The books always talk about cool and warm season crops. And when to start them based on last frost dates. However, I am finding that definition lacking for me.
1. I never have a frost date.
2. I live in the tropics which is so much different from temperate climates.
a. My day length only varies about 2 hours from the shortest to the longest day
b. Seasonal changes are subtle my annual temperature ranges from about a low of 51 to a high
of 91 all year. The day night difference is about 8-10 degrees.
I have two main seasons hot and wet
I find that what I considered warm season crops are actually cool season crops for me. Tomatoes, bush beans, hari covert, cucumbers, unless they are heat tolerant cultivars. Some plants you would consider to be annuals are actually perennials for me.
Instead of difining plants as warm or cold season. It is better for me to define them by the optimal temperatures for growth and quality.
Cool season crops (instead of leafy and root crops) Crops that mature in temperatures less than 75 degrees.
Some of my cool crops actually have to be sown at the end of summer July-September for them to
mature when the temperatures are cooler and have the longest harvest interval
Warm season crops mature in temperatures from 75-85 degrees
Then I have another category and those are the crops that are heat tolerant up to 100 degrees.
Most of the tropical species can handle very hot weather. Actually, at my elevation it has only peaked at 92 degrees, but downhill it can get to be 100 degrees especially when there is a lot of concrete and pavement.
Most of the regular cucumbers, tomato, bush beans, hari covert, bell peppers, lettuce, radishes, zucchini, arugula grow best at temperatures less than 75. Beyond that, the non-parthenocarpic zucchini will only produce male flowers, tomato, cucumber and bush beans will drop flowers and stop fruiting. Lettuce and most of the leafy crops will have tough, bitter leaves and bolt. Asian greens can tolerate warmer temperatures a little longer till about June when it averages 88 degrees.
Most of the cultivars I grow need to have good disease and heat resistance to do well.
However, asparagus does fine as long as it has enough water. Kale which is a cold tolerant plant, actually is very heat tolerant. However, it becomes bitter in the heat. Kale, hot peppers,Swiss Chard, and eggplant are perennials. Tomatoes would be perennial too, but disease usually kills them.
Heat tolerant cultivars of cucumber, tomato, southern peas, tropical beans (asparagus, wing beans, cowpeas, and heat tolerant pole beans) will grow well in the summer heat with enough water and some shade for some of the plants. The pole beans don't last as long as the tropical beans, but they will tolerate the higher temperatures a little longer.
Tropical vegetables can tolerate heat and humidity the best. They have very few problems with mildew, fungal or bacterial diseases. Tropical vegetables, and the heat resistant cultivars ( up to 90-100 degrees) last the longest.
July-August is my off season. I only take care of perennials. After May, I am pretty much just harvesting out the garden. I solarize, and cover the garden in weed mat and wait for things to cool down. I usually can plant onions, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts in September. I plant Garlic on October 25th.
I actually have to start some "cool" season crops when it is still hot and muggy because of their long days to maturity. For these crops to mature in November when the temperatures are cool enough for them to produce. If I wait to plant them when the temperatures cool down in November, then I have a shorter harvest period since I basically cannot plant any cool season crop past April, and I can only plant the crops that will mature in 30 days then. By May the average daily temperature will be 86 degrees.
I can start planting the "warm crops" that need warmer temperatures to germinate once the temperature gets to be about 68 degrees. Tomatoes can be planted when it is 50 degrees. The tropical plants: super hot peppers, shiso, papaya, will be slow to germinate if at all until it gets close to 80 degrees.
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applestar
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LOL I’ve always wondered if your tomato growing season is more like “winter”.
It’s so true that “expert” books and resources need to be looked at through the lense of your own growing region and climate, and wonder where the authors are growing there’s.
On the flip side to your situation, there are so many gardening techniques that I want to try but are impossible due to winter temperatures falling below compensating with reasonably convenient means….
It also turns out that I don’t want to go outside and garden when I have to bundle up and then “break into” thoroughly bundled up structures, which may suffer from breaking the “hermetically sealed protection” … besides which in order to do so I would have to take off my gloves
…I think I need a fully equipped green house connected to the main house via an underground passageway…. 
