Full Garden Tour July 2025

Good morning friends. We're up with the birds today to do our July garden tour because so far July has already been ridiculously hot. Like it's already 77 degrees at 6am right now. I'm surprised we didn't catch any deer because we are going to see in the garden there's been some deer damage. If you're new here, my name is Dagny and I garden in zone 6B here in Massachusetts. I've been gardening for about seven years now and I have 15 raised beds that I garden in as well as a mini orchard, which I think I will kind of start with today because there's been a lot of new growth in that area. I love to do these garden tours because then I can look back and remember what I did and didn't like about my garden in the years past. But even just going from month to month, like you are going to see such a big difference in this July garden tour as compared to the June garden tour. Things have just really started to flourish and blow up even with the heat waves you've been having. My goal in the garden is always to create a space that's kind of a mix of chaos and organization. So I do have different zones for different things. Right behind me here is my tea garden, which we will get into. We also have the greenhouse, which has some pretty catastrophic things happening in it right now, which I will also get into. And since I garden with chronic pain and fatigue, just limited energy in general from the autoimmune conditions that I have, a lot of what you'll see in my garden is that I've built it up to be really accessible. So all of my garden isn't just in raised beds, but in elevated raised beds, which means they're really high up. So if you look here, most of them are about at hip height for me. So I don't have to do a lot of bending and kneeling. I've automated a lot of my watering systems and my garden is primarily a food garden. But I do think that growing flowers is equally important, especially if you want your food to produce really well. Things are a little bit extra messy in the garden these days because of my pregnancy. I've just been really running on low fumes at all times. The heat makes it so that I have to get out here at six in the morning, about two or three good hours before it gets too hot before I can really do anything. And I'm a little bit out of breath. So sorry if you're noticing that too, but let's get started. I'm going to kind of give you a broad overview of the general zones that we're going to be exploring today. And then we'll head over to the orchard. So like I said, I do have 15 raised beds. Three of them are within the greenhouse. One of them is actually up on this deck area, which we don't go there. It's just, it's not a pretty zone, but it just has herbs in it. So we do have these three beds, which is the tea garden. I have these two beds over here, which are two by six beds that have my onions in them right now. But we're going to talk about what's going in the next. And then this zone is primarily for the vegetables. So I've got the arch trellises. I have some grow bags behind everything that we can look at as well. And then if we turn back this way past the greenhouse on the other side of the greenhouse is where my orchard is. So we'll walk over there now. So you do have green stocks going. I'll get into those. They're not looking super happy right now. And then a similar situation over here where I've got five grow bags, not looking too happy right now. This is actually the most successful of them. This is sorrel. It's just gone to seed for the year. I'm going to collect that seed and spread it around. I love sorrel. It's got this beautiful bright lemony flavor. It's supposed to do this. You can still use it. It's not like when a lot of other things bolt and it turns bitter and tough. You can still eat the leaves after it does this, but I will be cutting it back once I harvest the seeds off of it. These bags are all empty right now. I know it doesn't look like it. There's a lot of weeds and self-seeded snap dragons, but we're going to be moving some stuff into them this week. And then back here is the orchard, which is looking really crazy. I have videos from the spring kind of going into my pruning and everything I do to keep them small that allows them to grow so close together in a tight space like this. And it also goes into this specific variety. So I really recommend checking that out. If you're curious more about how I picked what I picked or why I picked it, there's some weird stuff happening in here right now. I have not honestly been over here very much and I'm a little bit shocked. These have like tripled or quadrupled in size in the last month. I want to say most notably this peach tree, which I believe was probably about two feet tall this spring is now almost as tall as me. So it's about five feet. So we're going to be doing a big summer prune on these, which will be a whole nother video. If you're interested in that, I do have a fig in here. This is kind of interesting. Like if you actually look at the fig, the main tree has not made it over the winter, which was entirely my fault, but whatever fig it was grafted off of survived in the winter, which is really curious because most figs cannot survive colder temps. So I'm really curious what kind of fig it is now. We may never know, but whatever it is was more cold hardy than the one I planted. So that's really interesting. I think I'm going to try to make fig syrup with the leaves because it's supposed to have this beautiful like vanilla caramel-y flavor and we probably won't get any fruit off this this year. So we might as well use the leaves. I am seeing some evidence of diseases and potentially just pests munching in here. I did not get a chance to spray. I