The garden has changed a lot this month. Actually, it has changed a great deal! So much has grown, sprouted, ripened, blossomed and more…it’s been so awesome watching it!
Let me show you around the garden throughout July!
July 3
Here are the potatoes — there’s a few weeds to pick, but I didn’t have my gardening gloves, so I didn’t pick them yet…that would be so brutal picking the thistles with no gloves!! Yikes! Let’s check out the potatoes!
Queen Anne potatoes
Here’s the Queen Anne blossoms — aren’t they pretty!?!
Red Apple
Red Apple blossoms are pretty too!
Cerise
Bintje
Here’s the Yukon Gold potatoes and Honey Triple Sweet and Double Sweet Corn.
Yukon Gold flower…I’m so happy to see them flowering!
Triple Crown Bicolor corn, pok choi and asparagus which has not yet come up. The pok Choi hasn’t done well here and has gone to seed, so we’ll pick it and cook it up!
This is the corn we grew last year and harvested the seed and planted it — it’s done so much better than the other store corn. And finally the dill is growing here!!
Here’s the large garden bed.
Here’s the Red Emmalie potatoes.
And here’s the Melody Potatoes which need to be hilled once again.
Here’s the garlic, beans, carrots and beets. The beets are up, some carrots are coming up and beans are too! This is the seed that got rained on and then we planted them in the muddy soil. They’re doing amazing!
Here are the pumpkins — they’re getting ready to flower.
Beside the pumpkin we have dill growing. Not sure how the seed ended up here, but it’s here and growing well! It would have been seeded here from last year.
And here’s the watermelon and cantaloupe.
‘L’ has beans up now and the spaghetti squash and romaine lettuce are doing great!
Here’s the cucumber, peppers and tomato.
Here’s the mint and our “pollinator box” — we will be cutting the mint back this week.
Here the one southern garden box — I’ll show you what’s in each garden box up close. We were watering this evening!!
Onion and garlic are doing great! We have been eating them – it adds such nice flavor to salads, chicken and so on.
Heres the beans. We replanted a bunch more here last week.
Here’s the Gourmet Blend radish, Early Snowball turnip, Easter Egg Blend radish and pok choi as well as salad bowl lettuce.
Here’s the peas and dill.
Here’s the other southern garden bed. Let’s take a closer look!
Here’s the rutabagas – they’re doing really well! The beets are growing here as well. We replanted some as they all didn’t come up. Celery isn’t doing much yet.
Then we have lettuce.
And then the parsnips and carrots, which are doing much better now.
Next we have peas which unfortunately fell on top the carrots, but my daughter put another trellis and tied the peas up onto it. They’re flowering!! Yay!
Here’s the cherry tree.
Here’s the gooseberry and blueberry.
Let’s head to the front yard and I’ll show you the shrubs. Here are the two blueberry shrubs.
Here’s the plums. They’re bruised from the hail.
Here’s the raspberries. More raspberries are growing and ripening which is so awesome!
Here are the honeyberries. More are ripening, and they’re huge!
July 4
My brother is helping us plant two shrubs today. Here we are planting the black currant. We decided to plant it in the large garden bed. It will grow about 4 to 5 feet high and wide which would take up one section of this garden bed. I wasn’t sure where else to put it, so that’s why it’s here. We lose a little bit of growing space, but that’s totally ok. Once the currants produce a lot, I’ll be making jelly and juice.
Once the currants turn black, they’re ripened. They’re sweet yet tart and have an earthy flavor. Black currants have three times the vitamin C as oranges do. I am looking forward to having black currants!
Here we planted the jostaberry. It can grow about 6 to 8 feet high and wide. It is a cross between a black currant and a gooseberry and has the flavor of a grape mixed with black currant and are a bit tart. Once ripened, the berries will be a deep purple, almost black in color. We had jostaberries years ago but they never really produced much and we had a couple to try before the birds ate them all!
July 6
It’s been raining which is nice because it’s been hot so the cooler temps and rain are welcomed.
Here’s the strawberry patch. I’m so excited to have a strawberry patch!
