Rocket Arugula

Arugula (or Rocket) is a vegetable in the cabbage family known for its peppery tasting leaves. Great tasting in salads and on pizza. The plant bolts rapidly, so continuously sow it for a harvest all season. It is incredibly easy to save seeds from it too. (Article coming soon!)

Anaheim Pepper

Anaheim Peppers are my favorite non-spicy pepper. These peppers grow somewhat long and are easy to harvest and spot because of that. Very easy to grow these and you can probably fit them easily in small container gardens.

5 Vegetables to grow during Extreme Summer Heat

If you live in an area that regularly experiences high temperatures exceeding 95°F, you may have difficulty growing certain plants. Fortunately, there are many varieties of vegetables (including greens) that can withstand the heat. Here's a list of 5 of my favorite varieties for the summer.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Much like the other Swiss Chard I've grown, Bright Lights is a winner. It's especially fancy because it grows in many different colors, namely yellow and pink.

San Marzano Tomato

San Marzano is a classic Italian paste tomato. As I intend to make a lot of salsa and sauces, I chose this tomato as it is an indeterminant variety, as compared to a tomato like Roma. This one should be fun to cross with some of the other tomatoes I've planted this year.

Red Russian Kale

Red Russian Kale is unique variety of kale, in that it can be grown to full size, or enjoyed as a small leaf plant. It can be harvested multiple times in a year before going to seed.

Ruby Queen Beet

I decided to give beets a try again this year. I had never had luck growing them well in the container garden, guess they didn't get enough sun to develop a nice sized root. I'm planting these in with the Swiss Chard, as those tend to do good. They'll be grown for dual purpose, the leaves and the roots. The thinned out beet microgreens had a nice buttery taste to them.

Genovese Basil

This is the basil you grow if you want to make pesto. My seeds seem to germinate reliably, and this basil really develops well indoors under the grow lights. Will be cloning this variety off to populate the garden.

Buttercrunch Lettuce

Decided to try out a new variety of lettuce this year. This lettuce is a semiheading variety that can supposedly resist some heat. After seeing how prolific it is in other people's yards/hydroponic systems, I decided to go for this one. I've had good luck getting this variety to germinate too. The transplants I've put in my garden are also holding up to the hot weather my climate gets!

My first crop I've harvested out right before the heatwave was about to hit. Lettuce hardly had any bitter taste to it. Had the traditional buttery texture! This variety is an early summer champ.

Fresno Chili Pepper

Fresno peppers are very similar to Jalapenos, but are slightly hotter. These pepper seeds are pretty easy to germinate compared to other varieties of pepper I have tried to grow. Even in small containers, these plants can grow a lot of peppers (I got 7+ so far from growing in a 1 gallon pot). They love sunshine and heat, so keep them illuminated.

The peppers can be picked when they are green or red. They'll ripen up even after they are picked when green.

White Lisbon Onion

I really like growing these onions. They are very small, can fit in nearly any location in the garden. Several plants can fit into containers as small as 1 gallon. These are easy to cultivate and good candidates for succession planting. If you need something to fit in between your rows of carrots or lettuce, consider these.

Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach

This is one of the oldest varieties of spinach and probably the most popular heirloom variety. I liked growing this one better than Olympia because the leaves actually got large before the plant bolted. Although some plants still bolted, this is a more reliable variety. Leaves are very crinkly and still retain good flavor for a short time after bolting.

Ruby Red Swiss Chard

As I enjoyed my white variety of Swiss Chard, I decided to try growing the red variety to add some more color to my life. I started these seeds a week ago, so I'll be adding more information and photos as they grow. This is a really easy plant to grow. I haven't done anything other than watering it to keep it alive and growing.

Salad Bowl Lettuce

The plant is so named because when it is fully grown, it is supposed to fill an entire salad bowl. From my experience, it does. This lettuce variety has different shaped leaves compared to regular leaf lettuce types.

True Siberian Kale

Kale is one of those plants like Swiss Chard, except it is in a completely different order. It's more similar to a cabbage than it is spinach or chard. This variety of kale is really easy to grow. As long as it gets water and some nutrients, the leaves will grow large. My favorite way to prepare kale is to make chips; shred the leaves, drizzle with olive oil, and cook in the oven at 275F for 25 minutes.

Nevada Lettuce

Nevada Lettuce is what I would consider special for my part of the country. It can tolerate extreme heat compared to other varieties of lettuce. Mine was able to survive 90°F and higher conditions without bolting. It's very similar to other leaf varieties of lettuce, but it will taste a little bitter once you end up harvesting it. The bitterness is not overwhelming though, and the plant is a good choice for gardens that have climates like the state of Nevada. Although I haven't tried growing it in cold weather, it probably grows just as well as any other lettuce variety for the season.

Early Golden Acre Cabbage

Early Golden Acre is a pretty standard variety for cabbages. This plant takes a while to grow a head, especially in low light conditions. I grew this one in a 4 gallon container and it worked out. I was delinquent by not watering the plant for about 3 weeks while on vacation, so the plant looked pretty dead when I came back. Regardless, the head still weighed in just above 1/2 lb. I think a bigger container and more fertilizer/light would result in a larger head. The first one I harvested was size of a baseball.

ACE 55 VF Tomato

I only bought one full sized tomato seed variety last year and it happened to be this one. This plant gets big. Be sure to stake it or cage it. I tried growing it using the Kratky method. The fruit did not grow that large for me, so I neglected to post a photo of it. I may try growing it again in soil next year.

Red Cherry Tomato (Large Fruit)

A very easy tomato plant to grow, and an easy one to clone too. It can be grown in containers as small as 1 gallon, but a larger container is better. Plants will grow larger in bigger containers. The Kratky method and other hydroponic techniques can be used for this plant. Produces lots of cherry tomatoes throughout the season. Not as sweet as other varieties, but that's because the fruit is larger.

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas

For the time period I grew this plant during, it survived the heat well. The heat burned away some of the bottom leaves, turning them brownish yellow. I didn't get a great harvest though. This variety is tasty and is worth growing when your area does not get freakish heat waves in the middle of March. The edible pods are very sweet. I would recommend growing this variety to shelling peas.