bought the spray and everything. And then I was in the first trimester. And if you know, you know, sorry, the crows are an unpaid actor. I am seeing some leaf curling on here, but maybe someone else with a little bit more experience will recognize what's happening. But there's also some leaf damage, which is usually from the Japanese beetles around here. So I don't really know what's going on with this one. And I'm also noticing some leaf curling happening over here. So I don't know. This is an area where I'm still learning. My second peach tree is looking really good, but you can see everything is starting to even touch the greenhouse. So we've got that branch touching the window of the greenhouse. August is when we do our big prune in here just to kind of like cut everything back by like 50%. This is a pink lady apple. And I swear it wants to grow in that espalier style. Like it's very flat and high and tall and wide. So every time I cut it, it just kind of keeps going up and up and up. This is the first time it has really felt like a forest out here. Like it's actually providing a screen of privacy from the road, which is a new thing for me and something I really appreciate because this wall of windows gets so much like traffic basically just going by all the time. This was not a fig tree. It had a fig grafted at the base. So again, we can just kind of use the leaves and see what it does. So yeah, that's essentially what we've got going on in the orchard. There's 12 trees in here. It's not a huge space. It doesn't look like we're going to get any fruit this year, which is fine. I planted most of these about a year and a half ago. So I wouldn't expect to get fruit off of these. However, to the right of the greenhouse, there are some more established fruit trees that are looking like they're starting to do okay. They were planted way too far into this tree line. So they get a lot of shade, which is why you'll see this peach tree in particular is leaning really far, but there's two peach trees. I believe that's a pear. And then there's an apple, which has not fruited because I don't think it had a pollinator close enough. And this year I did a really big aggressive prune on it off the top. I mean, you can barely tell there's still another huge branch over there that needs to be cut off, but I kind of hit my limit of like, I didn't want to cut back more than a third of the entire tree. So that one will go next year. But this is the first time I've ever seen this apple put on fruit and I cannot wait. We've actually got a couple of apples on here within reaching distance too. There is definitely a disease on this one as well. So I'm not getting my hopes up. They still could kind of rot and fall off the tree before this has a chance to ripen. And this is another big reason I don't like big fruit trees. Cause there's no way I can spray and treat this as one person. Like it's just not happening. The other trees, I feel like I can kind of manage the disease, but in here all bets are off. All right, I'm going to turn us around. So we're going to go from our fruit trees back into our tea garden area. This is the area that I find to be the lowest maintenance in the garden and the most beautiful, honestly, because it's just full of pretty flowers. I think flowers are just generally more low maintenance. We do have our first evidence that the deer have been coming through, which I've never dealt with this. So posting about gardening on the internet, I get people ask me all the time, what do I do about my deer? They're munching through everything. And I just kind of been like, like good fence, like liquid fence is a really good option and solution, but I've never dealt with it personally in my garden up until this year. I haven't been able to test liquid fence now and it does seem to help, but they can be relentless. So let me show you what they've done here because I mean, if you think about like how high these beds are too, like these have to be pretty big deer that they're still munching on all of this. So this was my beautiful echinacea no longer, not really sure why they just kind of bent and broke a lot of this stuff. Maybe as they were reaching, I may just, I'll probably just cut it back all the way and let the leaves try to regrow and establish these beds are all for tea. It's all edible flowers and medicinal plants in general. So I will go through everything that is in here, but last year it was entirely annuals or things that would not be perennial in our zone. And I'm trying to really change that this year because I'm just finding that 15 beds is really my limit, which I'm so thankful and lucky to be able to have 15 beds. I know some people don't even have one, but especially with the pregnancy, it's been way, way, way too much to keep up with. So I'm hoping a lot of this either self sows or over winters. And we did have some good luck with the snap dragons self sewing in ways I didn't even anticipate. Like we've got these ones coming up through the slats, like the sections of the bed and they have been flowering. They're not right this second, but there's even more on this side. So snap dragons assertions and marigolds, which I pack in everywhere, but especially in these beds are known to be really good at self sewing. And I'm really hoping that if I just let a few go without dead hitting them, I'll have a good supply next year without doing much effort. And even the pansies I'm starting to let them go cause it's too hot now. So I'm going to let these last round go to seed and just see if we get new ones next year on their own. So this bed really started off with just the pansies. There is some basil in here that looks like the deer have also been munching. I do some herbs