Here’s the raspberries — we’re picking them this evening – they taste amazing! Homegrown raspberries are much more flavorful than store bought — they’re sweet yet a bit tart. It’s so hard to describe but they taste like I’d imagine they would! Nothing beats homegrown!
Here are the cherries — with all this rain, they sure ripened!!
More of the blueberries are ripening!!
Here’s the backyard — everything is sprouting and growing well!
Here’s the greek basil, parsley and chives that we have in the front yard in our herb garden box. We have 2 parsley plants and 3 chives.
The front yard shrubs are doing well and growing so good – I think all the rain has helped immensely. We have been enjoying a few blueberries — they’re so flavorful!
Here’s the rhubarb. We have our original rhubarb that we’ve had for 5 years and this Victoria Red we just purchased.
Here’s the tomato plant. I love to see the tomatoes and the flowers!! Looks like we’ll have a lot!
“A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul.”
— Saadi
Here’s a July 8 Tour of our Garden — come walk through and take a gander at our garden “in-person.”
We have had more rain as you can see.
Finally we get to eat veggies from the garden!! We have lettuce, peppers, chives and green onions that we’ll be putting into some salads. Yum!
July 9
We picked the rhubarb. It’s beautiful! I washed it up and chopped it – I ended up with 6 cups. We’ll bake something with it and freeze the rest.
July 10
We decided to chop down the parsley and chives to chop up to freeze and dry. I use a lot of these herbs, especially through the winter, so I want to have lots dried and frozen.
Here’s my blog post about storing herbs for the winter.
Watch how we preserve parsley here or how we do the chives here!
Here’s our garden plots at my folks’ — there’s lots of weeds but the weeds will help shelter the squash and cucumbers since it’s full sun all day and evening.
We did some weeding around the corn, beans, beets and carrots, and it looks a lot better now. I like living in the city but nothing beats the calmness and quiet of the country!
Here’s the garlic my aunt sent to my folks last fall. The garlic was planted then and covered in mulch. The scapes are now curling so we can now remove them. You want at least one full curl before removing the scapes.
We have 100 year garlic which our Romanian ancestors brought to Canada 100 years ago. Then we have Sister garlic (also known as hardback garlic and is sweeter and has flavors of peppers), German (known for its robust flavor and large heads), PE (known for its large cloves and milder flavor), and the last row my aunt is unsure who gave her the garlic, so it’s “unknown”.
I love the prairies — fields of grains…right now they’re green, but soon they’ll be golden!
July 11
Our first tomato!! It’s the best tasting I’ve had since last summer! The store tomatoes are just not that flavorful!
The cherries are ripening!! We’ll be able to pick them soon! Right now, they’re not quite ready and very sour!
The blueberry has a bunch of berries to be picked too! These blueberries are so sweet and have so much flavor! It makes the store bought blueberries taste watery.
“Life begins the day you start a garden.”
— Chinese Proverb
July 14
Today we went berry picking to my folks’ — we picked saskatoons and raspberries. There’s so many. We will freeze some and can some and of course eat all we want.
Here’s us picking raspberries you can watch here.
Time to chop, freeze and dry more parsley!
July 15
Let’s start in the front yard!
We have been picking more raspberries from our little farm raspberry patch in our yard. It’s amazing how these two little plants, one once was just a stick, have turned into these beautiful plants bearing us fruit! It is super exciting to see!
Here’s the tomatoes and peppers we got on sale. The tomatoes look horrible but are still producing tomatoes. The peppers are doing quite well though which is great!
The blueberries are doing good. This tiny shrub is finally producing berries after almost two years! Yay!
The chokecherries are growing good but are quite green still.
Here’s the herbs. The chives and parsley are growing really well after we trimmed them back to preserve to use all winter long. And the greek basil is doing good – looks like I’ll have to preserve it next!
Here are the peppers. They’re slow but doing alright.
Here’s the seeds that were at the bottom of our seed bin so we just tossed them here in the dirt — they’re doing amazing! There’s onion, lettuce and a tomato plant!
