July Garden Harvest in Zone 8

How is your garden growing this year? I hope it’s thriving this summer. Our garden is doing a lot better than last year.

Last year I had one garden bed that nothing grew well in. I was perplexed as to why since I treat all of my raised beds the same way each year.

But I’m happy that all of the vegetables in that bed this year are really thriving. Well, all except the sugar snap peas, but it’s not because of the soil in the bed. It’s because of all the warm weather.

Those poor peas hate it once it gets above 70 degrees for long and they are starting to show their dislike for the heat. But we are continuing to harvest a few peas here and there.

Strawberries

Our strawberries are coming to an end. They really gave us quite a few berries this year. I harvested 12 quarts of berries and I was thankful for so many. The prices of local berries really went up this year. They were $32 for a flat of strawberries.

I think last year they were around $25 a flat so that was quite a jump in price. Plus our homegrown berries taste so much better than the store bought ones too. So juicy and flavorful we eat them right out of the garden bed.

Raspberries

The raspberries are continuing to produce also. We’ve harvested a few less this year than last year but I think it has to do with the weird wet than dry and hot weather we’ve been having off and on.

I noticed quite a few raspberries seemed to dry up on the vine before they even got ripe. Now I’m not sure why this happened.

It could have been from the one week a couple of weeks back that we couldn’t get out to water them as much. But it was a cooler week so I’m sure they had plenty of water.

But either way, we lost quite a few to this strange happening. We have more to ripen and we enjoy them so much I wish we had more raspberry runs.

Lettuce

Our leaf and buttercrunch lettuce continue to produce. I have a few heads ready to harvest so I didn’t purchase lettuce this week. We will be enjoying the delicious tender lettuce out of our garden all week long.

We are still waiting on broccoli, which I’m not sure will come this year. I got my broccoli in late but with our cooler spring I thought it might produce some, but so far nothing has come of it. I’ll leave them in and see what happens.

Kale

But the Russian kale that is right beside the broccoli is quite happy and doing well. I love the purple color mixed with the green it’s not only delicious but pretty too.

The beans are growing up our cattle panel trellis and soon we should be enjoying fresh green beans out of the garden.

Waiting on Tomatoes

The tomatoes are starting to bloom which means tomatoes won’t be far behind. It looks like the cherry tomatoes will be loaded this year look at all those blooms.

Flowers in the Garden

For flowers this month the hydrangeas have started to bloom and they are so pretty. This little hydrangea was started because a branch was buried in the leaves long enough to set up roots.

We transplanted it but weren’t sure it would survive. But look at it now, just two short years and it’s tripled its size. With pretty lavender flowers too.

Our roses continue to bloom. My favorite is this heirloom tea rose. It has so many petals on each rose and smells heavenly.

When it comes time to prune the roses, I save some of the roses and bring them inside. A few I’ll place into a bowl for potpourri. The best looking ones will go into a vase to enjoy.

Recently I made a batch or rose water and rose oil with the blooms from our roses and both turned our great. I’ll be drying petals for use in bath bombs this winter the next time I need to prune.

Tuesdays in the Garden

That’s about it for our garden right now. But the other Tuesday in the Garden gardeners has more to share about their gardens too. Take a peek at what’s growing in their gardens this year. Just click on the photos below.