because herbs are medicinal and you can use them as tea as well. So we've got some oregano here. I believe this is Greek oregano. I usually do Greek. It's chamomile again. It looks like somebody's been munching you. I do French marigolds because the African marigolds are not edible. So you want to make sure they're French ones, which are the really fluffy ones. And then my favorite flower of all time, snap dragons, this specific variety. I'm going to have to pop it up on the screen for you. I know it's from Hudson Valley Seed Co. It's now my new favorite snap dragon because it's tall, but it's not like crazy tall. And it has this beautiful gradient and variation of color that is just my absolute favorite color combination in the world. There's some more chamomile. I just pack these like you do not have to follow the plant spacing rules in here because if you did, you would just plant the singular lavender in the center and it would have like to take up the whole space. So that's another perennial that I'm hoping and it should overwinter just fine. There's some anise hyssop in here somewhere, I swear. And there is yarrow as well that may or may not flower this year. I'm not sure. I planted a little bit late. Then I have, I think what is my new favorite zinnia of all time. It just has this beautiful gradient again. And as it opened, it had even more of like an orangey peachy tent to it. I'm obsessed with it. I can't get over it. I keep looking at it and it's making all sorts of beautiful, like more branching. So with the zinnias, you do want to try to cut that first bloom back because if we cut it back right here, all of these side shoots can put their energy into blooming. I stuck a dill plant in here. I try to stick dill in nearly every bed. Swallowtails love it. I do have some baby swallowtail caterpillars that I will get to show you in these beds. I also planted a blanket flower here, which should be perennial and calendula, which should self-seed as well. So everything in this bed should really be self-seeding or perennial. And I'm really hopeful I don't have to replant it next year because I love the combination too. There's even some lemongrass in here. I always like to say when I show the tea garden these days, I know I can't eat the lemongrass and a lot of the other things in this bed right now. I'm waiting until after the pregnancy, but I am just preserving drying them for later. Our second bed has more of that orangey red theme going on, which I really like. And it also has three perennials in it. So again, worst case scenario, none of these kind of annual self-seed. The perennials are going to get bigger and better every year. Although the lemon verbena likely won't overwinter here. I am going to try to take some cuttings from it and keep it in the greenhouse. I've already cut the lemon verbena back once because you really do need to be aggressive with pruning it in order to keep it from getting woody and leggy. And it helped so much, like all of this is brand new growth here. And I think I'm going to do it again and get it even bushier. But that is one of my favorite things to grow. It has a beautiful smell. It's so bright and refreshing. I do have, I believe just a common sage here, which again was just a tiny little plant that has just blown up. Lots of nasturtium in this bed. I like to do this Alaska variegated variety because it just has this beautiful model leaf look that I think is so unique. This one is not looking variegated. I can't recall what type this is, but this bed, so I've got my favorite snapdragon and my favorite zinnia in this bed. This bed has my favorite marigold. I've discovered like three of my favorite flowers this year. Like obviously I loved those individual types, but these varieties specifically are incredible to me. I don't have to pop the name up. Sorry. I have pregnancy brain, but they have so much variation. Like as they're opening, they start out really dark and then they get lighter and lighter as they mature. So I'm determined to seed save these and put them everywhere. I would really honestly like them to replace kind of your basic hardware store orange ones, which still I love. Like, I mean they're beautiful, but I would love to have this everywhere. So this bed's just the marigolds, nasturtium, sage, lemon verbena, and then that echinacea, which I am trying to steer more toward native whenever I have the choice. I do think that's really important and I need to get better at it. And then the front bed has a few things going on, really none of which are super perennial. So I'm counting on some self-seeding happening. This cosmos self-seeded from last year. I'm excited about that. We've got more pansies. Probably the only thing in here that will overwinter is the chives, which I need to cut back desperately. I actually have two that need to be cut back really badly. There's more calendula in here and those snap dragons, lots of calendula in that corner. And then I have the hibiscus. I always do a hibiscus in here. It never overwinters. I need to maybe get like a hardy hibiscus, but I haven't seen one at local nurseries yet. So it hasn't happened, but I would really like that because at this point, this front bed is going to be the most blank next year. If I don't put some effort into it and I'm going to have a six month old one, I need to be planting these out. So that could be interesting, but we'll figure it out. There's a few other containers that we can get into here, but first I want to talk about these. So like I said, these are two by six. These ones are two by four, but they're a lot deeper. I do have my onions in these this year. I've never grown onions before this year and so far it seems to be going good. I don't know