Lifespan of edible annuals in the tropics

I am tending to my first successful garden ever, I got to wondering about lifespan of the plants. I sowed them a bit early this year. My Chinese yard longs produced beans like crazy but the plant is yellowing over now even with nearly daily harvests. I have no idea if it's nutrients, some disease, or its lifespan. I feel like it's not even too late to sow again and do my trellis a bit better.

For warm weather plants, if it remains hot enough, will they simply continue to thrive even if they're annuals? Or do they have some sort of lifespan built into their DNA that must be followed no matter the weather?

Here in FL I was getting 4-5 harvest of those yard long beans a year. The plants wouldn't live terribly long, but I'd get plenty of beans and just kept replanting. My experience with nightshades and brassicas was that I could grow them for 2 years, but the second year harvest wasn't as great. I've had ghost pepper, eggplant, collard greens, and dino kale, the kale did the best of the bunch on its second year. It waned a bit and I lopped off the dying top which caused it to grow arms off the main branch and made a bunch of tiny leaves which never got as big. It was ok and it looked really amazing, but I would have been better off growing something different in warmer months in that space. I guess shade cloth or some other method to break up the intense summer sunlight could have helped, but that seems like more hassle than just composting the struggling plant and picking a more appropriate plant for the season. I live at the beach with almost pure sand and very high evaporation, so it might be different for others with different conditions.

Here in Hawaii, plants act much differently than on most of the mainland. Things that are annuals for most gardeners can often last over a year, or even multiple years in Hawaii. I’m located near South Point of Big Island, so I’m in the tropics.

Parsley….can last years
Peppers….can last years if disease doesn’t get them
Tomatoes….often last for over a year
Pole beans….often get 3-5 flushes of beans
Lima beans….at least 2 flushes of beans. Might go longer but the plants get straggly so I pull them out
Kale….keeps going. I cut them down when the stem gets more than 5 foot tall
Collards….I’ve had plants going on 3 years old before I got tired of them
Chard…I’ve had plants 3 years old before I pulled them in order to recondition the soil
Basil and oregano last years when pruned regularly
Mizuna and arugula can last a full year before bolting if kept watered, fertilized, and harvested
Asian greens…..many can last 6 months to a year if leaves are harvested weekly
Eggplant….I have 3 year olds plants right now that are still producing
Pumpkins and gourds will last a full year if planted in the late fall. My current pumpkin plants that I seeded in October are producing their third flush of fruits right now. The plants are still thriving.
Sweet potatoes….they don’t die back here if they are tended and pruned.

Wow, gardens in Hawaii must be amazing. I love the tropics. We prefer a lot of the same vegetables but I guess it comes with the territory... Can't often grow a lot of things they can grow up north. The only things I really miss are onions and garlic, which I eat daily so it sucks we have such a short window for them, if any. I've been looking into garlic chives or flowers for the garlic flavor, I don't know of anything besides green onions that have any sort of onion flavor.

I got a tip a couple years ago to grow Japanese vegetables since they love humidity.

How in the world do you keep collards going for years? I am a mustard greens addict. Part shade? All my green vegetables do not do well once it gets slightly hot here, even Japanese ones like hybrid spinach or mustards.

It says you're near an active volcano... Growing coffee?

I can also keep collards, kale, chard, peppers, eggplant/bitter eggplant, and some other stuff going for years (in Brazil, a few hours south of the tropic so not officially tropical, zone 9b.)
Some things just go all year round- jabuticaba, mulberries, passionfruit seem to just fruit whenever they darn please. In my state farmers can usually get two crops of corn or beans per year (a good spring/summer one and then a "mini harvest" during the fall).
Most things (especially beans, peppers and tomatoes) usually get diseased and have to be ripped out after one harvest. Most things leave the collards alone, except for aphids, and they last better.
I think we might have something in common with Hawaii here- we can grow for a long time but the bugs/diseases are really heavy duty so it all balances out. We might get snow or a bit of frost a few times a year but it doesn't kill off the pests.

@Jeff, I can only do spinach in the winter (even heat tolerant varieties- just put mine in the ground this week, and we expect to get frost on Wednesday....), and for some reason every bug likes mustard, so I don't even try growing it anymore.
But I have a few hundred chinese cabbages, kales, tatsoi, pak choy, romaine lettuce, and who even knows what else going right now, it will be a good winter harvest.

Tereza Okava wrote:in Brazil,

You're in Brazil? The Copa América and specifically Brazil got me addicted to football... Is land expensive down there and are foreigners that buy land frowned upon? I have about 50% Cuban blood but a) I can't even visit Cuba if I wanted to, and b) I'm not really interested in visiting with both the embargo in place and communist government. How I wish I could experience two of my favorite things there... rum and cigars

Land here is so expensive, especially Florida, but I love the tropics. Not sure I could live in any other zone except perhaps a slight mountain region or the New Mexican desert scape.

I guess it's ubiquitous, the tropics have heavy duty bugs... I pretty much can't grow mustard because leaf miners and caterpillars that destroy them. Even during winter with less humidity and when bugs settle a bit.

Jeff, it's hard to compare prices, we're dealing with crazy inflation so if you have dollars I suppose it's a good deal, but since the pandemic land prices are high and not going down. I love it here, but this is not an easy country (said with love: unless you speak the language and have family/strong network it's tough, and most people end up leaving. I'm American, but spent most of my life overseas.) And it's not getting easier (political instability, all the unrest in the US is repeated here too, plus inflation, shortages, etc.).
There are limits on how much land foreigners can own (though you're allowed to have a decent enough amount), plus there are visa requirements.
On the other hand, as the Portuguese said when they first came ashore here, anything you stick in the ground grows like crazy. It's crazy beautiful. And man, do we have fruit.

Yea, I understand, there's about a 0% chance I'd move anywhere outside America but was just curious.

I want to leave these miserable suburbs, every time I plant a tree or perennial I'm just like, I don't even want to be here, so why am I continuing to waste time and set my future self up? I do it because I love it but it's a tiresome self-defeating cycle.

Su Ba wrote:
Kale….keeps going. I cut them down when the stem gets more than 5 foot tall  

Those kale stems can be dried and then turned into walking sticks! Or play swords (that's what my kids like to do with them 😆).

Jenny…. I throw the trash from the kale into the pig pen. It gives them something interesting to play with, plus they eat it sometimes too.

Jeff…. Yes I grow coffee, but only for my own use. Years ago I use to sell roasted coffee, but gave that up. I feel I can spend my efforts better growing other things.