the micro climate shaded Tomatoes will produce as much fruit as those in full sun but for now we’ll harvest the ones in full sun that are ready basket get a basket okay I briefly mentioned before an area where I’ve planted Mammoth sunflowers which provide shade directly to the understory of tomatoes and earlier basil and these are performing a little bit better than the other tomatoes with less signs of heat scorch it’s a big one wow the Costo fantino is a ribbed heirloom tomato that performs well in intense heat to help our plants perform better we mulch with grass clippings and I water deep at the roots every other day if not every day using a water wand mmy I am growing mostly heirloom varieties of Tomatoes for Saving seeds but we have a couple favorite hybrid varieties that perform exceptionally well in the hot humid South you can see the level of production on these cherry tomatoes here and I think a big part of that is having a lot of pollinators around by mixing the planting beds together with flowering perennials I’m a big fan of using living mulch or ground cover perennial plants at the base of my fru and crops to conserve moisture and C [Music] pollinators how beautiful want to find some more cherry tomatoes the most successful plant by far for bringing bees to our food crops has been the Lamb’s here it is very easy to grow and plant from seed and it’s also Evergreen I have between 8 to 10 cherry tomato plants growing here and we tend to just eat them all up outside while we pick them yum now I’ll show you the last microclimate experiment we’re doing here and the results so far my watermelon is not going to make it I have watermelon planted in another spot where it gets a shaded microclimate and that one is doing really well now this watermelon you can see the leaves are not wilted and I think that’s because of the microclimate uh I planted the roots of it shaded from southern and western exposure and this melon is steadily growing bigger in size it is a crimson sweet variety so it should get a lot bigger than this by the time it’s ready to harvest so I’ve got two melons in different places here my canalou I’ve been keeping watered but it’s just too hot we’re standing near where planted my watermelon I’ve also got a cantaloupe growing back here I’ve got the roots of it there they are okay so just for comparison this cantaloupe is growing in a microclimate like my watermelon and you can see the leaves are just fine and it looks a bit crazy but I’ve got them shaded here by this big bush that’s an edible tree fruit called pineapple guava my watermelon is right down there is where it’s planted can’t quite tell but it sprawls out and goes onto our um walkway that’s covered in plastic so I consider that to be another successful microclimate experiment because these two in the shade are thriving and the two that were in the sun are dying or dead well that’s it for our video today everybody I hope that you got something out of [Music] it m what about you you can eat it baby go ahead you go ahead a you’re so sweet