Okra

Sweet potatoes should work. They grow into real pretty vines, and they seem to love the heat.

Sweet potatoe vines loooove the heat. I had some last year and I had to trim them like every 3 days because they grew so fast!

All of these can take full sun if mulched well and watered correctly.

Melons
Squashes both summer and winter.
Cucumbers
Okra
Yardlong black seed pole beans
Sunflower

thisisme, I have some watermelons in there that are actually flowering a bit, but look a little sad and burned. I have one bush cucumber plant in a pot and had to move it to the shade a few weeks ago b/c the sun nearly fried it. It's still stressed, but at least it's flowering.... But I can't imagine it would do okay there -- are the vining types that much different than bush?

jeff_12422 my watermelons are in full sun and thriving. So are the cantaloupes and specialty melons. I have a small bush cucumber in full sun doing well too. I do not put anything in a pot in full sun without protecting the pot with burlap. My Armenian cucumbers are small but thriving too. It may be your soil or that they were planted to late or your watering regimen. My beds are double dug to a depth of 24" and the soil is loose and rich. Over that is now a 3-6" layer of mulch. My plants are also on drip irrigation through which I also fertilize the plants. I have both vining squash and bush type and vining melons and bush type melons. They are all doing fine.

This is my first year with my new garden. I studied and studied and read everything I could find and watched Master Gardener YouTube videos before I did anything this time. All I can say is so far so good. The only disappointment is a little bit of BER on some of my tomatoes. Right now is kind of like an internship and I'm getting better as I go along. I tried growing tomatoes in pots and Earth Boxes here several year back in full sun. They all died. Growing in pots is full sun a really hard way to do it in Arizona. Make one mistake on a really hot day in full sun in a pot and your plant is dead. Not something I want to repeat.

Thanks. I have kept most of it in pots b/c the bed just seems too exposed. This way I can move them in and out of the sun without it being too much. I put a few pepper transplants in there last month, and they withered and died almost instantly. I have a (soaker? the name is escaping me right now) hose (with the little holes in it) snaked through the bed and everything in there thrived last winter. Maybe it needs more water now that it's warmer?

I got some cedar mulch and compost yesterday, so that should help too.

Jeff if they were mine I would start out like this. Lay our your soaker hose in the bed. Turn it on for a while and see where it waters best. Plant your plants there. Water the plants well. Then cover the entire bed with 3-6" of mulch. The more the better. Then run the soaker hose early morning and after the the heat of the day, say around 6:00. The mulch will keep the soil moist and cool and your plants will love you for it. Once they have had time for the roots to get established you can experiment with backing off on the frequency of the watering schedule.

A little bit of a warning. I have been told that with our hard water many of the soaker hoses tend to clog over time.

The thing I hate about growing in pots here is that they are so unforgiving. Leave them out in the sun on a really hot day and the roots get toasted. Not enough water and they bake. To much water and they boil then the plant is toast.

Here is a picture of some beets and carrots taken today in full sun. They are not suffering either. In fact they are growing like weeds. They get a little water early morning and late afternoon. I still have a lot of mulching to do before it gets really hot. I have a lot of mulch though so no problem.

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Hi Thisisme, what is the exposure of this wall? I have a long bare wall that faces north, and another one that faces west. Also, what did you use to fill your beds?

:)

haname this is a south facing wall with full sun. The picture was taken today. I have melons and butternut squash a little further to the left and they are doing fine too. I purchased a Sandy Loam Mix from Pioneer Sand Co. If I had it to do over again I would have used 70 percent Sandy Loam and 30 percent Mulch Mix to add just a little more organic matter to the mix. The plants seam to love it though. All the plants are on drip irrigation and I can fertilize though the irrigation system.

I would have taken a picture of the melon and squash plants but I've been a bad boy. I only received the load of free mulch Monday and I had not mulched them yet. They are still thriving but I did not want to set a bad example. They will all be mulched though just as soon as my back lets me. It took forever just to get the 12-13 cubic yards off the street and into the backyard.

Your yard looks great, thisisme. Trees and plants all look healthy.

As for the problem with soaker hoses clogging with our hard water...I just poke holes on either side of my trees with an ice pick. I guess it's more of a drip system now and not really a soaker hose any more...but it works.

Dave

Thanks Dave, I do my best. Its been a long time since I had a real in ground garden. Since I was a youth in NorCal. I studied for about two years before going all out this time. I had a failed container garden with Earth Boxes and GrowBoxes and 25 gallon pots a few years back. Looks like I will be hip deep in vegetables this time though.

thisisme, thanks for sharing the pics. I'm amazed! Do you use shade cloth at all, or is everything just out there in full sun??

It occurred to me recently that the broccoli and cauliflower never matured fully before opening up and flowering b/c the sun may have been too much, even in winter. My lettuce did okay, but bolted early. I was thinking I would just use shade cloth, but now you're telling me your whole bed looks like THAT on a south-facing wall with no shade???

