I grow all of them here in Edmonton. Eggplant and melons require a little more heat or protection but many varieties have been developed for shorter seasons. Interesting to know how far north of here gardeners have success with warm weather vegies. :)

Ginny

My neighbor grows corn north of Grande Prairie but she starts them in her livingroom in March. Same with tomatoes I am so glad she shares.

I live in Saskatoon.

I'd classify the warm season crops into 3 categories:

1. Easy: Guaranteed success except in the crappiest of summers: Corn, tomatoes, summer squash, winter squash
2. Moderate: greatly benefit from plastic mulch, row covers and other protection, but will also yield without such benefits: eggplant, peppers, melons. Often fail in years with unusually cool summers.
3. Difficult: plastic mulch and row covers ARE necessary for any sort of production, even in normal summers: *drumroll* okra. Ironically, my favourite vegetable.

Well, don't feel bad about the Okra. I'm in 6A in SE Michigan, and I generally never have had much luck with it either, and no one I know of in the area really does. It will survive and grow a few feet tall, and yield of small handful of pods, but we just don't have the long, hot days and hot nights this plant really needs. I've pretty much decided to not even try again, I planted a few this year only because I had an old packet of seeds and I'm trying to use up all of my old seeds.

I've grown sweet corn in Edmonton for 20 years and only one year of those 20 did it fail (extremely early killing frost in late August). But growing one of the very early varieties is key to success at 53.5 degrees north latitude.

I've produced ripe muskmelons here too, but watermelons so far elude me (only tried twice -- one year they ended up golf-ball size, once year they ended up full ice-box size but never ripened.

I used to watch the 'Canadian Gardener' series on CBC, which was hosted by the man from the U. of B.C. Botanic Garden (can't remember his name, David something perhaps).

They had regional guest correspondents from around Canada who were amateur gardeners, and who would report on what was happening in their gardens and in their regions. One was an elderly man from Yellowknife, who had quite an amazing little garden during the short summer season. The nearly 24 hour days, brought things into rapid growth. One thing that amazed me was how compressed everything was -- plants that for me would bloom a month apart or more were all blooming at once for him.

Specifically, though, this man had a small glasshouse which he used to start transplants, and to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in -- they benefited from the extra warmth even in the summer, and of course that prolonged the harvest since fall and frost came by early September there.

Quite fascinating to me.

You might want to check out this guys blog site. :)

Ginny

http://chateau-listeur.blogspot.ca/

Sweet corn grows very well in and around the town of Peace River (AB) townsite, and ripens by mid-August with our long summer days. I personally was surprised to find extensive cornfields last year around LaCrete, AB, which is about 150 km NE of me, and I know that Corn does very well in Ft. Vermilion, as well.

I'd think that the northern limits of good sweet corn growing in Canada would be Ft. Simpson or Ft. Liard, NWT. When I worked in the NWT, I was advised that the farthest north uncovered gardens were in Tsiigehtchic, which is about 100 km from the Arctic Ocean, but never got to see them myself...and it's doubtful, in any case, that you could get a good corn crop there.

Gosh, denninmi... I remember that show. David Terrant was the host. Bob Switzer co-hosted for a few years; he was a hoot, lol, though I think he was under foot most of the time (poor Terrant)!

We have no problem growing short-season corn varieties. I think my latitude here is roughly 52 degrees (central Sask). Some of these other posters are definitely further north.

Where I am in south Iceland, it is nearly impossible to grow all of these even with a protection. Most often you need a greenhouse. Only summer squash and siberian tomatoes can be grown with some effort.

Summer has common frosts until early June, and occasional frosts until early July, and frosts start again by mid August. By early September expect the soil to start freezing. Summer is cold and windy, and sometimes very rainy and cloudy.

Summer squash is the easiest. But this summer has been a cold summer and it looks I am not going to get an harvest even with plastic mulch and a fleece cover. In good summers you can grow it without plastic mulch, but it needs a slightly sheltered spot.

