Now is the time to plant okra. But wear gloves when you harvest it. The leaves and stems have hairs that make me itchy. I also had bush beans last year, but I can't remember what kind.

Your herbs, tomatoes and peppers are probably about to peter out.

The bell peppers didn't seem to take the heat, but the hot peppers and the Cuban sweet did much better. I am trying a new pepper now, to see how it does. ;o) I have grown spaghetti squash, malabar spinach, eggplant, lettuce, bock choy, swiss chard, collards, arugula, onions,and snow peas, but late fall, winter or early spring.

For a summer garden:

amaranth, sweet potatoes, cherry tomatoes, collards (although tastes better in cooler weather), you can still plant green beans for another month, lima beans, southern peas (i.e. blackeyed peas), seasame, yard long beans, unusual tropical vegetables, eggplant, hot peppers, malabar spinach, new zealand spinach, purslane (highest plant source for Omega-3) and calabese squash.

Also, I found a bok choi plant from Gourmet Seeds that says it can be planted year round in tropical climates. I'm waiting for the seeds to arrive to try it.

I'm clearing the garden spot now, and can't wait to have some fresh okra and eggplant!

This will be my first veggie garden in 7 years. I'm so excited, I could scream!

And cherry tomatoes...YUM! Garden candy!

my summer veg garden is pretty small... last year: sweet potatoes, crowder peas (i LOVE mississippi silver peas from southern exposure), pole beans (i cannot praise rattlesnake beans enough, again from s. exposure -- they produced throughout the summer until the freeze), okinawan spinach (doesn't grow fast in the summer, but i had it in full sun and think it might do well in shade), plantains, yd-long bean, hot peppers, okra (not a lot of luck with okra).

if i were to choose just two, it'd be easy: sweet potatoes (no work, tons of potatoes) and crowders, which you can eat so many ways and are tastier than any yankee bean.

i've come to think of july and august like december and january up north. this year, i even planted tomatoes on a window ledge in august for my november garden. stoopid cat ate them all.

Flowerlady, the purple bean you mentioned is "Royal Burgundy". I grew these last summer & highly recommend them.

My garden is all potted. The space I set aside last year to be a garden needs much more soil augmentation than I've been able to give it so far. But, two types of tomatoes and a bunch of herbs will keep me happy for a while. If the basil is actually as prolific as it looks it will be, I'll make some pesto. cora

So is it a case of planting a sweet potatoe you get from walmarts to produce more sweet potatoes ? English guy living in Fl, all new to me, Thanks Frank

Don't forget melons.Though not veggies,I stick them in with them. Anyone else grow melons in th e summer?

Here is the description of the pak choi that is supposed to grow all summer long. I'm giving it a try to see how it does.

HO TAU BOK - BABY PAK CHOI

(35 days) It belongs to "Baby Nai-Pe-Tsai" type. The stem is extremely dwarf. Sometime called "4-inch Nai-Yu-Bok". Very popular. Heat-tolerant. Can be planted year-round in tropical areas. Excellent for Nai-Pe-Tsai Miao. 2 grams packet UNTREATED - $2.39

frank,
i've had really mixed luck with batatas from the store -- i suspect they're treated or have spent so much time in low-oxygen storage that they're no longer capable of sprouting. i once put a sweet potato in the garden, left it for a month in june with lots of heat and water, and dug it up a month later to find it utterly unchanged. but when i keep them in the pantry, they go bad in a week! anyway, it's worth a shot -- i would pot up a potato, and it may throw off shoots from the eyes. best to do what i did -- get slips from a friend. you can also order them from steele company very cheaply -- google steele sweet potatoes.

new2 -- give it a shot, in the shade. my guess is that they'll bolt almost immediately, but i discovered this winter that bolted pak choi tastes absolutely no different.

goldenpond -- i've not grown melons, but in may and june i've had some success with winter squash, as strange as it might seem. i'm growing seminole pumpkins this spring -- they produced an incredible amount in the fall. hope they do a repeat performance this spring.

Here are some more that I'm going to give a try this summer. Just waiting for the seeds to arrive.