if this discoloration is bad. I'm choosing to ignore it. I think it's just aging of the plant, but hopefully it's not something more catastrophic. I have 72 onions in these two beds and I planted them three together because supposedly that is fine and you won't really lose a heck of a lot of size of your onions bulbing at that spacing. And this allowed me to dig way fewer holes and made the whole planting process a lot easier. If you missed the whole mulch situation in this bed, I'm experimenting with a sheep's wool mulch in these beds and it's working really well. I keep getting asked like, how's it going? And I think, I mean, it has a mulch, it works excellent. The issue is that I had a bunch of lettuce planted in here and when I pulled the lettuce, I got all these blank spaces that it's really hard at this point to fill it in because the wool kind of like felted itself down to the soil. So as I pull the onions out, there's going to be even more blank spots. So I think the wool mulch is an excellent solution in a perennial bed where you're not just pulling things up all of the time. Among the lettuce I had put in a lot of chamomile seeds, which still isn't flowering and I'm not really sure why. So that's kind of a bummer. I'm hoping that it's still flowers this year. And there's also a ton of basil again, something I just stick absolutely everywhere. There's a random kale plant, which I don't think I put there and it's getting eaten alive. So probably should just pull that out when I pull the onions and also a random carrot that I didn't put here. And I still have my spring radishes in here because I let them flower for the pollinators. The seed pods are really good as a snap pea alternative in the garden for a little snack until they kind of get like hard and brown like this. At this point I'm just letting them go to seed so that I can save the seeds and not buy radish seed next year. You literally only have to let like a single radish go to seed and you'll have more seeds than a whole seed packet would offer you. So you really only have to buy radishes once they just look kind of wild while you're waiting for them to turn into seeds, which is fine. These beds are the same except that I did throw a husk cherry, brown cherry in here. And this was just kind of like I had planted too many and I didn't know where to put it and figured like, why not stick it in the middle of this bed? Cause I was starting to panic about like when I pull these onions, which will probably just be in like a couple of weeks, they are behind where they should be. Honestly, I expected them to be quite a bit larger, but they're still growing well. So I'm not like worried about it. It's just going to be delayed. And I don't think I said these are the Patterson onions. They're a great storage onion, just a regular yellow onion. There's so many onions. So 72 probably isn't even enough, but I've just never grown onions before. I did them completely from seed too, not from starts. And it was a really satisfying project. I definitely want to do it again, but not in these beds. Because again, my focus is on trying to make things more perennial, more deer damage. I don't even know what this plant is though. Oh, this was a radish that they ate. Plan for these beds. Let the onions mature, pull the onions. Then I'm putting at least two, I could fit three, but they're so expensive, but at least two of the jelly bean blueberry bushes in here. Those are a dwarf variety. They only get about one to two feet tall and they only need to be about one to two feet apart. So I really could fit three in each bed. So I'll plant those in the fall. We'll mix the soil acidifier. And I will film that for you guys. And then it's really hard to do companion plants with blueberries because they need that acidic soil. But I don't want to have to fill these beds in around them in the spring either. So the plan is to add some strawberries. The strawberries will go wild and just kind of create a living ground cover in these beds. It's going to be kind of like a mini permaculture food guild kind of thing, but there's just a very limited things I can grow with them. So I'm thinking yarrow, calendula, try to leave the chamomile in there. I'll leave the basil. That won't last next year. And then I'll do a top coating of the straw mulch that I actually put in the other beds that we'll get to in a second, just to kind of fill in those blank spots and make everything look a little bit more uniform because I have extra. So that's the big planting project for perennials for fall. So we're doing blueberries because there's always been blueberries on the property, but they've never been happy because the soil is not acidic enough in the raised bed. I can control it. And if you can't do it in a raised bed where you control the soil, I would say just do it in a straight up container because blueberries are much happier that way. Okay. A few more containers in this section. We do have my pile of mint here. There's apple mint and banana mint in this starting to go to seed, which I really cannot let it do that. So I'm going to cut it back again really aggressively, which I just did. I do have a tea plant here starting to put on some really nice new growth that I'm happy about, but I do want to repot this. The soil is fine. It's just a smaller pot than I think it would be happy in. So I'm going to repot this and it didn't put on like a ton. It put a lot of leafy growth on, but not a lot of like stem woody growth. So I don't want to prune it this year. I don't think. And then like ignore all this. The backsides of the green stalks aren't planted at all. Everything is stressed. We're going to seed. There's some tomatoes and basil and old kale in here