It’s so true that “expert” books and resources need to be looked at through the lense of your own growing region and climate, and wonder where the authors are growing there’s.
On the flip side to your situation, there are so many gardening techniques that I want to try but are impossible due to winter temperatures falling below compensating with reasonably convenient means….
It also turns out that I don’t want to go outside and garden when I have to bundle up and then “break into” thoroughly bundled up structures, which may suffer from breaking the “hermetically sealed protection” … besides which in order to do so I would have to take off my gloves
…I think I need a fully equipped green house connected to the main house via an underground passageway…. I dream of having a hoop house, mainly to keep the rain out during the rainy season and the bugs out the rest of the time. But, that is only a dream. I have no space for that. The permits would kill me. My shade benches have to be small and under the top of the fence because the HOA would complain if they could see it. It is also why I can only sneak some ornamental edibles in the front yard. As it is, I have been cited for the alyssum in the pollin and nectar garden spilling over the edge of the driveway in my yard, so I have to cut it back to the edge of the driveway, which invites weeds along the edge.
I would like to grow some cold plants, but I am glad I don't have to deal with winter woes either. Glads and amaryllis are perennial here and they are among the few bulbing non native plants I can grow without any special attention. To grow garlic, I have refrigerate the bulbs for 10-12 weeks. For dahlias, I can grow them from seed to bloom, but the tubers would have to be lifted and refrigerated for them to grow again. Tulips and daffodils can only be forced. Sakura does bloom in Wahiawa above the 900 ft elevation. I live below that, but it is just 4 miles away, so I can still enjoy them in January. I am glad I don't have the tree. It really isn't pretty when it is not in bloom.
I would like to grow some cold plants, but I am glad I don't have to deal with winter woes either. Glads and amaryllis are perennial here and they are among the few bulbing non native plants I can grow without any special attention. To grow garlic, I have refrigerate the bulbs for 10-12 weeks. For dahlias, I can grow them from seed to bloom, but the tubers would have to be lifted and refrigerated for them to grow again. Tulips and daffodils can only be forced. Sakura does bloom in Wahiawa above the 900 ft elevation. I live below that, but it is just 4 miles away, so I can still enjoy them in January. I am glad I don't have the tree. It really isn't pretty when it is not in bloom.
AppleStar, I also have thought about "... a fully equipped green house connected to the main house via an underground passageway ..." 
Perhaps there is a need for more gardening information for those in the tropics, Imafan. All gardening is local. Have we realized that English language gardening information from the UK may well be from people living on a latitude the same as Alaska? Now the time zone for Alaskan gardeners may fit with your clocks but it hardly makes any more sense for Hawaiian gardeners. I'm wondering if you have explored information from those folks and institutions in northern Australia.
You are using the term "hari covert" in a post, Imafan. When I first noticed that you did this I thought that the spell checker must have come up with that spelling of haricot beans. Or, that you were doing it in jest.
Steve
Perhaps there is a need for more gardening information for those in the tropics, Imafan. All gardening is local. Have we realized that English language gardening information from the UK may well be from people living on a latitude the same as Alaska? Now the time zone for Alaskan gardeners may fit with your clocks but it hardly makes any more sense for Hawaiian gardeners. I'm wondering if you have explored information from those folks and institutions in northern Australia.
You are using the term "hari covert" in a post, Imafan. When I first noticed that you did this I thought that the spell checker must have come up with that spelling of haricot beans. Or, that you were doing it in jest.
Steve
No, I spelled it wrong it is Haricot vert beans.
I do actually use the tropical permaculture site a lot. That is one from Australia and I use their extension service sites for things like making fruit fly bait. I have to order the vegemite because it is not a common thing to find in stores here. I can get fruit fly male lures locally, but the protein bait is only sold in gallons now and is about $200. I would have to find a lot of people to split that. I could not even finish a quart when it was available. I got the torula yeast online.
