Variety-dependent plants during summer heat

Oh, man, you were not kidding when you said it's a steam bath out here. It's like a sauna. We are out here in the Good Day Garden. We got David Whitwam from Whitwam Organics here to talk about it. We're talking variety, but our poor little corn stalks. Yeah. Look at those. Are they dead? It just dried up. Yeah. Are they going to make it? No, no, no, no. They're gone. That's done, done, done, done. Poor buddies. They were looking so good. Yeah. Well, our experiment to see if the caterpillars would eat them from the ground up failed, which I guess is a good thing because it grew successfully. Basil smells good. Yeah, it does smell good. This is our African blue basil. So you had mentioned how steamy it is out here. Yes. It smells like steamed basil out here. If you couldn't tell, summer is definitely here. I mean, minus our three o'clock rain showers, which I don't know if we're supposed to see that anytime soon, but the heat is definitely on, especially the nighttime heat. So not really cooling off at night and then getting up in the morning, sun's not really out yet. And you feel that humidity. I kind of feel like that came in a little bit late, just the deep humidity at night, staying hot until really late and then still being really hot in the morning. Sometimes that comes as early as like Mother's Day. And this year, I feel like it held off almost till July 4th weekend where it was really like it is right now. And that's very important because that is when you 100% need to be switched over to summer crops. Right. And this is an example of summer crops. You've got a nice little bed made out here. It looks like you cleared everything out. I cleared everything. So what I want to talk about is varieties. So we have a mizuno eggplant. We have mojito mint. We have hakachu. I think I'm hakachu melons. And we have the African blue basil. Can you hand that to me? Sure. And then we have the African blue basil. And then we also have our downy mildew resistant obsession basil. So why am I going through all of these fancy names? Because with our heat in the real summertime in Central Florida, South Florida, North Florida, you can't just plant basil. You can't just plant a cantaloupe. You can't just plant any old eggplant. So you really need to grab varieties that come from different parts of the world where they see these temperatures, the heat. Right. That they can kind of adjust. Where they can adjust. So the African blue basil, that's a really good one. The obsession basil, the hakachu melons. But it's just really important when I start talking about things to plant at certain times of the year, it's variety dependent. Yeah. It's very much variety dependent. Well, good. I can't wait to see how all of these grow and come in. I know we're running out of time, but a quick cheat code is if you're looking at seeds, look at the germination temperature. So if the germination temperature goes way up, so if it's like won't germinate till 75 and then germinates all the way up until 89 on the germination temperature on seeds, there's a really good chance that those plants are going to appreciate this type of weather. We don't want plants that are struggling or barely making it or need shade cloth. We want ones that love this stuff. Yes. And that's what we're putting in today. All right. David Whitman, the true Floridian in this Florida heat and long sleeves. Long sleeves are better. I know. I guess that's true. I guess that's true. All right, Russell, we'll send it back to you. Get it back in here in the AC. I'll see you in a minute. Oh, I know. It is muggy. All right. See you in a minute.