Here’s the strawberry patch.
Onto the backyard.
The blueberry shrub is doing so well – there’s so many berries to pick! And they taste so good, exactly like a blueberry should!
Here’s the mint and the flowers — the mint has completely taken over!! I can’t believe how much it grew! And of course, I have weeds to pick!
Here’s the gooseberry. We just noticed a ripe gooseberry but now it’s overripe!
The cherry tree is wonderful!! I can’t believe how many cherries we have this year! And they’re ripe and ready to pick. They’re sweet with a little bit of tartness.
Here’s the one lonely dill growing by the pumpkin — can you spot it?
The pumpkin is doing so good!
Here’s the watermelon and cantaloupe.
The cantaloupe is flowering and we just might get melons this year!
Beans in ‘L’s garden are doing good considering we had to replant it.
The spaghetti squash is growing excellent!
The cucumbers are flowering and little cucumbers are starting to grow. I’m so thrilled because the past few years we planted cucumbers, nothing grew. So I’m looking forward to finally having cucumbers!!
The peppers and tomato are growing well.
Here’s the saskatoon shrub.
Here’s the jostaberry.
The mint is actually growing that we removed from the strawberry planters we had bought from the store this spring. The mint looked toasted, but I planted them in the back planter, and I was surprised to see the mint growing so good!
Here are the melody potatoes.
Here’s the beets, carrots and beans from the seeds that were left in the rain.
Here’s the spring garlic.
The Red Emmalie potatoes are growing really big! They’ve taken over the asparagus and garlic area!!
Here’s the peas, carrots, parsnip and lettuce.
These are Green Arrow peas which are high yielding and are growing peas like crazy! The peas are huge and grew really tall! They have a lot of pods on the plants. They are not quite ready yet but in a couple weeks they will be! I love garden fresh peas! I’ll definitely plant way more next year.
Here are the carrots and parsnips.
The lettuce is doing amazing and it tastes so good!! The leaves are tender and I can just eat it plain!
Here’s the rutabagas.
In the next garden bed we have the dill and peas. The peas fell over onto the dill.
Here we have pok choi, lettuce and spinach. Everything is going to seed.
Are the pok choi flowers not beautiful?!?
Here are the radishes, also starting to go to seed. We have pulled some but there’s no radish to eat.
Here’s the beans, onions and garlic.
Here’s the corn and potatoes.
The dill and corn.
Here’s the strawberries we dug up and the pansies that went to seed. They’re doing great in these pots!
July 16
We are back at my folks’ picking more raspberries!
July 18
We decided to check the veggies at our plots at my folks’ and WOW — they’re doing amazing! We picked some veggies to bring home to cook up. Nothing beats the taste of homegrown!
That’s what Our City Homestead is all about – being as self sufficient as we are able. Yes, it does help to have these plots at my folks’ this year, but even if we didn’t, we are still doing what we can in our city yard to grow what we can!
All these veggies, we turned into a big pot of beet soup (borscht).
July 22
Our plum tree has three varieties grafted onto it. The main part of the tree produces “Bounty”, the other two branches are “Opata” and “Pfisten”
Bounty – this is producing the most plums on the tree. There’s some holes and welts from the hail we’ve had.
Opata – there’s a few plums growing on these branches.
Pfisten – this branch is growing the least and anytime there’s a bit of wind, they’re falling off. I’m not sure if we’ll actually get any plums of this variety.
The apples are growing a bit in the apple tree.
The peppers are doing quite well and are ripening.
The tomatoes are doing well in the front, we picked lettuce and sorrel to try and we picked a few peppers as well.
The mint is growing better in the pot than it was in the garden box!!
We have had nearly 3” of rain these past few days.
The pumpkins are growing nicely!
The dill is growing great, so we are starting to pick the fronds to chop up and dry and freeze so we can enjoy all winter long.
You can watch us preserve dill here.
There’s not many gooseberries this year, but we have two that are ripe!
Time to pick the last of the cherries. They’re ready now. They’re sweet yet tart and absolutely delicious!