Most of the seeds that we can get unless you go to the grocery store or know someone who has seeds or cuttings are mainland seeds. Ctahr, the local extension does have some publications, but most of them are not written for homeowners. The best publication they have on home gardening was written in 1943 and some of that information is dated, especially on pesticides. It was written for basically a row garden in dedicated plots. Most of us, especially in the newer homes don't have that kind of space and there are restrictions if you live in a planned community.
Because of the globalization of food and culture, we hardly see any native anything. Native birds are mainly on conservation land. Non-native plants and animals are what you will find in all urban areas and they dominate. Even the open land is full of non-native weeds. We have so many feral jungle fowl (fighting chickens) that the city is funding a program to try to eliminate them.
15% of our food is grown locally. Farmland is expensive and all inputs, fertilizer, seeds, equipment has to be imported. Local farmers usually cannot compete with mainland sourced food. Even mainland eggs are cheaper than local eggs. Less than that are ethnic foods like taro. Taro was not even native to Hawaii. The early Polynesians brought 31 principal plants that was their main source of food, medicine, and fiber. Taro was one of them. Diseases, water pollution, and apple snails have caused issues with taro production to the point that taro actually has to be imported from Samoa to meet the demand. The farmers grow lettuce, kale, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cabbages, and the kinds of things you would also find on the mainland. We just have to pick disease and heat tolerant varieties.
The University had only 28 seed varieties and there are even less now. Many have been discontinued or they don't have enough seed. Most of their tomatoes were developed in the 60's and are not resistant to TYLCV. The beans, corn, eggplant, Chinese cabbage, they have developed were bred for our climate and for disease tolerance. It is why I cannot plant any kind of corn. Our corn is tropical corn and will set on a short day and it is maize mosaic virus resistant. The beans are heat and disease tolerant. I used to grow Kentucky Wonder but it gets rust, Poamoho beans are rust resistant.
What most of us grow in our gardens are really non-native foods. If they do not come from the western world, then they originate from the East. There are tropical foods we do grow and those do very well like the tropical beans, bananas, spinach, eggplant, hot peppers, moringa, and sweet potatoes. The best source for how to grow that is someone who is actually growing them.
Most new gardeners try to grow the western vegetables when the mainland does. That does not work unless they have disease and heat resistant varieties. Most of the western vegetables are better grown in cooler weather. Tropicals during the summer. It doesn't help that most of the sources for information are geared toward temperate climate conditions. When many of you are gearing up for planting in April or May, we are putting in our final plantings, because we will be mostly harvesting and maintenance June-August and not do a lot of planting.
Even my friend who is working on a farm, could not understand when I told her that I would have to switch varieties of cucumber and beans to more heat tolerant ones because I will not get a good crop of bush beans when the temperature is 90 degrees, and only heat tolerant cucumbers will produce at those temperatures. The varieties I grow in the rainy season have more mildew resistance but won't tolerate temperatures much above 85 degrees. The TYLCV tomatoes that I have to grow now, for the most part are not heat tolerant. They get more BER and will stop producing and growing in the heat and resume once the temperature cools. There were few TYLCV resistant varieties available a few years ago, but more are coming out and I have found one that is naturally resistant, red currant, tiny but sweet. The vine is not tiny though.
I have found some good mainland sources. Florida, Texas have the same issues we have with heat and humidity in Summer and shorter days. One of my new catalog finds was Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. They have seeds and practical growing guides for very hot summers. The garden calendar for south Florida works for my climate and includes some crops and plants that we commonly grow here.
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP452
https://www.southernexposure.com/what-t ... t-summers/
https://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/gr ... ables.html
This is the ctahr (College of tropical ag and human resources. Land grant founding college of the University of Hawaii) tropical topics links. Some hyperlinks are broken but the publications can still be accessed by cut and paste.
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/uhmg/tropical-topics.asp
I do actually use the tropical permaculture site a lot. That is one from Australia and I use their extension service sites for things like making fruit fly bait. I have to order the vegemite because it is not a common thing to find in stores here. I can get fruit fly male lures locally, but the protein bait is only sold in gallons now and is about $200. I would have to find a lot of people to split that. I could not even finish a quart when it was available. I got the torula yeast online.