and even a pepper and some Swiss chard. They're just miserable. I do have a plan to put my garlic in these this year. You guys know by now, I love the green stalks. I have no qualms against the green stalks. This is all user error. They're container gardens. They need consistent watering. I had them hooked up to self-watering systems that came on automatically. We're like Bluetooth timers and they just, it's not like been worth setting them up over here because it's a much longer run to the hose. But clearly I should have done it because everything is miserable. So I was thinking if I do the garlic one in each pocket, that's 30 cloves of garlic in each green stalk. It just needs to overwinter in there to chill, which means I can still plant a shallow rooted crop on top of it. I could do arugula or I could do lettuce and it won't disturb the garlic clove underneath. And then by the spring when the garlic clove is about to sprout, I can make sure that that lettuce is pulled. Will this actually happen with a newborn? I guess we'll see. Giving the garlic space to grow. And then by the time the garlic is ready to harvest at the beginning of July, the bed can just kind of rest until it's time to replant it again. So I think that's the plan for at least one of the green stalks. Probably both of them. I did plant beets in the other one and my beets, I don't know if anyone can help me with this. They never like form a bulb properly. I think I'm just not watering them again though enough. Like there's something in there, but it's not, it's like all dried out and wrinkly and weird. Another stressed tomato. This is Kallard greens, which was doing really well for me. The cabbage white butterflies had not found it. They did find it eventually. But I mean, considering the heat waves we've had and how much I've neglected it, I mean, I've still been able to harvest off of it. So I consider that a win and I'm just going to keep cutting it back aggressively and hope that it overwinters. But everything else in here, probably I will just pull like even this, this Swiss chard is kind of stressed. I will give you a quick update over here because we did plant these as part of one of my garden tour videos, but these are the passion fruit that I planted. They're doing okay. I expected more growth on these. And then one more container in this corner. I do have some self-seeded volunteer snapdragons, which are this really nice, pretty pink. I put the flowers in here and the deer have been getting to them. So of course, the one I was the most excited about was this dwarf teddy sunflower and they just munched it to bits. They munched my basil. I do have some zinnias and cosmos in here and yeah, it's, it's a, it's a situation. I see the most kind of wild growth happening within the arch bed garden. This is the original garden. Everything else that I just showed you is really new as of last year. Like we did a huge, huge project last year installing the greenhouse and five new raised beds. And then this year I added the three raised beds inside the greenhouse, but that was it. These beds have been here the longest. They've been through the most. They've been through it all with me. They're the original like start of the garden after I moved on from in-ground gardening when my arthritis got really bad. And I think I have them down to kind of a system because there's three rows of able to rotate them through each bed, having peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, but it is not without its issues. And of course, I feel like the worst of those issues are happening in these front beds. I want to start with this bed and then over here is where those swallowtail caterpillars are. And they're so freaking cute. I can't wait to show you, but there's more nasturtium and marigold in here. They are very sunburned. If you see your nasturtium starting to do this, it's because they're sunburned and they will bounce back. Usually, like you'll see there's lots of new growth. So you can start pulling off these dead leaves, but it will get too hot in certain areas for them. And in those cases, and I've even had it happen. You can try cutting it back to more of like the stump part here. And I've had them bounce back in like September without having to replant, which is nice. The cucumbers are starting to bounce back on these trellises. Of course, all of them are on this side. Like I over-planted that side and this side, but this side is just now crazy. So there's even like, these are cucamelon vines. They're a lot thinner. And every day I have to come out here and just kind of, this is actually one of my favorite things to do, train them up the trellis. But there's cucumbers on pretty much every trellis, at least some combination. There's cucamelons. And then there's also this Malabar spinach, which has beautiful red stem. The leaves are edible. It's not spinach, but it has the spinach taste and like the thick succulent leaf of spinach. And it doesn't mind the heat at all, actually loves the heat. So those were my backup plan. And of course, now everything's just growing in these beds. There's a whole bunch of that Malabar spinach, but over here, peppers. So I did not label any of my peppers. So until they start fruiting, I don't know what the heck they are. Just a fun surprise. Here's more of those radish seed pods. These ones are perfect for snacking on at this stage where they're the light green and they're still nice and crunchy. So I will be picking most of those. You can pickle them or throw them in a stir fry, but the roots themselves look wild. Like tell me that doesn't look sentient. So there's three of those still in this bed. And they're honestly adding to a lot of the luscious that you see right