Hot weather isn't just hard on humans... many plants (even warm-weather crops) suffer when temperatures rise too.

My climate doesn't get as scorching as other areas. We usually top out around 95°F in peak summer, but evenings cool down significantly into the 40s. That doesn't make summer any less hard on my plants though.

Tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and cucumbers are all, surprisingly, sensitive to different things once the weather turns hot. Maybe you're seeing something like this happening in the garden?

• Plants refusing to grow beyond a few inches despite good soil and fertilizer
• Flowers drying up and falling off
• Crops producing plenty of leaves but few fruits
• Abnormally small fruits or fruits with weird shapes
• Fruits rotting on the vine before you can harvest them

These are all common problems related to excessive heat, and it doesn't take Texas-style heat to bring them on—even a string of days above 85°F can make your garden come to a screeching halt.

​Here's what's happening (and how you can help your plants through a hot summer).​

Seasonal tips

Weird-Looking Tomatoes? Why Catfacing Happens and What To Do About It Read more

What To Do About Tomato Flowers Falling Off Read more

How to Pollinate Squash by Hand (and Why Your Plants Have Lots of Flowers But No Fruit) Read more

How to Use Up a CSA Box (From Someone Who Wrote the Book On It) Read more

What I Always Plant Midsummer for an Epic Fall Harvest Read more

The Trick to Germinating Spinach Seeds in Hot Weather Read more

Getting ready for my fall garden

This week, I started hardening off a tray of brassica seedlings to transplant next week in the bed where I'd harvested all my garlic a few weeks ago. They'll live under shade cloth through the end of the month (or until our weather starts tapering off—it's hard to imagine right now because we're still getting above-average highs).

In that now-empty garlic bed, I mixed in an organic all-purpose granular fertilizer to prep for the new plantings and added 3 inches of aged compost on top (which doubles as a mulch).

I also just sowed my final round of seeds in the garage. Lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage, collard, mizuna, senposai, and other seeds sprouted in less than two days! It's amazing what warm (not hot) air and soil will do for seeds.

Usually when I start these crops in early spring, it takes several days (up to a week) for the seeds to germinate. Midsummer seed starting feels like a cinch in comparison!

Everything I've started is also frost-hardy, so they'll continue growing through winter and—with some help from frost cloth—into the following spring.

Some of my cool-season favorites include:

• ​Senposai, a leafy hybrid that's a cross of cabbage and Japanese komatsuna. It's quick-growing with tender, mild leaves, and withstands temps down to 10°F or 15°F.
• ​Winter Giant spinach, which produces huge, semi-savoyed leaves. It's sometimes sold under the name Gigante d'Inverno. I've been growing this variety for 15 years! In Bend, it even germinated outside in October after a freak light snowfall.
• ​Champion collards - This variety easily overwinters in zone 5 without any frost protection, and grows massive by the following spring (while its leaves stay tender).
• ​Fordhook Giant chard - White-stemmed chard is typically more cold-hardy than rainbow chard in my experience, and I grow this every year for my fall/winter garden. A staggered planting allows you to harvest both mature greens and baby greens by winter.
• ​Vates Blue Scotch kale - This is an excellent choice if you live in a place with long winters, as it can survive hard frosts and gets even better in the snow.
• ​Winter Density romaine lettuce - I always grow a romaine type in fall, and this variety is new for me. With "winter density" in its name, I have high hopes it can keep going through some freezes.

I love growing a fall garden because there's none of the pressure associated with spring planting, and if something didn't work out so well earlier in the year, you've got another shot at it!

So if you haven't started seeds yet, don't wait to sow them indoors or directly in the ground. This is prime time for plotting your fall garden!

P.S. If your plants seem lackluster in the heat, here's what's happening (and what you can do to help them survive summer).

P.P.S. Plan your fall garden, log your daily highs and lows, and track what you sowed and when you harvested with my Ultimate Garden Diary.

This downloadable and printable mix-and-match garden planner, journal, and recordkeeper helps you stay organized and become a better gardener! (Bonus: no refill pages needed!)