“Gardening adds years to your life,
and life to your years.”
— unknown
July 31
Happy end of July!! I cannot believe it’s the last day of July! As you can see, so much has changed in the garden this month. Let me show you around the garden today.
It’s been hot this week, between +28C/82F to +32C/89F but the backyard gets above +40C/104F. We had 5” of rain last week, but with the heat all week, we had to water this morning.
Here’s the lettuce, parsnips and carrots. We thinned the carrots out a bit and they are not really growing yet.
The peas are doing great though and we’ll be picking them this weekend!
Here’s the rutabagas — we will be thinning them out so the vegetable itself can grow larger.
Look at that lettuce!! It’s huge and we were waiting for the iceberg to turn into heads. We will be starting to pull it from the ground to eat and replant again. The thistles behind the garden bed are atrocious and so hard to pull — if I’d have thought about it, I’d have left space between the fences and garden beds.
Here’s the full and peas. The peas have fallen over again and attached themselves to the spinach.
The radishes, turnips and pok choi have all gone to seed so we will be pulling them out.
The green onion and beans are doing well.
Here’s the jostaberry.
The saskatoon has grown a lot this month.
The tomato plant is doing amazing here!
The tomato is starting to overtake the peppers along with the cucumbers!
Here are the cucumbers – they’re flowering really nice and cucumbers are growing! Yay!
The spaghetti squash is doing amazing! It sure has grown a lot and there’s flowers which is exciting to see!
Here’s the potatoes and beans in L’s garden box.
The mint has completely overtaken our pollinator box. We will be trimming it back on a cool evening.
Here’s the blueberry – there’s a few more berries to pick!
Here’s the pumpkins, watermelon and cantaloupe. And you can see the potatoes in the back garden bed.
Here’s the pumpkin up close.
Here’s the gooseberry.
Here’s the mint from the strawberry plants. It’s actually growing ok thanks to the shelter of the pumpkin!
Here’s the melody potatoes.
Here’s the beets, carrots and beans we planted from the seed that got left in the rain.
Here’s the beans up close along with the garlic. You can’t see the asparagus because the potatoes have spread out so much.
Here’s the potatoes – red emmalie – we have never grown this kind before.
Here’s the peas, carrots, parsnips and rutabaga.
The peas are ready! Some are close, but lots are ready for picking!
Here’s the large garden box – potatoes, corn, dill, black currant and of course weeds because no garden is complete without a bunch of weeds!! Haha!
Here’s the dill.
This part is not growing well. We have only a couple corn and the black currant and pok choi that came back! I’ll be cleaning this section up and I’ll plant something that is quick growing.
Here’s the flowers around the backyard. The flowers in the pink pot have come back from seed.
Onto the front yard!
Here’s the apples.
Here’s the plums – I touched one to see if it was ready yet, and it fell off into my hand so some of the plums are definitely ready! The Bounty plums are red with yellow flesh and are so sweet though the skin is a little tart. Once soft, they’re ready to pick. The Opata plums are a purple-black.
Here are the peppers and tomatoes.
Here’s the chokecherry – they are ready to pick.
The parsley and chives are growing so good in this weather!! It’s almost ready to pick, chop and preserve again!
The lettuce grew great in the front! We have an actual romaine heart!!
Here’s the raspberries.
Here’s the honeyberry shrubs.
Here’s the rhubarb. We have 4 plants now!
Here’s the sorrel. We have been eating it in salad, removing the rib but it is a bit tough, so I think I’ll try cooking it up next.
Here’s the strawberry patch. They have been flowering, so we will have more berries!
This mint is doing a much better now that we planted it in this pot!!
And that’s the garden this month. It’s grown so much and we have started to harvest a lot of fruit along with a few veggies like lettuce and the herbs. Our plot at my folks’ is doing well and we have been eating potatoes, carrots and beets now.
I am looking forward to seeing how the garden does in August and we’ll be starting to harvest more herbs and some veggies as we slowly head towards fall.
How’d your garden fair this month?
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” —
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