now. Once I pull those, I feel like it's going to look pretty barren here for a minute until these peppers really start to take off. The one interesting thing in this bed that's not in any of the others, I do have some Valencia red peanuts in here, which I've never grown before. And they seem to be doing all right. I have no frame of reference for that. I've never grown peanuts before. I'm curious to see how they do. There were a ton of carrots in here. Now there's just a handful left that I probably should just pick and start a new round up. But I had carrots going down the center rows of everything here. I do have a lot of banana peppers. I know that I do a lot of banana and Cuban peppers. And this I believe would be a bell. Yep. That's a bell pepper. They're not getting super huge right now. This is a zucchini plant, which I don't think I've ever kept zucchini. I also have squash over here. I don't think I've ever kept either of those alive this long, like into July, which I know I'm just tempting fate here, but there's been no squash on board. I don't know what's going on and there's fruit. So I'm psyched about that. This is the other tribe. I need to really cut back because if I cut it back now, I'll get a whole nother flush in the fall. So that's really important. And that's pretty much it in this front bed. I mean we're just waiting to see what kind of pepper this one is, I guess. And this one, and I'm guessing cause this one's smaller. It may be like a jalapeno. There is a jalapeno in this bed. You can see all the little babies on it right now. And this is another jalapeno right here. I believe this one is the burpee one that's like a dwarf variety, like a pot of Pino or something. I feel like I should say this for the grand finale because I think, I think it's the most exciting thing ever. But look at this baby swallowtails. I swear they triple in size every day and they're just going to town on this dill and I'm not at all mad about it. We actually discovered them on this dill, which you can see they made quite the dent on already. So last night I was like, we need to move them. I want to make sure they have enough food. So we put them on this one instead. I'm so tempted to cover this with something cause we had five when I first discovered them on the original dill, we're down to four and I know the birds are making a stack out of them and I kind of want to just take one of these and put it over the dill and then some row cover and make a little swallowtail nursery for them. Normally I wouldn't interfere with nature, but I need something good in my life right now. I need these babies to grow up here. I love these shishitos. So good. So prolific. This plant will get pretty big. Also more carrots, marigolds in here and assertion obviously. And this is where I did more of the Swiss chard, which the deer have also been enjoying, but I did a yellow, a white and a red. And I think it's just so pretty. I think Swiss chard is a really great edible ornamental. Honestly, there's another shishito in here and then I have celery on the ends of all three of these beds. One of them is getting leaf curl. And I think it's starting to spread to these other ones. So that's unfortunate. I think we're going to lose all of it. Probably. I'm debating cutting it back really hard and seeing if it resprouts for fall because you're not supposed to eat it when it gets this, like it's a bacterial infection, I think. Or maybe it's only when it's showing lesions, which I don't see maybe that is a lesion. Yeah. I don't know. That's too bad. I don't love celery. This is not the end of the world. You can see in the wood chips, this has gotten like crazy because it's real hard for me to bend down right now. So I just kind of gave up, but most of it's flowers because it's self-seeded from last year. These are all seashell cosmos that were in the back bed and they've just kind of like expanded and I don't hate it. Like it's probably going to be really chaotic next year if I let these ones go to seed, but I don't know. I can't seem to bring myself to do anything about it. So front row is essentially peppers. Middle row is our tomatoes. There's that celery on the end. That's one cosmos. It's enormous. And then I've had the first of my tomatoes. Aren't they beautiful? I'm obsessed. There's a few more carrots left in between these rows. These are all dwarf indeterminates. So if you're thinking they're really small, it's on purpose. They're supposed to be really small. They get about two to three to four feet tall. So they're all probably about two, two and a half feet tall right now. And they're already putting on enormous fruit. Like look at this plant. So huge. So I do have them marked because I can never remember what's what. So this is our lemon ice variety. I have not pulled a single ripe one off of these yet. It's probably going to be a few more weeks before we get any ripe tomatoes off of these beds. I have a bunch of brandy freds in here around the back. There's like a mocha cherry, which is really interesting looking already. I think they're so beautiful. In this tower, I have my tomatillos. I have one on either side here. I had originally put them in grow bags. They do great in grow bags, but they were too low to the ground and the bunnies and the deer were having a snack on them, which I cannot have. I need my tomatillos to make it. There's some plants where I'm like, it's okay. It's nature, but I only have two tomatillo plants. I need them both. So I moved them into these beds before it was too late and staked them up. So I think they're a little bit behind growth wise where they would be if I hadn't transplanted them so late in the year, but that's okay. They are putting out their flowers and