(AN04) GOLDEN CHOY SUM (40 days) Traditional variety in South China. The plant is approx. 28 cm in height with green leaves and yellow flowers. Very tender and delicious. It is productive and resistant to diseases as well as tolerant to heat and humidity. An ideal variety for summer and early fall cropping. Choy Sum in Chinese means the inner stalks and tips because Cantonese love to eat the delicious stalks and tips of this vegetable. 2 grams approx 500 seeds UNTREATED - $2.39 Quantity :

(AN24) YU CHOY SUM HONG KONG F1 HYBRID (35 days) this is a terrific selection of Choy Sum to consider, as it is quick to harvest and very heat tolerant, making it suitable even for those in tropical climates. Wonderful mild flavor. 2 grams approx 500 seeds UNTREATED - $2.59

Yaaay! Summer vegetable thread! I love it! I've been thinking about the same thing...what can I grow here in Florida in the summer (compared to what I grew as a kid in the northeast...).

Does corn do well here in the summer?
Squah...? Zuccini and Summer squash? I tried containers for both last year....it was an absolute failure! Not enough space for them I think....

I've had lots of luck with tomatoes...but not much else. I just put cukes in the ground...hoping to get something from that.

But, I agree...with all the soaring food costs and state of the world...I'm thinking veggie garden might be a good way to go this year.

I have some veggie beds in my yard; and mostly for the same reason as you - tomatoes and peppers that cost too much and taste too little! Then I just kind of got hooked on watching the progress of the plants, and now of course I pay 5 times more for my homegrown veggies than for my Winn Dixie ones - but it's so much fun! I have my sweet peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants all in the same bed - the tomatoes tower over and shade the peppers, which seems to be working pretty good for now. The tomatoes can't take the heat that the eggplants and peppers can, so later in the season I'll prune back the tomatoes and let the others take over. I have watermelon just getting started, and I have okra - the okra LOOKS miserable, but is producing pods just the same. Too soon to know on the watermelon. I have old greens in a bed (swiss chard, mustard, etc) that I've just been too lazy to pull up; but when I get around to it I'll put in some yellow squash & zucchini: In my yard they self-destruct pretty quickly from powdery mildew, but I'm usually getting sick of the squashes by then anyway, so a brief season with them works out well for me.

Any way you go with it, it's just more fun than boring old grass in the yard, whether you save money or not. Good luck!

Oh my, THANK YOU ALL, for your wonderful responses. I really am looking forward to trying something for a summer garden.

Ill ~ I had to google crowder peas and I love them. Would like to try them and the yard long beans and sweet potatoes.

happygirl ~ thanks for the name of that bean, I'll see where I can order it from.

I'd like to try some squash also. I do think this would be a raised bed maybe in our secret garden area behind our cottage.

I checked out some books from the library today too.

Happy Summer Veggie growing.

FlowerLady

I've had no trouble with store-bought sweet potatoes sprouting. It's a tad late now to be trying to make slips though, actually way late I think, so better to order them. In central fla slips should go in march to early april, late april at the latest probably. Slips aren't tough like the mature vine.

pnb, i think you're right -- ideally, slips should go into the ground in march... BUT, last year i planted mine in may (second week, i think) and they produced very well when i dug them on sept 8. i think if i had the room, i'd start a bunch in march and another bunch mid-may. i think the rule is 100 days. that way i could have a couple of harvests. if you leave them any longer, they get too big to eat. mine were almost too big...

and it's really never too hot to start slips -- if you bury them almost completely in leaves, they'll grow.

Here is a link that might be useful: sweet potatoes in my garden

Good to know for those years when we linger til May. It'll be better when I have time to make and plant out slips in the traditional fashion. My last year's patch had few big tubers and a great many small ones, despite being in for probably about 250 days. Mostly a result of direct-planting of tubers, I suspect, and resultant crowding of slips in concentrated clumps. This year I'm trying to overcome that problem by having used very small planting tubers to reduce the number of sprouts, and I used those long root-shaped tubers as much as possible figuring that will distibute the sprouts better.

Last fall I planted sweet potato slips out behind my shed, and they lived through the winter even with total neglect and bad freezes. Plants have leafed out nicely. I probably should check on the tubers, I'll bet they're huge.

I am seriously getting into planting edibles, because everyone should grow their own damn food if they are able. Just this year I've started a bunch (mostly fruits): mulberries, blueberries, guava, olives, jalepenos, tomatoes, oranges, raspberries, and a ton of herbs.

