Happy July!! It’s been a hot month and the garden has grown wonderfully this month!! Having flower pots and garden beds is how we are gardening in the city! Before we had garden beds, we grew vegetables in several different types of gardening pots and we were fortunate enough to garden at a community garden. But I definitely am glad that we can garden at home now!
We have garden beds in the front yard and backyard as well as trees and shrubs. We planted everything last fall so it’s exciting to see how well it’s all doing!
Let me take you through our yard and show you what’s happened throughout July!
We started July off with Fireworks for Canada Day! And Happy 4th to our American friends!
Now let’s get to our garden update!!
July 4
Here’s our peppers. We are growing habanero, jalapeno, chili peppers and bell peppers. The habanero is slowly growing, but the other plants have peppers on them!
Here’s the Robin Tomato. The plant itself stays quite small and compact, perfect for container gardening! But because it is compact, we really need to look around to pick tomatoes otherwise it’s easy to miss them.
We planted some garlic chives from seed along with lettuce.
Here’s one of my rhubarb plants. It’s called Victoria.
Here’s Stevia leaf. You just add it to your drinks for sweetness instead of sugar! Just tear and bruise the leaves in your glass with a little liquid, let sit for a few minutes, and then fill your glass with ice and whatever you are drinking like tea or coffee.
Herbs. Here’s all the herbs we are growing this summer.
Here’s my daughter ‘L’ and her mini garden bed of mint, sprouts and radishes.
Flowers because I love flowers! Plus it’s like a pollinator box to attract bees to our yard which helps pollinate other plants.
Here’s the blueberries. I’m excited to have fresh blueberries!
Here’s my daughter ‘H’ watering the garden with me. As you can see, the potatoes are doing really well! The dill is up, lettuce, squash and a few other veggies.
Here’s the potatoes.
“That was the happiest homecoming ever. Here, Pa said, he’d harvested a crop he didn’t know he had planted. A harvest of friends!”
— Laura Ingalls Wilder
July 8
In just a few days, the garden has already changed! The apples are starting to turn red — I think it’s all the heat.
We are finally picking jalapenos! They have a bit of kick to them but not overly spicy.
Raspberries are turning a deep red! Time to pick!
July 9
Weeds. The weeds in the gravel/rocks where one day a deck may be are simply atrocious!! There’s no landscaping cloth under the rocks here which makes them hard to pick. I’m so glad I found a solution though!! In a designated watering can that I wrote “WEEDS” across so I don’t accidentally water garden plants and cause their demise, I put a few squirts of blue Dawn dish soap, some sea salt and then a jug of vinegar. I let it sit a couple minutes and then pour on the weeds when it’s hot outside. The next day the weeds mostly shriveled up!! Two days later, they all turned black, dried up and was easy to pick and get rid of! It smells awful but works great!
Now, back to the garden!
Just in a couple days, the blueberries are turning color! The already blue ones are turning a deeper blue and softening which means it’s time to pick them.
I’m so excited to eat fresh berries from our yard!
Here are a few tomatoes. They are finally blossoming which is great! There’s not as many blossoms as I had hoped for, but we’ll at least get a few tomatoes!
These are my daughter’s garden boxes along the far side of the fence. Here is mint, carrots, beets, peas, lettuce, pumpkins and zucchini.
Here are potatoes, radishes and a few different squash plants.
And here’s strawberries and rhubarb.
Gooseberry.
Cherry tree.
Here’s a bunch of different veggies growing. There’s potatoes, corn, squash, peas, beans, carrots, beets, basil, lettuce and dill. We really packed it in to grow as much as we could.
Pansies. These actually grew in my front flower box last year. When they came up in the spring, I picked them up with handfuls of dirt and set it in a flower pot of dirt and now they are growing. They easily spread their seed, are very hearty and come up each year. And they’re so pretty to look at!
Since it was so hot, we picked lettuce once it was dark out. I find lettuce picked in the heat of the day often goes limp and tastes bitter.
I’m so excited to have garden fresh vegetables and herbs again!
Raspberries! We only have two raspberry plants this year, but I’m hoping to plant more this fall or next spring.
July 15
The raspberries are a deep dark red and ready to be picked. They’re sweet and delicious!
Yum! I think we got a decent amount from the one raspberry plant so far!
Honeyberry
Look at those beautiful berries! They’re sweet yet tart!
These are the two honeyberry plants we originally had at the community garden. They are finally growing, producing berries and looking good!!
This is the Viking Chokecherry. Chokecherries are tart, dry your mouth out and have pits. The name is very suitable. I’m looking forward to when it produces lots of berries so I can make juice and jelly.
The chokecherries are still green. They’ll become a dark red, purple and almost black looking before we pick them.
Apples are looking good. These are the Fall Red.
These blueberry bushes are so small I put flowers and a garden ornament by it so they do not get stepped on!!
Here’s the chili peppers.
July 16
Look at those potatoes!! They’re growing so good!
Here’s corn, lettuce, beans, peas and carrots. ‘H’ planted them closer together than she thought!
Here’s squash, corn, beans and cucumber.
Here’s the garden from the other side!!
Potatoes and dill.
Dill.
Lettuce and onions.
More dill.
Here’s the big garden box from the other corner.
“Home is where my plants are.”
— unknown
July 24
Here’s the rhubarb.
Here’s all the mint:
Look how well the flowers grew in just a few weeks!! They’re so much more full now!! I love the scent they give off!!
Garlic chives, lettuce and stevia. The other lettuce was all pulled to be eaten and re-seeded.
Here are the peppers. We are finally eating the bell peppers.
Here are the herbs which are growing in the front garden bed.
Corn is growing great! And look at that squash! Wow!
Finally we have some patty pans (also called starburst squash) growing now!
We have cobs starting to develop on the corn plants! Yay!
Strawberries and rhubarb. This rhubarb plant is taking longer to grow than the others. We also planted sunflowers here and cucumbers!
Potatoes are doing good and are flowering. Once they stop flowering, we can start to harvest potatoes!
Potatoes, dill and squash.
Squash, lettuce, radishes and potatoes.
Pumpkin, beets, carrot, lettuce and mint. A bunch of seeds did not come up.
Peas are flowering now and some pods are slowly growing peas. I’m so excited!!
The pansies are growing well too! Look how much more full they are in just a couple weeks.
And that’s the garden this month! There’s been lots of growth and change. There’s blossoms and veggies growing and berries that are ready to eat. It’s such a blessing to see!
How’s your garden? We’d love to hear!
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours