Full Garden Tour 2026: Everything We're Growing on Our Family Homestead!

Okay, here it is, a full garden tour for you guys. As promised, welcome to my little sanctuary slash place of toil and labor. I say that in a joking way but also in a very serious way because it has been an all-out war since we started with the bugs. For whatever reason, the cucumber beetles have had a heavy presence since day one. It seems like we have been doing a lot of things there, so I'll share those with you in case you've also struggled with cucumber beetles or are currently struggling. But yeah, let me just walk you through. In this first trellis, we have cucumbers over here. These are straight eights. They're like a slicing cucumber that will vine up and over the trellis. It should be really pretty. They're really starting to take off now. In front of them, these are actually a bush variety of cucumber. Will they bush? I'm not sure because I planted a couple more over there that are taking off and they definitely don't look any different than the vining cucumbers. But it's possible that I mixed them up also. Hey girls, look. This is how I deal with cucumber beetles. I basically just mush their life out. Then I wash my hands. But they have been the bane of the garden thus far. Can you girls look for some? The one thing I found that works really well is soaking around the base of the plants because it draws the beetles up to the surface and then you can grab them and squish them. They have been significantly less like every day that we've been out here hand picking beetles off. I've noticed that we kind of are getting less and less but there are still a couple of these beds that that have quite a few of those nasty little bugs. All right, so we've got cucumbers and more cucumbers. I actually had planted some nasturtiums on the ends of these but they did not germinate. I do have more nasturtium seeds that I got from Azure Standard coming on Wednesday. I'm going to plant I think nasturtium on one side and I bought some sweet alyssum to transplant too. Then over here we have more of the same cucumber. These are supposed to be bush cucumbers. I'm not convinced. They're supposed to be a pickling variety. Is it possible these be an actual ladybug? I think it is. I can't tell. Is it possible that they got mixed up in my tray full of cucumbers? Yes. So we'll see what happens here. But I also have some dill because obviously you use dill in your pickles. The dill is fragrant and it helps keep some bugs away which might be why these seem to be thriving. You can see there's like a lot less eaten-ness. And then I also have some marigolds planted in here that are just starting out. I think there's some baby pickles on this one. I know I had one that was really good. Cucumber. There are cucumbers. There we go. There's a cucumber baby getting started. So fun. So that's cool. We definitely have had bees out around buzzing about pollinating. Yeah look there's one here, one there. Okay this is just a mirror image of bat bed. We have more cucumbers. However I believe that these are the white wonder cucumbers. It'll produce a cucumber with a white rind which I think is kind of cool. I also plant, oh they're starting to germinate. These little teeny seeds. I planted some sweet alyssum but man this peat moss is really creating quite a barrier. So I planted some sweet alyssum on both sides. Again there's a dill in the middle. I also started some new cucumbers in between. Succession sowing is a really cool thing because inevitably at some point these cucumber plants will stop producing. Maybe we forget to pick one and it tells the plant that it's time to be done growing. But we'll have some more coming up behind it so we will have cucumbers all season. To be fair it is a lot of cucumbers. We basically have the same thing down with these three beds actually. Okay so these three are kind of a state. I like the symmetry of doing you know the same thing on either side. However this one did have an assertion that germinated so she's there. She's pretty. That's what I'll probably do an assertion there and sweet alyssum here and on the other side. I have, I dug out one of the cucumber plants that was here and put my grape in. It may or may not make it. Clearly I waited too long to plant these guys. But that's okay. It was kind of one of those things I didn't really want them in this garden. I wanted to build another space for them but I wasn't sure where. So I ended up just saying let me stick it in here. We'll see what happens because I can always dig it out of here later since it's raised. But I put one here and one on the other end so that could become a grape. So next year this might be grapes instead of cucumbers. But yeah we've got cucumbers here. Let me walk you through the middle. Then more cucumbers and dill, marigolds. In between the marigolds help keep bugs away so I'm just waiting for those things to get a little bigger and bloom so they can do their job. Over here the same thing. We have the cucumbers. These are the white wonder, dill, and then sweet alyssum that I planted. I think I need to water this though a little bit today. And then yeah if you come through here this is different. The middle. So and these I actually have eggplant. There's two over here and two over there. They look pretty beat up. The flea beetles came out very strong but I've seen everyone say that the eggplants as long as they're healthy and big when you put them out they'll usually out live the flea beetles. So I'm not too worried about them at this point. I also know a lot of people use eggplant as a trap crop so essentially if the only purpose they serve is to keep bugs away from other plants that's great. But we'll probably still get some eggplants off of those. And then I have some pole beans. I did the the blue lake variety. There's three in here and three in there. And carrots. I threw some carrots. I thought by the time the beans grow up there will be a nice shade