I really want to plant Amaranth this year. I'm interested in trying other grains and leaf-vegetables, too. So much to try! Thanks for all the info and tips you guys have posted :)

Wonderful thread! My Ohio gardening skills won't do me much good at all here, so I've got a great big learning curve too!

For those in the Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale area, there's a class tomorrow morning for the ladies on growing food in the home garden. Given by a master gardener, you can find the post on Craigslist, Fort Lauderdale area. It's in the For Sale/ Free category, if anybody wants location and registration info.

girlsaylor

I grew sweet potatoes one year in oak leaves. I had a great big pot, and I put the leaves in and watered to pack them, then buried the sweet potatoes. The vines were beautiful, and the potatoes did great, and NO DIGGING!

I used to grow potatoes in straw in SC in an old wheelbarrow.

I live on a lake which has been receding the last couple years so I have temporary sunny space for gardens. So last fall we put in a raised bed with herbs and beans, lettuce, onions, parsley, cilantro, dill, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, potato - a little bit of a lot of stuff. So far it's all doing great (although the peas are about done for). And I have a baby watermelon about 1" long which I am watching with anticipation.

I recently added another bed with sweet potatoes, peanuts, garlic, dark blue petunias, marigolds and nasturtium - all mixed together. It is just starting. I discovered I can snip of a piece of sweet potato vine and stick it in the ground and it roots. How easy is that!

I love checking on the progress, watering, and most of all walking out to the garden to pick dinner.

hey, judy -- how do you grow peanuts? i mean, in theory, i know... but where did you get the seeds/nuts?

flowerlady -- where'd you get your peanuts?

They sell peanuts at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (see link), but I'm pretty sure that you can just plant raw peanuts. The squirrels planted some for me and they came up just fine. They were "planted" about 3" - 4" deep when I pulled them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Peanuts

Ill-Mannered, Publix had raw peanuts in the produce section. I don't really know how to grow them - first time. I just took some out of the shell and soaked them in water overnight, then planted them. They seem to be coming up. My thinking was being a legume, they would be good for the soil so would benefit the sweet potatoes.

y'all are making me jealous. Down here, the best I can hope for until fall is okra. And I'm planting okra tomorrow. I've got black-eyed peas coming up, but I've never done them before, so that's a long shot.

And the cantelope vine died this week (with a fruit not yet ripe, still clinging to the vine, we'll see what happens to it.) I found a green tomatoe lying on the ground below the bush _ the bush that hasn't produced much this year anyway because it was too damn hot, and clearly it's done, dropping unripe fruit in desperation.
The sapodilla has failed to produce much this year, though last week I found a giant fruit on the ground. It had been on the ground too long and was buggy (with sapodilla, i've found too long is a matter of hours not days _ they're so sweet and they split when they fall, so you practically have to watch them fall and go grab them to get good fruit. Last year, it dropped so much fruit, that wasn't hard. this year, not so much.) The squash vines are getting scorched, despite my best laid plans (and soaker hoses). The peppers have petered out. The broccoli is coming in all at once, with aphids. The cukes declined to produce. Even my arugula, the hardiest of weeds last year, has died. I may have a few onions yet... but they will be small and disappointing.

so in my second year of trying to live a little off the land... I'm failing. And expecting a summer hanging out in the pool, daydreaming about the fall and winter garden. Does anyone else do that, cuz my significant other thinks it's nuts, but he thinks I'm "working" in the garden, while I keep telling him I'm just playing in the dirt?

Instead of a compost "pile" I bury my garden scraps in the veg. growing area. I now have white potatoes, sweet potatoes & honeydew growing, all from the scraps. They may sprout in an area I would not have chose to "plant" them but what the heck, you know the saying, "grow where you are planted." My okra is forming buds, just pulled my Florida sweet onions, tomatoes are finishing production. I love fresh Cranberry beans but refuse to pay what they cost in the stores. A gardening friend found them in the dried bean section of a grocery store in Tenn. & got a large bag for me. They are now growing in my garden. Yard long beans are blooming. Powdery mildew usually gets my summer squash & cukes, so I gave up on them. Ah! gardening is such fun.