I'm sure they will fruit soon. This bed also has some provider green beans and I plant these nine to a square foot and I think I have two blocks and that's way too many green beans for two people. Let me tell you, like thankfully I freeze them and we'll use them for like our green bean casserole for Thanksgiving and stuff. But holy moly, I also have on the other side Gold Rush, whatever. It's the yellow one, these ones. So same situation. I did two blocks of nine and they're overrun and it's literally like I have to spend hours picking them, but that's pretty much these whole beds. I think next month this is going to be way more interesting cause we'll have ripe tomatoes on them. The only difference on this side, there is some squash and watermelon that I planted on the corners, but they're not doing well. On this side, I did do a Trombachino squash and I don't know if that's just poor pollination or if it's because of this damage here that it's starting to yellow and not look great. But the upper leaves still look okay. It's so hard to tell with squash if it's going to go or not. We're just kind of in a wait and see pattern with that one right now. There's basil tucked in, a lot of basil tucked into these beds here. And then I do have some more squash besides that summer squash I showed you already. I can't remember what this is. The back beds have the eggplant in them. Although I think there's some stray peppers in here too, which breaks some rules, but it's not the end of the world. This particular squash did not make it, which I thought it was the seminal. I didn't think this one would have problems, but the way it's wilting makes me think it was squash vine borer and I really don't know. I don't know what happened to it. So got to pull that and replant it. I also did stick my only indeterminate full size tomato in this bed, which I will probably regret. This is the Super Tom tomato. It's already growing out of control. I've been very aggressive about pruning it. I did a patio baby eggplant in this grow bag and it's really cool. It's very like bushy and putting on a ton of fruit. So I'm excited about that. The rest of the eggplant in these beds is I believe just like a classic purple Italian eggplant. These other grow bags have my potatoes in them. Those are the Adirondack blues. And then I do have a sun gold cherry indeterminate tomato in this grow bag, which needs some more trellising. All of this is flax, which I'm hoping I can harvest for fiber. Probably won't get to making the fiber this year, but I can at least preserve. I did a bunch of wildflowers in here. I didn't think we're going to make it, but they really have started to take off. So I'm excited to see how that does. There's a lot of poppies, bachelor button, which I know is not native. It was in the native mix that I got, but it is not native. And then all the ferny frothy stuff. That's the asparagus that went to seed. You can see it's like very chaotic over here right now. And that's fine. Like it does not need to be perfect. The final bed over here and then I have a few more containers has these tap berry beans. These are very common in indigenous cultures in this area. They're super drought tolerant. I have them in this bed too, actually. I was confused by this. I said I would address this in another video and I finally figured it out because I thought they were a bush variety and I guess they're kind of a cross. They kind of grow with semi-vining tendencies or they don't need to be supported because you can see they keep trying to like tangle each other up, but I've just kind of let them do their thing and they're falling over the sides. Hasn't been a big deal. This bed does have the Ichiban eggplant, which is honestly my favorite kind of eggplant to grow. I find them to be the most versatile to cook with. There's also more banana peppers and Cuban L peppers in here. And then this is that celery I was saying as the really bad leaf curl. And this is my pesto perpetual basil. This is a sterile basil that does not bolt. It gets really, really big and it has these beautiful variegated leaves. So you have to propagate it from cuttings. I'm going to try to get a cutting to overwinter. I did last year. And it was a little bit finicky, so it didn't happen. There are some more squash in these corners. Don't remember what they are. And more zinnias, which I really need to cut back. But look at this peachy one. That's cool. That's happening in the arches right now. I don't think I'll be really planting these out for fall at all this year because I have to deal with the greenhouse. So let's talk about that. I don't even know where to begin. On first glance, greenhouse looks really lush and it is. I mentioned a couple of times that I've been having issues with aphids in here. It got to a point where like there are plants that are just completely covered and suffocated with aphids. And I think white flies to the point where I have been harvesting in here and literally just throwing into the compost because I don't even want to bring inside to wash it off in case those things start to infect my house plants. I have come to the decision that the greenhouse is a fall, winter, spring. It is not a summer project for me until I can get a temperature controlled. It's not even a space that I can really sit and use most of the day for two months out of the year. It gets really hot in here. It gets like 100 to 110 degrees. So I'm looking into options to see if we can temperature control this space because our house is also kind of small. And then the baby's bedroom is our office. So this space may change a lot in the next year or two. I think the beds will stay. I love the beds in here. I think they're beautiful. How I use