Tour of My Garden: July

I always think of July in the vegetable garden as the month where the harvest really starts to racket up! I’m starting to have a hard time keeping up with the vegetables coming in from the garden. I cook a lot during the week, but the fridge is getting more and more crowded with every passing day. What a wonderful “problem” to have!

I’d thought I’d take you on a tour of my garden as it is right now – a snapshot of the height of summer.

Notice anything different about my house in the photo above? I, with helpers (thanks Mom, Dad and Jeff), am painting our house this summer. Do you remember the old color? A minty green that we guess is the original color from the 1960’s. I’m unsure about the new accent color on the door. I think I may need to go a shade darker/deeper. It’s a little too bright.

The flower garden border between the street and the front yard garden is really popping. It’s a bit crowded as well, so we’ll plan to move some things around in the fall to create more space. Below, the honey bees are all over this ornamental allium in the mornings.

I’m loving my herb spiral. The plants have filled in nicely. From the top: rosemary, thyme, parsley, onion chives, sage, purple basil, calendula, golden oregano.

Without a wide angle lens it’s difficult to get a full shot of my front yard garden. Here are a few beds from the side. the nearest bed has celery on the left, then rows of carrots, beets and cilantro. The middle bed has lacinato and curly green kale on the ends with romanesco broccoli in the middle. (I’m still waiting for it to produce.) The far bed has purple kale on the end with leeks, purple cabbage and beans in the rest.

My 300 onions are bulbing up really nice so far! I just finished the last of the onions from last year this week. (I froze some chopped to get me through the first part of the summer.)

I was pleasantly surprised to find these purple peppers peeking through the plant one morning last week.

This tri-color mix from Johnny’s (Trilogy) has green, yellow and purple beans mixed into the same packet. I’ve been having fun using them raw in colorful dinner dishes.

Mom always said not to play with your food, but I can’t resist when it’s this beautiful!

Moving on to the side yard – you can see the painting in progress in this photo. We live in such a friendly neighborhood. Pretty much every day that I’m working outside someone stops to say hi and complement our gardens and new paint color. It’s so heartwarming!

My hog panel trellises are finally getting covered with greenery. I planted love vine and hyacinth bean on this one. In the rest of the bed are flowers in the front left side with potatoes behind, on the right is okra and basil in the front with potatoes behind.

Some of my favorite annuals have reached maturity like this Lady in Red Salvia (above) and Peppermint Stick Zinnia (below).

We experimented with another style of hog panel trellising above. This one has Sungold tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers and squash climbing up it’s sides. In the rest of the bed are salvia and zinnia on the front left with brussels sprouts behind, and a big bed of tomatoes on the right.

The pole beans have quickly reached the top.

I love the tendrils on the squash.

The side garden doesn’t have a fence, so I intentionally planted vegetable I thought the rabbits wouldn’t eat. I haven’t harvested much from this garden yet since it was planted much later than the front garden.

Thanks for taking the tour with me! If you have any questions about the garden leave them in the comments below the post.