over these carrots. But these are carrots you can grow all year long. I think I can't remember if they are the short and sweet. They might be the short and sweet carrots. They might also be Danvers. I'm not not totally sure. They do need to be thinned out. I'm just waiting for them to get a little bigger so I can really figure out which ones look the healthiest. Okay so at this trellis and these beds we have these are butternut squash. Early butternut squash that will go up and over and then the squash will hang down. I think it'll be really cute but it looks like we did lose one. Excuse me. This guy wasn't looking so great yesterday and it looks like it finally gave up the ghost. Sad day. But that's okay I actually have some spaghetti squash out back that I was wondering what to do with so I think I may may just transplant one of those in here. And then we have our tomatoes next to the squash. These are Roma tomatoes. This is supposed to be a Roma tomato but I mixed it up with the one on the end so I think it's actually the millionaire cherry. Millions of cherry tomatoes. Cherry million. I don't know. I think it's called millionaire cherry. So there's five Romas. Millionaire cherry. Two, four, I guess there's seven Romas in that one. They're supposed to be six in each and then one millionaire cherry. This guy is supposed to be a Roma tomato also but I had them all in a tray like in an order and as I was transplanting them I forgot the order and so he's supposed to be at the end of that bed and the one down there is supposed to be here. You can tell because it's taller. The millionaire cherries are outgrowing the Romas because the Romas are determinate variety. These are indeterminate which is why I wanted them on the ends right here so that my kids could come and just pluck some off. Determinate means they grow to a specific height and get bushy and yield a certain amount. Indeterminate means they will just like vine and grow and keep growing. They can get very tall. Um you know obviously you can prune them to keep them forever but yeah so this these are all my tomatoes. I have done a bit of pruning already. They may need it again soon. I like to prune off everything that is hanging down close to the soil um just to keep good airflow under there and so the leaves don't get wet. I have marigolds that are coming up along here which should help nicely to keep some bugs away. If you come down to the end these have been really cool. I'm going to get a couple more of these just to stick them up. I bought it's like a roll of zip tie material with a clip and you just cut it so that's what I've used to tie my tomatoes to stakes. These are the same tomato. This is actually a juliette tomato so this will be a slicing tomato. We don't eat a lot of fresh tomatoes. I made I did mostly romas so that we can freeze them and then turn them into sauce and can the sauce but I did put a slicing variety on this end and the very end down there. That one is brandywine. This one is juliette just in case we want something with fresh tomatoes and then like I said the cherry tomatoes which my kids love as snacks. I love that caprese salad so they're really great for with those little mini mozzarella balls and balsamic drizzle on top. Chef's kiss. So delish but this little guy already has some tomatoes. They're cute. Then on the corner of these I actually have basil. There's four different types of basil, one on each corner. I don't actually know because it was like a mixed variety. I know one of them is a lemon basil because it smells like lemon. It's so good but I did just trim it back. I'm hoping that that will start to take off. I ordered some more basil just so I can interplant a bit more because basil also helps with pests and then I think these are zinnias and they germinated really weird. Like a lot of them germinated but like in this area they were spaced out really nicely and it looks like we're gonna have a high concentration of them. I'm gonna have to stake this guy up so they can grow up there but I've been trying to plant some flowers for pollination purposes and then over here I was so worried that this was diseased but I think it's a variegated variety of zucchini. These are our zucchini. I am going to get trellises. I'd like to grow them upward and maybe not this year but I think in the future I will grow them up into the square trellises so that we can interplant other things because it really once you once you lift all the leaves up and once it's growing up you have so much more space for bush beans or more flowers or or anything else like that. And then we have three three little corn little corn kernels germinated so we've got some corn. I told John it probably won't make it. It'll probably blow over because that's not a whole lot to to give it strength but maybe I can stake it up just for the sake of letting it live. Anyway, thankfully we haven't had too much of a problem with squash bugs on these except maybe that little lady beetle. So there's our zucchini. Let's go down to the other end, Johnny. I already told you guys that I like to mirror the thing so we kind of have the same exact thing over here minus the tomato switch up which irks me in the tiniest bit but it's fine. I do have marigolds though and these ones are actually getting kind of big which is exciting. I'd love to see them blooming and then the basil on both ends here. I know for sure this is the Genovese sweet basil. I really don't know what kind of basil that is but there's the basil and then this bed for melons. These are musk melons like a honeydew or these are musk melons like a cantaloupe. I know I planted way too many per the rules of cantaloupe and raised beds but I think my plan is to let it be chaotic and let them grow out those two over the side that way these two this way this one this one this way and then that one just down the bed. That's the plan is that they're just going to go crazy. I also just planted bush beans in all the open