Most of the seeds that we can get unless you go to the grocery store or know someone who has seeds or cuttings are mainland seeds. Ctahr, the local extension does have some publications, but most of them are not written for homeowners. The best publication they have on home gardening was written in 1943 and some of that information is dated, especially on pesticides. It was written for basically a row garden in dedicated plots. Most of us, especially in the newer homes don't have that kind of space and there are restrictions if you live in a planned community.
Because of the globalization of food and culture, we hardly see any native anything. Native birds are mainly on conservation land. Non-native plants and animals are what you will find in all urban areas and they dominate. Even the open land is full of non-native weeds. We have so many feral jungle fowl (fighting chickens) that the city is funding a program to try to eliminate them.
15% of our food is grown locally. Farmland is expensive and all inputs, fertilizer, seeds, equipment has to be imported. Local farmers usually cannot compete with mainland sourced food. Even mainland eggs are cheaper than local eggs. Less than that are ethnic foods like taro. Taro was not even native to Hawaii. The early Polynesians brought 31 principal plants that was their main source of food, medicine, and fiber. Taro was one of them. Diseases, water pollution, and apple snails have caused issues with taro production to the point that taro actually has to be imported from Samoa to meet the demand. The farmers grow lettuce, kale, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cabbages, and the kinds of things you would also find on the mainland. We just have to pick disease and heat tolerant varieties.
The University had only 28 seed varieties and there are even less now. Many have been discontinued or they don't have enough seed. Most of their tomatoes were developed in the 60's and are not resistant to TYLCV. The beans, corn, eggplant, Chinese cabbage, they have developed were bred for our climate and for disease tolerance. It is why I cannot plant any kind of corn. Our corn is tropical corn and will set on a short day and it is maize mosaic virus resistant. The beans are heat and disease tolerant. I used to grow Kentucky Wonder but it gets rust, Poamoho beans are rust resistant.
What most of us grow in our gardens are really non-native foods. If they do not come from the western world, then they originate from the East. There are tropical foods we do grow and those do very well like the tropical beans, bananas, spinach, eggplant, hot peppers, moringa, and sweet potatoes. The best source for how to grow that is someone who is actually growing them.
Most new gardeners try to grow the western vegetables when the mainland does. That does not work unless they have disease and heat resistant varieties. Most of the western vegetables are better grown in cooler weather. Tropicals during the summer. It doesn't help that most of the sources for information are geared toward temperate climate conditions. When many of you are gearing up for planting in April or May, we are putting in our final plantings, because we will be mostly harvesting and maintenance June-August and not do a lot of planting.
Even my friend who is working on a farm, could not understand when I told her that I would have to switch varieties of cucumber and beans to more heat tolerant ones because I will not get a good crop of bush beans when the temperature is 90 degrees, and only heat tolerant cucumbers will produce at those temperatures. The varieties I grow in the rainy season have more mildew resistance but won't tolerate temperatures much above 85 degrees. The TYLCV tomatoes that I have to grow now, for the most part are not heat tolerant. They get more BER and will stop producing and growing in the heat and resume once the temperature cools. There were few TYLCV resistant varieties available a few years ago, but more are coming out and I have found one that is naturally resistant, red currant, tiny but sweet. The vine is not tiny though.
I have found some good mainland sources. Florida, Texas have the same issues we have with heat and humidity in Summer and shorter days. One of my new catalog finds was Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. They have seeds and practical growing guides for very hot summers. The garden calendar for south Florida works for my climate and includes some crops and plants that we commonly grow here.
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/EP452
https://www.southernexposure.com/what-t ... t-summers/
https://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/gr ... ables.html
This is the ctahr (College of tropical ag and human resources. Land grant founding college of the University of Hawaii) tropical topics links. Some hyperlinks are broken but the publications can still be accessed by cut and paste.
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/uhmg/tropical-topics.asp