Normal tomatoes: impossible.

Siberian tomatoes: they can crop only if in a sheltered spot, like against a wall. But still the crop is very poor.

Corn: I tried painted mountain corn under a plastic frame, it seems still impossible to grow corn in Iceland (unless inside a heated greenhouse)

Peppers/eggplant: impossible (so far I haven't been able to make them flower), however they remain alive during the chilly summer

Melons, Pumpkin: they not only do not grow, but can die if there is a frost in July. Also weather can be very wet and chilly, which is bad for them. I tried siberian watermelon and it died too.

Anyone has varieties that crop good in cold weather?

If I recall correctly, the old guy's name was Stan...great show. Last I heard, David Tarrant had retired and was living in Mexico.

I haven't tried to grow too much that has pushed my zone, i.e. eggplants, okra, sweet potatoes...I live with picky eaters and I know I couldn't get them to eat any of it. I love the look of okra plants and their flowers though.

Oops, spelled David's last name wrong...how can you tell I'm a Dr Who fan? :)

This post was edited by Donna.in.Sask on Mon, Jul 29, 13 at 13:26

Donna in Sask,

Hehe, that's funny. I grew up in the tropics (now living in central SK) and I still can't appreciate the taste of beets and carrots. They just taste so flat and unidimensional to me. However, I have grown to like certain things. I now like sauerkraut, and baby turnips are great in salads. I miss my okra. I can get it to grow here but the yield is so low I don't bother with it anymore.

Okra is delicious when soaked in buttermilk for half an hour, dredged in seasoned cornmeal, and pan-fried. No sliminess this way and it's more addictive than potato chips. Use only fresh okra, never frozen.

The fellow in Yellowknife was Stan Hutyra - a well known gardener in the Knife for years. I grew corn in Fort Smith, NWT - it was fabulous to walk between the rows of corn - they were taller than me!!!

Segurelha -- I looked up the website for painted mountain corn... I think that's a bit of a scam as far as northerly production goes. The developer of that variety is 850 km south of me, and that's certainly not a variety anyone around here grows. For most reliable sweet corn in these parts I'd grow something like Polar Vee or heirloom Orchard Baby. But from your descriptions I still doubt they'd work for you, though they ripen mid-August here.

Earliest tomato I can think of is sub-Arctic maxi. Yields are low, but it is early. I am growing Latah this year and it seems very early too... have picked a bunch alreay. It also has low yields, but the taste is great.

Yukon Chief corn is bred for cold weather growing, that may be a possibility. In the past I have started corn indoors in 6-cells to transplant out. This works well, my earliest crop was ready the first weekend of August.

BTW, I found out through Denali Seeds in Ancorage AL, that these short season warm weather veggie seeds like tomatoes/peppers/cucumbers/squash/corn/pumkin for Alaska are the best seeds to grow also in the subtropics/semitropics & tropics as wellThe short season has its benefits like producing a crop before disease & insects can attack the plants.. It has been a process that started in the late 19th & early 20th century, throughout climate zones 3(semi-artic) & zones 2(sub-artic) the boreal forest zones of the northern hemisphere that research was done to find out what warm & hot weather veggies could grow & produce in these climates. Norway ,Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, Northern Boreal farming & agriculture is a potential that still needs to be developed in these regions.

I have grown fine sweet corn cobs in Gjøvik, Norwat, at approx. 61 degrees north. But warm or hot summers are required. This is a so called sun arctic climatw zone, so I this is a borderline climate for corn.

I tried corn this year in my greenhouse.

A lot of the ears were very small for some reason.

It sounds like starting early and transplanting is the way to go. However, my wife planted a corn kernel in my flower bed as a joke on me, it grew, and something happened to it and it has like six ”tillers” which all are about to bear ears lol. should get 7-10 ears from a single seed. Maybe a greenhouse isn’t necessary? Here is a Minnesota midget cantaloup I grew. I’ve eaten several and have a bunch almost there. Please let the weather hold out. Planted in mid May in ground in a greenhouse. There was an unholy stretch of cold May 22-24 that I think damaged/stunted my veggies this year.