space so I really do need them to grow that way so that the bush beans can come up. I saw somebody saying if you have open space in your garden plant bush beans and I thought well okay so I think I planted bush beans in between my tomatoes too I did yes I did lima beans planted some lima beans in between some of the tomatoes over there and I planted them in here and in the bed down there these are all peppers if you garden at all you probably already could tell that. We've got jalapenos along the side there's four jalapenos in between each one I did just plant a lime these are green beans these are more of the blue lake but they're the bushing variety and then these are California wonder the golden peppers in this row these four these four are anaheim peppers which seem to be the happiest honestly they're doing so well these just started taking off finally I got these from azure standard and I thought well they're never going to grow but they thankfully finally just started really taking off these are a purple beauty so they are going to grow beautiful purple bell peppers which is just so exciting they turn purple isn't that cool purple food sounds weird but I'm excited I also planted carrots along here I'd love to I'm going to look at a local nursery and see if I can get more marigolds because I'd love to interplant some marigolds down the middle just again attract pollinators and keep bugs away because clearly we have a lot of bugs this year it's probably not too bad it could be worse I've seen people dealing with roly-polies I'm glad we're not dealing with that uh this is watermelon I started some some that didn't make it I had restarted from seed in these but I don't even see the seed so I'm not sure if a bird may have snatched them up but I'm going to take this cantaloupe from my little greenhouse out back and I'm going to let them get a little bigger just so I know that they're good and hearty and then I'm going to put those here but these watermelons are really starting to take off honestly remember Rajan they looked so sad for a while they were I was like I don't know if they're going to make it at all but they really made a comeback these are jubilee watermelons on this side I think there may be a couple sugar babies like those smaller ones the honeydew I am tempted to just call it a loss here with my honeydew melon the cucumber beetles they literally just mutilated these um it is depressing so worst case scenario we swap these with cantaloupes as well but I was really going for some honeydew but the goal here and now it's funny because I wasn't sure what to do with all this space I think eventually I will get more raised beds um but it dawned on me if I plant the watermelons here in hills they can grow that way and I'll use garden stakes to pin them and you know train them to grow in the lines that way if I need to but they'll spread out across this whole thing the mulch will help keep the watermelons up off the ground and help keep them you know from like rotting and splitting and there's there and there why is the dog like to poop over here okay so same thing again it's a mirror we've got two honeydew and watermelons however what are these these are crimson sweet so we had a couple sugar baby mostly jubilee and crimson sweet up to here and then these are florida giant I'm excited to see what these I think they'll make some really big beautiful melons so that's going to be really cool and that brings us back to another pepper bed again we've got carrots here I did plant I planted some like fairy bouquet flowers and I think some cosmos which is probably way too late for but I had the seeds from 2022 and I was like you know what if they sprout great if not it it is what it is um so I put those in the ends of both of these beds next to my worm composting bins but then here these are green peppers green california wonder on this side red on the other side and then on the end I have my mini chocolate bell peppers and these things are really these have been thriving since day one they actually have flowers and fruit already on them um which is really cool did it taste like chocolate no I wish they tasted like chocolate I think they're just going to be brown brown pepper I never heard of one and then we have a nasturtium that did germinate here then I'm going to walk you guys through my herb garden um and our blueberries which is a mess right now this looks terrible like a jungle I'm going to take our push mower around and mow around these but then I think I'm going to lay weed fabric down we've been trying to stick to cardboard and organic materials as much as possible um but with these blueberries being like you know very permanent in the ground thing I think I might do landscaping fabric around them and then just mulch it uh because mowing around is a pain and we have a few that have some low hanging branches so that makes it even more difficult to try to mow plus the weeds are starting to spread into the the holes yeah this one is absolutely loaded with blueberries this variety is the alapaja alapaja alapaja all right so the rhubarb is probably dying out for the season I got this not really expecting a giant rhubarb harvest this year but it is a perennial so I just wanted to establish a single spot for this to come back every year and get bigger and bigger but I'm happy with the way it turned out when I got it it had three leaves it ended up growing like maybe three more um stalks on it so but it's definitely getting a little bit warm for that rhubarb here I am really surprised that the German chamomile is holding on as long as it is I think it's because this particular bed gets shaded through part of the day um but I've got holy basil or tulsi and then German chamomile in here the holy basil and the German chamomile are both annuals so they will need to be replant replanted every year but the German chamomile recedes really easily so this may end up having chamomile in it again next year I'm not