the space is going to change significantly. I think the hardest thing as a gardener is knowing when to quit on a plant. And I have been known not to do this. I have been known to let a plant go way longer than I should because I have hope that it can bounce back and they usually do. It's entirely possible for these plants to bounce back. I have all the tools at my disposal to kind of knock down the aphid population and then introduce those nematodes, which I already did. However, there's just so much foliage in here and you really have to get good coverage spraying with organic products because I won't use anything that's synthetic. I'm only using organic kind of aphid destroyers in here. I just simply do not have the bandwidth this year. It may be in a different life, in a different season of my life. Things would be different. And that's why a lot of being a gardener is acknowledging your unique circumstances and how they're going to impact what you can and cannot do. So we're going to talk a lot more in the next video about this. I'm going to show you what's growing in here, just kind of to document how it looks and what we did. But just keep in mind that in the next video, you're going to see me rip it all out. And I want to be super transparent with you about that, that like I'm not just sitting here like everything's perfect, everything's great. And then the next day you're like, wait a second. I thought you said everything's perfect. Everything's great. Why are you taking it all out? It's sad because it does look really beautiful. I love coming in here with the bright white walls and all the greenery, but it will also give me my best chance of getting this space set up for fall and winter. And that is really important to me this year, but we'll get more into that in the next video. So this is the greenhouse fans off right now. So it's nice and quiet, a little chaotic stuff everywhere. That's fine. I've got a squash in each of these corners actually doing really well. I may wait to pull those because I am having the most prolific squash in here that I've ever had in any garden. So if I can get a few more harvests off of it, that'd be great. There's a lot of peppers in here and you will see now the damage that I'm talking about. These are all covered in those bugs. It's a lot of dead leaves on the ground. So there was a Cuban owl, a bell pepper here. I believe this was another Cuban owl, Swiss chard, a lot of sunflowers along the back, which are really, really struggling. Like once you start to get close, you pan back, it looks lush. But once you start to get close, it's just sad. Even the marigolds are completely overrun and just struggling. So it has a lot more of the same. I did my hot peppers in here and I did a few shishitos. I did more Swiss chard, basil and some zinnias back here. These are the rattlesnake beans. They're probably the least affected by the aphids. Maybe another thing I can hopefully leave a little bit longer, just leave the squash and those beans for now. There's some zinnias, which I was so excited to experiment with this this year and see how they did in the heat. They haven't minded the heat at all. So just a note, if you are growing inside of a greenhouse this summer, zinnias don't seem to mind. These are watermelon. And this is again, the best I've ever had watermelon grow. I think it's just loving the heat in here. We don't have this kind of heat out in the rest of the garden. And again, not super, I don't see any activity from aphids on those. So I may leave one as long as I can just see what it does. But essentially if I don't get everything out of here and give it a chance for the beds to rest and all of the eggs in the soil to die off, like I'm going to pull everything and treat it. If I don't do that, I'm just going to have these problems all winter and then I'm going to cry. So everything has to go over on this side. I'm going to put those outside. Those are the rosemary plants and my citrus. So I have a Meyer lemon and a Kalamazzo orange and I have the snake plant, which I believe is actually 800 snake plants and really should be separated, but it's happy in here. So I'll probably put those outside and let the beneficial bugs kind of have at them and make sure there's no aphids on them before I bring them back in. I do have a jade plant up here and a Kalanchoe, which looks a little bit stressed to me too. We were just experimenting and at the end of the day, that is how I convinced myself not to be upset about any of the things happening in my garden. I learned a lesson from it. It was not a failure. It was a lesson. And at the end of the day, like these lessons are like a big reason why I garden. It's not for the output of the garden itself, getting a huge harvest. It's primarily just about spending time in nature and learning something new. And I learned something new this year. I learned that growing in the greenhouse in summer, while it can be done, in my specific case and my lifestyle and where I am in my life, it's just not worth the effort. So we're going to do a fall winter spray in the greenhouse. We're going to do perennials out in the raised beds as much as possible. And these are going to be beautiful and different every single year. And that is perfectly okay. Just a reminder, the forever growing shirt is linked down below the description. If you want to grab one of your own, this is my favorite t-shirt. They're like thick, but they're really, really soft and comfy at the same time. So they're just durable, which is a requirement for me and my t-shirts. I hate when the neckline like starts to roll over and stuff. This does not do that. Thank you so much for watching the July garden tour and I will see you in the next one.