I read and have observed nights need be be below about 70 for many of them.

Yes, assuming that they have sufficient health and nutrients available for blooming then fruit set will normally pick back up once the temps fall a bit. There is a FAQ here about the necessary temps range for fruit set and all fruiting plants and also discusses some of the other causes of failure to set fruit.

http://faq.gardenweb.com/discussions/2765999/why-are-the-blooms-on-my-tomato-plant-dying-and-falling-off

Dave

I've lost my squash plants I guess to borers; I got just one squash before disaster. Next year I'll have to use spray

I have seen some of my winter squash and pumpkins abort the female flower buds when night temps are over 70. The melons seem to love the heat. The tomatoes don't.

We haven't had a night below 80 for at least 2 weeks and the day temps have been over 100 for even longer. The only thing setting fruit is the okra. Melons, squash, peppers, tomatoes, and pole beans are all dropping blossoms here. Even the eggplants are.

Dave

"We haven't had a night below 80 for at least 2 weeks and the day temps have been over 100 for even longer."

Dave, how do you get your garden work done with temps like that? I'm out very early if midday temps are expected to reach mid 80's. Can't imagine day after day of 100.

"how do you get your garden work done with temps like that?"

Drink water. Lots of water. Wear shorts, t-shirt, and a sun-hat. Welcome to the south. Of course, welcome to the land of two growing seasons and gardening that is pretty much year-round. As a northerner (well, northwesterner) relocated to the south, it takes some getting used to. As a friend of mine from Wyoming has told me, at least I can do stuff outside throughout the year. He's stuck inside for many months.

Yep. Early rising - it was 78 at 5 am this morning! Cool. Shorts, sandals, and a good layer of Deep Woods Off for all the ticks and chiggers. It ain't a pretty picture! ;-)

And Dan has it even worse than I do.

Dave

I'll take it any day over the 4 months of winter here. :)

I have to add that just the other day, our weather forecasters announced (without a trace of sarcasm) a "cold front" that was coming down from the north. The temps wouldn't get above the mid 90s! I think that's where the wind turns around to be from the north, and we get Dave's heat instead. Why, soon the temps will be down in the 80s, and we'll all have our hands stuffed in our pockets. Here in August, vegetable gardening turns into an exercise in survival, and our ammunition is water and mulch.

I'd have to adjust a lot to garden in Texas or Arkansas with the heat and more. Your guys gotta be tough. Not sure I could do it, heat bothers me more and more each year and ours is nothing compared to yours. Also, there would be a lot to learn about diseases, pests, and heat tolerant varieties. Guess there is good and bad to most every gardening area. For now I'll stick with four seasons and enjoy a bit of a rest from gardening in the winter.

We do have times that the heat or/and humidity cause blossom drop in tomatoes. And runner beans stop setting for awhile in the warmer weeks of summer. During our hottest times regular beans will also stop setting. And that is when the peppers, eggplant, and okra (if one is trying to grow that in the north) take off. I didn't realize it could get too hot for them, also.

It works both ways. I admire the toughness of far northerners in enduring hard winters. Also, the shorter growing season makes summer gardening a little less casual. But this is why it's so important for posters to include a description of roughly where they are. Their questions and comments have to be taken in that context. Because gardening advice can depend profoundly on where you are. Down here we laugh at some of the advice posted on gardening forums, which is passed off as generic advice for everyone. As we've noted, the term "hot weather" means very different things to different people.

<I'll take it any day over the 4 months of winter here. :)>

I don't know Peter. More and more I find myself dreaming of the weather in Northern Idaho. Some days even winter in Fargo ND sounds good. :)

Dave

Maybe we should make like a sitcom, and switch places :)

...to the earlier comments re yardlong/chinese long beans being heat tolerant - yes, they are among the vegetables that have no problem with temperatures mid 90's and above.

Garland, Texas here, a suburb of Dallas. Been really hot and dry the past few weeks, and the past few days have been the hottest! Past two days around 104-105, and nights around 80 degrees. Definitely survival mode around here, and I water my garden every other day.

Amazingly my cucumber are still producing! I keep picking a basketfull every few days and have given lots away. I am getting a few runts, but have had some nice sized ones too despite the heat. Yellow crookneck squash was producing good when it was between 98-100 for highs, but the past few days above 100 has pretty much shut them down. Okra loves the heat. 104 and they are happily producing. Have started given some away...

Peppers are producing, but mostly they are ripening, since I think most of them set when the temps were in the upper 90s. I pulled up all my bush beans. The plants were surviving, but no beans anymore, except and occasional tiny runt bean.

As Dan said, tomorrow we get a cold front, and temps are supposed to go back to normal, which is mid to upper 90s! Yeah big hats, shorts, lots of water!

People pay money to go into a sauna and sweat buckets. I do it in my garden for free!

Those yardlong beans, how do you eat them? Like green beans, or do you shell them?

ccabal, most recipes I've found (and there are a large number of them) are of the green bean stir-fry type, which happens to be my preferred method of cooking them Do a web search on Chinese or yardlong bean recipes and check it out for yourself. You can use a wok for the cooking process, but for smaller quantities stainless steel or Magnalite would work just fine.

One thing to note is that there are multiple types of longbean varieties...from light green to dark green or red, with solid or speckled or streaked colors, and having different color seeds. The different varieties have slightly different flavors and textures. Some varieties freeze well and others no so. The ones above are the white seed light green color beans. These seem to me to more closely resemble the green bean texture and flavor than their dark green cousins.

I need to try these. Are the gardening nutritional needs for yard-long beans similar to regular beans? Looks like trellising is the way to go. I've heard that they grow rather poorly when the weather is cool, so maybe planting time is later than for most summer veggies?

I've grown Chinese long beans specifically to address the subject of this post... i.e. vegetables that can produce during the intense heat of summer.

Correct, they do not do too well in cool weather. No point in planting early... I wait until a couple of weeks past our last frost date before planting.

Chinese long beans are actually in the cowpea family and I would guess would do well in most any "decent" soil. My garden soil happens to be well conditioned so we probably would need a bit more feedback from others visiting this thread who have tried them in a variety of soil conditions. Others may also be able to comment on the bush varieties of Chinese long beans as I have yet to try these cultivars.

Yard long beans attract lots of insects to our garden. However, the bees working the flowers have never bothered me while I picked the beans or worked nearby.

In Michigan, these only do well when we have a "hot" summer and the runner beans stop producing. Planting both makes for good beans to eat no matter what Mother Nature delivers.

Cool, I think I'll add the yardlong beans to my garden plans next year. Thanks for sharing that!

Every time I read that 95 is hot, I have a good laugh. It is supposed to be 111 to 113 every day for the rest of the week here. That's the shade temp, probably next to an irrigated lawn, so imagine how it feels in the sun or sitting in a car. At those temps, you're not getting any vegetables other than dead ones. Gardening is not a summer activity for everyone, which is why if you just say where you live is "hot", random people on the Internet don't know if you mean 85 or 120.

But, yes, after you get below 95 for highs your plants will wake back up and start to produce.