really sure if I'll keep it there or not uh and then we've got our rosemary and thyme I did just clip all of my herbs back last week so that they could kind of force energy down and then grow regrow again um yeah we've got thyme rosemary this is our strawberry mint this one is orange mint and this guy is already like sending off little runners and growing and spreading so I'm really excited I'd love to see next year just these beds absolutely full of each individual mint because the goal is to harvest them all summer and and make tea dry them out for tea yeah this one is peppermint you're right little peppermint leaf that one's starting to spread too this one is kind of slower it is sending some runners but it's been a little bit slower to take off if you will this is spearmint this here lies what was supposed to be lemon balm but alas none of it germinated which is really sad because it was like a brand new seed packet and I had nothing grow oh well um let me and then our lavender the lavender is looking really happy it's been smelling so good this one I thought was going to die but it looks like it's coming back but yeah this one's really starting to push out and grow and I think there's two different types of lavender here okay I'm going to take you to the other side of the garden and show you the last thing we have for now my goal is to build a table for the center I think I'm going to put two round planters in front of each of these rectangle bins um I was thinking about putting my fig tree actually putting a fig tree here and then getting another one for there I think that could be really beautiful and it would provide some shade for the table and little snacks could be really nice all right so this this has been the most refining maybe maybe I think so I don't know the bugs are refining but this has been it's been teaching me a lot about patience and a lot about how God works in the unseen in the waiting in our desperation to want to fix it and want to do anything we can to move the needle forward and figure out and just assuming something's wrong and in reality it's just that there are things happening beneath the surface that we can't see and we just need to wait for those to come to fruition these are our thornless blackberries there are I guess two different varieties here and down there are raspberries I had them in their pots for way too long uh in their nursery pots because I couldn't decide exactly where to put them this was before anything else was done and I finally got them into the ground and I went ahead I got our trellises built these trellises need to go into the ground still but they've been built for like three weeks now and we haven't needed them because they look the same as when we put them in the ground and at one point the raspberries were even like yellowing a little and just looking really unhappy and I kept looking up like what can I do what's wrong with my raspberries why won't they grow should I prune them back should I like water them more am I watering them too much and of course as I'm looking things up there's so many different one thing saying oh the cardboard underneath is creating a water bowl and they're drowning and then one thing saying oh they need more water they're drying so it was just like so confusing um but I decided just to wait I gave them a little bit of earthworm castings one day that didn't really seem to do much and the other day I did come and I just pruned some of the end off you know what actually some of these had fruit some of the raspberries and some of the blackberries had like two and a half fruit and the fruit didn't look great because the plant was barely holding on and I said you know what I'm just gonna cut this off and I cut off just the tips I didn't even cut this one I just cut some of the tips where it looked like it wasn't going to to produce anything and I cut the fruit off and not even a week later and we noticed this new shoot here and we noticed I think was it this one this entire thing is a new shoot here and even the raspberries which when I saw the signs of life on these blackberries I was like but I think the raspberries still look the same and I realized today as we're looking at it that there's new life coming up here and there's new life coming up here this whole branch is new and there's new life coming up here uh and even this one this was the one that looked the worst and had the most yellow leaves but it's got tender new life coming up from here and here and so it just I think was such a beautiful picture of how sometimes we need to prune off the things and it seems painful cutting fruit off of something seems like the last thing you want to do but the fruit wasn't going to be good and it it wasn't going to be as much or as healthy as the fruit that will come after pruning it and having actual new growth so what happened was I pruned away some of the top and allowed the roots to dig deeper and the plant to focus its energy on growing stronger roots so that it could support new shoots and new cane and new life and I think that so much that is the picture of us and and life and our relationship with God is sometimes we get so used to what we think is green and beautiful growth but it's stunted and it's not taking us anywhere and sometimes we need to prune things off and grow deeper roots and grow deeper into our our faith in our relationship with our creator so that we can produce new life and stronger life and more abundant fruit in the future anyway that is our garden tour I will update you guys I guess mid-season as we start to actually harvest fruit we will do a first full harvest walk through and yeah tell me in the comments below what you guys are gardening what you're growing this year tell me what I'm missing what is one thing amazing that I need to be growing because I want to know we are still planning out I'm starting to plan out my fall garden this is just the beginning love you friends bless you have a good day