The Top 6 Summer Vegetables to Grow in Israel (and What NOT to Grow)

After 19 years of growing vegetables at home in Israel, I’ve had a lot of harvests.

I’ve also had a LOT of flops.

After so many years, I have compiled this big list of veggies that are most likely to produce a rewarding harvest in Israel. They tolerate our long hot summer well and are almost completely free of pests in Israel.

If you don’t want to spend months caring for a veggie bed only to get a negligible harvest, here’s my Top 6:

1. Tomatoes

• Delicious fruit. Most of us can never have enough, plus the neighbors will be thrilled to take any extras.
• Expect a great harvest of dozens of fruit (less if you’re growing in a pot). 

Minuses: 

• It will need multiple tall stakes and supports as it grows
• The plant gets overgrown and unattractive as the season progresses, and is an eyesore by September. That’s when you pull it out!

Expect to wait 2-3 months until your tomatoes are ready to eat.

Start from: Seedlings from the nursery. Choose a variety that interests you and that you can’t buy easily/cheaply at the supermarket. Starting from seeds is doable if you have a LOT of patience and/or no other options.

Read More about Growing Tomatoes in Israel

2. Eggplants 

• The plant stays relatively compact and attractive, requiring only simple staking
• Keeps producing well up till December
• May survive the winter and produce again next year
• Will produce 2-4 ripe eggplants a month
• It’s great charred whole and smothered with techina!
• The mauve-colored flowers are attractive and the fruits are simply gorgeous! It is a true delight to watch those glossy purple-black fruits develop day by day!

Minuses:

• Depending on your culinary background, you might not have so many uses for eggplants (but your Sephardi neighbors will always thank you for it!)
• Can’t be picked and eaten on the spot. Must be cooked.

Expect to wait 3 months for your first ripe fruit

Start from: Seedlings from the nursery. Choose an interesting variety! 

3. Hot peppers

• Produces abundantly – all the hot peppers you and your friends will need!
• The plant stays relatively compact and attractive, requiring only simple staking
• Keeps producing well up till December
• May survive the winter and produce again next year
• If you love specialized hot peppers, you will be richly rewarded!

Minuses:

• Depending on your spice tolerance, you might not have so many uses for the fruit (but your heat-loving neighbors will always thank you for it!)
• Can’t be picked and eaten on the spot. Must be prepared (often with gloves on!)
• Slow growing. Your kids might not have patience for this one

Expect to wait 3-4 months for your first ripe fruit

Start from: Seedlings from the nursery. Get interesting varieties!

4. Zucchini

• Grows extremely fast! So fun to watch it develop day by day!
• Produces super abundantly – enjoy zucchini lasagna, zucchini omelets, zucchini dips – and still have plenty for your neighbors. 
• Fascinating, enormous, gorgeous flowers. Learn to cross-pollinate between the male and female flowers!
• The flowers are a delicious delicacy too!

Minuses:

• Takes a LOT of space. Needs at least 1 sq. m. Don’t be deceived by how tiny and cute the seedling looks. Each leaf will be the size of a pizza!
• The leaves may suffer from mildew, weakening fruit production.
• In most areas of Israel, the fruit will all be destroyed by pumpkin fly starting late June. There is no organic way to save the plant after that. Hopefully you’ve had a least a month of abundance by then!
• Can’t be picked and eaten on the spot. Must be cooked. 

Expect to wait just 1 month for your first ripe fruit

Start from: Seedlings from the nursery. Due to the pumpkin fly, you can’t lose time growing from seed.

Read more about Growing Zucchini in Israel

5. Butternut squash

• Grows pretty fast. 
• Learn to cross-pollinate between the male and female flowers.
• It’s fascinating to watch the female flowers swell rapidly into fruits and then change color as they get their characteristic yellowish skin.
• When eaten fresh, you don’t have to peel them. The skin melts in your mouth as you chew.
• Stores very well long term with no drying, curing or other preservation measures. Just leave it on the vine still the vine dies, and then put it in your machsan. Take it out and eat it 6 months later. 