@FrozeBudd_z3/4 dang! Those ears of corn are beautiful. So corn transplants well? Also, do you find cucumber and melon transplant well?

I sowed my crop directly in the ground during the last week of May. I used an heirloom variety and had, frankly, terrible germination -- about 1/3 of the seeds sprouted. And, despite a very warm August and September (so far), the ears are just filling out.

I'm going back to the hybrids next year. I've had the best success with SH2 corn, and that is not what I expected when I started to plant corn.

Then again, I gave the entire garden over to the "Jarrahdale" squash a month ago, so I probably should have kept up with watering and fertilizing more than I should have...

David - Good to hear from you.

Would you be so kind to give me a lesson on corn? What is a hybrid and how does it differ from other kinds? I believe I grew "Peaches & Cream" this year. Is that a hybrid? What are the varieties you've had success with?

@davidpeaceriver__2b Also, how did your grapes do this year? I have a Swenson Red seedless in my greenhouse. I only managed two, yes TWO, solitary grape berries, not clusters, berries, from maybe eight clusters of flowers. They were unimaginably delicious. All this despite the vine having pretty good winter survival and growing like 8 feet this year on many canes. Are there factors inside a greenhouse that prevent grapes from setting fruit? I need help

L Clark, yes, corn takes well to transplanting, but again I impress it is NOT to be sown too early, just requires a 3 to 4 week greenhouse head start before setting out into the garden. I use those very small cell packs and carefully tickle and free up the circling roots at the bottom. I also do cucumber transplants, though these are trickier and tend to VERY quickly stretch to become spindly and they resent root disturbance. I plant out about a 20 ft row of pickling cucumbers and generally harvest at least 100 lbs or more. Always select cucumber varieties with a stated high degree of leaf disease resistance!

Pollination can be problematic within greenhouses, when possible be sure to leave doors and sides open to encourage the bees and wind to get inside. Those first few bloom clusters produced on young grape vines seldom tend to set much of anything, of courses the following years only get better! I did have established grape vines within a solarium, in about year four, I had big, delicious clusters of seedless 'Himrod' hanging down! I can't recall if I simply had shaken the bloom clusters a bit or had used a soft paintbrush upon them, just google to find out what's best to do.

Frozebod - Great info, thanks. I am going to try to transplant corn next year. It would be nice to stagger the corn and get some throughout the summer. I've got some more that is taking forever, but it's almost there that I planted July 1, I think.

I don't have trouble getting cucumbers in my greenhouse. I just plant in late may and am harvesting by August, it's the cantaloupe that is a challenge. We're having a long year and that is the only reason I'm getting any right now! It is so good that it's worth the trouble.

Good info on the grapes. Since posting this, I've talked to a few grape growers and they say to expect very little from your vines for the first 3-5 years. So it looks like I've got a while to wait.

It's time to plan those gardens, folks!

"Valiant" is the hardiest grape variety that I've found -- the central plant has survived temperatures below -40C for many years. You do have to prune the plant properly to encourage fresh growth, as flowers appear on second-year wood.

David, too bad this once fun and rather very active Far North forum is now stark quiet :( ... BUT, yes, I'm taking on some challenges this spring by planting cantaloupe and watermelon, the last two summers soooo HOT and dry I had kicked myself for not planting them, hopefully we won't now have a sopping WET summer!

'Mambo' watermelon I'll be attempting ...'Mambo' watermelon

That looks like a fantastic cultivar! I've been meaning to try "Minnesota Midget" myself, but I have a small garden and typically give it up to the winter squash.