@thisisme

I'm really curious to see how your plants do. At the veggie gardening class I took at the Desert Botanical Garden, they said that "sometime in May" was when they put up shade cloth (not more than 50% blockage) over plants that weren't heat adapted. Basically, at this time of year UV radiation is increasing sharply until the solstice on June 21, and it stays high while we hit our max temps, giving more tender plants a 1-2 punch.

@jeff_12422
I grew broccoflower this year and was confused by my results. I only had 2 plants survive, one in practically full sun and one with a bit more shade. The plant in the shade bolted in March as soon as temps hit 90 degrees. The one in the sun has continued growing to monstrous proportions (over 3 feet in diameter) and just put out a flower head this week.

Jeff I have other beds. That bed is 3' wide and 55' long in full sun. I shade my tomatoes from the afternoon sun. Another bed is shaded by the tomatoes themselves and yet another bed is shaded by a pole bean trellis. I start seedlings on a table inside the shade cloth structure I built for the tomatoes. Some plants need afternoon shade in the summer and some don't. Things grown in the winter need maximum sunlight. The beets and carrots will be picked before it gets really hot. When the beets and carrots come out I will prep that area and let it sit for a few months. Then I will be planting Artichokes there so they can vernalize in full sun through the winter. That way I will have a bumper crop of Artichokes next year in full sun.

It may not look like it but everything is nice and green and healthy. These pictures were taken at the end of the day when the light spectrum produces more yellow hues.

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Wow, that looks like a great setup! I'm impressed. So you don't think that having full, south-facing sun exposure all winter long with no shade isn't the reason my winter veggies didn't fare so well?

My broccoli didn't send up a flower head, but the main head separated and started to bud (yellow inside) before the head was anywhere near a full head like you'd see in the grocery store. The cauliflower didn't flower, but started to loosen up too, even though I blanched it. If it wasn't the amount of sun they got, what else would cause that? Poorly-suite variety for the region? Crowding? (How much space do you give each plant? I had at least a square foot for each single plant in the bed, but they were monsters.) Something else?

WOW I'm impressed with that setup! I thought I was getting sophisticated, but obviously I have years worth of work ahead of me. ;-)

@jeff_12422
Maybe it was the spacing issue? My broccoflower that bolted was a few inches from a trellis/raised bed wall, maybe the lack of root space did it? As a data point, The one of mine that turned into a monster has had practically unlimited space to grow in.

@thisisme

Do you have a gardening blog? Because I would be extremely interested in following what you're doing, when you're doing it, and why. You're obviously having a lot of success making the harsh desert bloom and I'd love to pick your brain.

tungstenchef some sites say use 40-50 percent shade cloth to protect tomatoes from the afternoon sun. Others say plant then where they will get afternoon shade. I could not find any 40 or 50 percent shade cloth while I was building the shade structure. I just figured 60 percent was more light than afternoon shade and went with it.

No, I don't have a blog. As stated in earlier posts. I'm still learning. After my container garden failed a few years back my wife did not support my gardening. So I searched and search and read books and watched Master Gardener videos. There was no way I was going to start a garden unless I was fairly sure it was going to be successful. All I can say is so far so good. I may start a thread for people to follow along with next year but no blogs. To be successful you really do have to plan. In the bed with the south facing wall I will be completely re-planting for a Fall/Winter garden. So everything there has to finish by a certain date. Someone in another thread asked if they were to late to plant Watermelon. The true answer is yes and no. There is plenty of time for watermelon to ripen before it gets to cold. There is not plenty of time for it to ripen and pull the plants and replanted for the Fall/Winter vegetables. Planting dates are important. If the watermelon goes to long the Fall/Winter vegetables will be planted late. If they are planted late yields may be low or they may even fail to produce anything.

Jeff over in the Vegetable Forum those kinds of issues usually have to do with one or more of these...

Not enough hours of direct sunlight.
Planted at the wrong time.
Poor soil or improper use of fertilizers.
Over or under watering.
To much cold or rain.

Its not always easy figuring out why either. Even the master Gardeners in the Vegetable Forum have crop failures. Its one of the reasons they like to plant so many things. If one thing fails something else is bound to thrive. Most even plant a few things that are not quite their favorite just because its more reliable.

Have you ever though of growing Chinese Kale instead of broccoli? http://www.evergreenseeds.com/chinkalgail.html

One of my favorite sites is in the link below. If you become a member the site becomes more functional. One of the added functions for members is that when you are signed in. When you see someone growing in a similar zone as your own you can click on their user name and see everything they have grown along with their descriptions and ratings. Way cool.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell University Vegetable varieties for Gardeners

Purchase some shade cloth. On Craigslist, there is some really good knitted white shade cloth, at a really good price You want the 50% kind.