Minuses:

• This is a vine and will grow quite long and needs a lot of space. I put it at the edge of a raised bed and let it trail over the side, so that it doesn’t take up too much valuable planting space. 
• The leaves may suffer from mildew, weakening fruit production.
• In most areas of Israel, the new fruit will all be destroyed by pumpkin fly starting late June. Fruits that set earlier will be fine even if left on the vine. The fly only infests young developing fruit. 
• Can’t be picked and eaten on the spot. Must be cooked. 

Expect to wait 2 months for your first ripe fruit

Start from: Seedlings from the nursery. Due to the pumpkin fly, you can’t lose time growing from seed.

6. Sweet potatoes

• Easy to sprout from pieces of sweet potato from the supermarket. 
• Super easy care plant. You hardly need to do a thing from planting until harvest, other than just watch. 
• The foliage is attractive, glossy and delicious. Eat the leaves just like spinach.
• The flowers in autumn are pretty mauve trumpets.
• It is so fun to dig up sweet potatoes out of the ground at Chanukah time! Not knowing how much you’ll get adds wonder and excitement!
• When you pull out the tubers, you naturally leave some smaller root fragments in the ground which will often sprout next spring – so you don’t need to plant it every year.

Minuses:

• This is a big vine and will need a trellis or fence to grow over.
• You don’t get to watch the tubers develop, since they’re underground.
• It’s a very long wait from planting to eating, but the plant is attractive and easy care meanwhile. 

Expect to wait 6-8 months until you dig up your tubers.

Start from: Just bury them shallow in the soil. No trip to the nursery needed.

Read more about growing sweet potatoes in Israel

I never want to go a summer without growing my top 6 summer veggies! They are so rewarding!

Sometimes I plants other vegies too, but only for fun.

Below are a few I might skip this year…

5 Vegetables NOT to Grow in Israel

(except just for fun, with no expectation of significant harvest)

1. Cucumbers – I get a very short season until the pumpkin fly (זבוב הדלוים) starts to destroy all my cukes. In late June, right after I finally overcome my mildew issues, and have installed various toy snakes and noisy plastic bags to scare the bulbul birds from eating the young cukes, the dratted fly shows up. Much as I love the idea of growing cucumbers, the reality over the past 5 years has gotten worse and worse. (Note: some say they don’t have an issue with the pumpkin fly in Jerusalem, but other parts of the country are badly affected)
2. Sweet Peppers – they take forever, never grow very big in the home garden and often get mutilated by slugs, who you may find have been raising their slimy babies inside that lucious sweet pepper you pick after months of waiting

3. Sweet Corn – they are fun because they grow fast but you will need quite a lot of plants growing closely to get full ears and the resulting corn won’t be so sweet as you’re used to

4. Watermelon – they take a very long time just to produce 1 smallish melon and it will be crammed full of seeds. We are all spoiled by seedless watermelons for a good reason!

5. Green Beans – These grow super fast and produce well but since they are kitniyos, halachicly it is problematic to grow them in the same bed as other vegies. They work great if you can arrange a dedicated bed and set up a pole teepee for them to snake their way up faster than you can say “Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum!” You will need 6-8 plants if you ever hope to pick a bowl of beans for dinner, but the odd green bean tastes good snacked right off the vine! 

Whatever you grow, remember to water often!

Vegetable plants are thirsty and the Israel summer is very hot.

Water 1-2 times a day for plants in the ground, 3-4 times a day for plants in pots.

Veggie plants also need sun. Many books say they need “full sun” (as in 6 hours a day) but in the scorching Israeli summer, a little bit of sun goes a long way. Three hours of direct sunlight should suffice for success.

And don’t forget to pray… for peace in Israel and abundant harvests too!

One last thing…

These lists are highly biased, based on my own years of experience in just 2 gardens. If you feel that this list is incomplete or just plain wrong, you are invited to tell us all how and why in the comments.

Happy planting!