I hope that we do get a wet summer. Our region has become increasingly arid -- there's only 17cm of snow on the ground, at a time when we should have maximum snowcover: the average precip for January and February is about 22mm and 14 mm, respectively, but it was 4 and 2 this year. And summer rainfall has been much reduced, as well. I'd like to try more eastern trees, but can't do that without some type of irrigation system. I lost one lovely sugar maple that did very well for five years, and grew like a weed, but it just withered and died a couple of years ago.

Average "normal" would be nice, 2020 vast Alberta croplands had been drown out, '21 couldn't buy a rain at my location, mind you I'm in a rain shadow ... BUT, forget about '22 it did NOT rain at all at my location from after the first week in July throughout the ENTIRE growing season, just brutal that I was tied to the garden hose for the full summer and some beds only receiving enough waterings to prevent die out, the heat and unusually warm nights would though have made for excellent melon growing! We also haven't received all that much snow this winter, but enough to keep the perennials snug and protected. Otherwise, all in all, it's become a bit challenging to remain enthusiastic when extremes are now the norm!

When I grew (field) corn further north than where I live now (3b), if the ground temperature was too cold, cut worms would cut off/destroy some of the plants before things could warm up. Some years worse than others.

Corn doesn't grow fast/well until the ground and air temperature warm up. However, I've planted corn seed pretty early some years, when it stayed cool/cold and didn't think it would come up but eventually did and grew well.

I've heard of corn seed rotting in the ground when too cold but never had that happen. It may have been an extreme instance idk.

Corn generally can take a couple of light frosts in the spring and still fare well, depending on how cold it got.

When growing sweet corn, just about the time it's juicy sweet ready to eat, racoons would come at night and eat just enough on a cob to ruin it, then go to the next cob and the next. Some sort of fence deterrent is necessary.

Other than that, we'd buy a short season variety for the field, the field corn would be 85 day max. Sweet corn didn't matter except the longer the growing day it was, the longer to be ready to eat. :-)

Bill, our last two summers had been intensely warm with the corn maturing well before frost, mind you had been set out as transplants, though direct sown would have been no problem due to heat lasting particularly late in the season. I'll keep doing my transplants, with such I've only had two crop failures in about 35 years ... well, last year wasn't exactly bumper due to being utterly bone dry and me not having gotten the sprinkler to the corn patch soon enough. Am gonna give cantaloupe and watermelon a try, these would have no doubt been successful had they been grown the past two seasons!

Thanks FB! :-)

Glad to hear you're having some summer season instead of cool and cloudy all the time.

We have so many 'Organic Truck Farmers' in this area, that we have, in recent years, bought all our produce.

Also, there's one neighbor who grows many acres of pumpkins, squash and gourds out at their farm, then they invite everyone they know out for a 'Fall BBQ' that includes a pot luck with steaks cooking on an open pit. After the dinner, the take everyone out to the fields on hay racks and let them pick all they can carry back to the wagon. We've filled our car trunk many times at this activity.

So, between the sweet corn/vegetable stands and our friends pumpkin/squash bonanza, I generally end up with more than we can use, and we share sometimes with others. And at my age and some physical problems, my back and everything else, feels a lot better this way. :^)

Can't find any of the corn pictures from the past but my corn patches were similar in stature to below.

About ten years ago: A turnip patch I planted, in July 2003? out at my old place (2A.?). ;-)

Bill, with the cost of seeds, time and energy to dedicate to a garden, enrich the soil, battle weeds, bugs and weather, then to freeze and preserve the bounty, it's a LOT of work especially when gardening on the larger side of things, I don't mean a tiny 12' x 8' ft bed, not saying small can't be productive. My long time garden buddy said he's tossing in the trowel, three years in a row his veggie patch a write off with either being flooded or droughted out.

That's quite the cover crop, looks like my lawn before I had it sprayed for dandelions, yes I much dislike herbicides, though having the lawn and gardens rather free of dandelions has drastically reduced the hours of weeding, more time for enjoying!!