Last Summer My Vegetables Stopped Growing in the Extreme Heat

I’ll be honest: last Summer my Potato harvest was abysmal, & in the extreme heat my vegetables stopped growing; at times, some plants’ leaves wilted. Many died and I know this happened to many friends gardens.

I got the best crops from plant species already adapted to growing in hot climates, like pumpkins and Aztec Maize. The Skirrets did well too, but I grow them in partial shade. Young Spinach, chard, and runner beans all died. Radishes died. The Mouli survived but were undersized. I got a bumper crop of tomatoes all summer and a few green ones in October. I also got a really good crop of grapes which I turned into pasteurised juice which we drink like a cordial.

The pumpkin leaves shaded the soil, but it still dried out, becoming powdery and cracked. I used most of my 2000 litres of stored rainwater. But the problem was the heat.

However, one plant that did okay, even after drying out for a few days, was a Typha Latifolia. Typha is an ancient indigenous staple and wetland plant. It is a perennial and, compared to wheat, more productive. Here is a demonstration of starch being extracted from the roots

I started growing Typha because I know it can survive extreme climates:

All the plants in the Famine Garden did well. Cornsalad, though, is a winter salad, and it is already growing. Interestingly, all the native staples classed as marginal foods, ignored by most foragers as boring, did well during the 2026 summer heatwave.

I have always pickled and bottled surplus and waste food. I stock it for consumption later in the Year. Sometimes I get stuff the food bank can’t redistribute.

Some people assume storing food isn’t helpful. Safely pickling and bottling surplus food is ancient indigenous wisdom. Perpetuated by the WI. Storing surplus food is an ancient skill that the ultra-wasteful, ‘just in time’ ultra-efficient industrial capitalism model of consumption has robbed us of.

When Robin Wall Kimmerer says things that help us remember what’s hidden from us, we only have to look with integrity and apply the principles of the honourable harvest. If it’s good for Indigenous people to learn ancestral skills, then it’s good for us: storing food for Lean times is good for us all and an ancestral skill.