August Garden Tour: Plenty of Harvests (and Bird Damage!)

Welcome to my zone 10 August garden! Despite the scorching heat, we’re harvesting a great mix of summer veggies and fruit. In this video, I’ll be picking apples, pluots, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes, green beans and a beautiful bunch of flowers.

I also want to share a real challenge from this year: a lot of my fruit has been pecked at by birds. While it’s lovely that the local wildlife is getting a snack, I’ll admit I wish I could keep more of the harvest for myself!

In the background, you’ll hear my daughters playing, and it’s a sweet reminder that this garden is more than just a place to grow food—it’s a place for family.

I’d love to hear from you too! What’s your favorite season to garden in? Does this Summer heat bother you? And do you have any plans for your garden this fall? I’m excited to hear what you’re up to!

As always, thank you for watching!

Jer 17:8

#SummerHarvest #GardenTour #AugustGarden #HomeGrown #BackyardGardening

Good morning, friends, and welcome to August. Um, today I am just going to take you around my garden and show you what is out here. We have all been sick here for the last few weeks, so I have not been out and things are a little bit messy. I’m going to try to clean things up as I go, but it is already um, let me check. It is already 79°, so it’s hot and I am going to try to make this quick. You’re also going to hear some stuff in the background, which you might have just heard right then. Um, but my kiddos are out here with me. So, there might be a little bit of distractions here and there, but we’re going to see how it goes. So, let’s just see uh what is in the garden in my um backyard zone 10A garden. So, first thing, we ripped out all of the um shallots right here. So, those are all gone and I have to decide what to do with this space. These are just some wild flowers and some dying and pestinfested. What are these? Um, snap dragons. I don’t know if you can see that. There’s a ton of aphids on there. Um, but behind it is a giant zucchini. I have one here and one over here. And they’re getting close to like they’re like halfway a little bit past halfway their lifespan. So, I need to grab this zucchini right now. And actually, I did not spot this earlier, but there’s another one right there. Going to go grab both of those. Oh, I found it on my leg. So, next I have these bell peppers over here and a bunch of marolds. Um, the marolds are basically they’re basically done. Um, they’re pretty infested. I think they’ve got spidermitites. Um, so I’m just going to pull out a bunch of this right now. And I’m going to try to grab as many of these bell peppers as I can. Anything sticking up is getting suncolled really bad. So, I don’t know. Especially with the um the pest infested marold. I’m thinking I don’t know. We’re going to see how much I yank out right now. Look at that. anything that I I know they’re small, but if it’s it being exposed to the sun, I’ve got to take it or else it’s going to get suncolled and I have to throw it away anyway. Okay, so this is the strawberry bed. This is Well, I It’s still flowering. I don’t understand this thing. My plan is to um when the temperatures cool back down, transplant these into the green stock that I got. And I think I actually want to get some new varieties, too, because these were not we liked them, but they weren’t my favorite strawberries. Okay, this is a zucchini plant that is almost done. And a maragold that actually is looking pretty healthy. So, I’m pretty much going to leave that there. I might deadhead it a little bit. Um but it doesn’t look infested quite yet. um a tomato plant that is definitely infested with spidermitites. And let’s see, this bell pepper I think is done for the year. Um I don’t know how well it’s going to produce. I’ll probably leave it here just to see what happens, but it is flowering. Um but typically it’d be done by now. And those are the my mother’s day patunias that my daughter got me and they’re looking really good. Probably should dead head from school. Mhm. From school. This is just a mess of overgrown um basil that went to seed. And I have left this because this is really this has been really helpful. I mean, one for pollinators. They love this. Um but two, because it is very easy to tell when you need to water based off of how the basil leaves look, and I didn’t have plans for this space anyway. Once I have plans for this space, then those they’re just going to get ripped out. Um these marolds also look a lot healthier. And but I will probably come in and dead him. Oh, actually now that right there is pretty noticeable spidermite damage. I didn’t see that earlier. So, um Huh. Okay. Well, maybe I’m going to pull this one, too. The lime tree and the uh mandarin tree both um if you followed along, no fruit this year, which is actually the first year they’ve done that. Um like no, like almost no fruit even formed on the tree nonetheless. Um survived long enough to grow to any size. But, um, I’m that’s okay cuz I’m just trying to rejuvenate these trees this year. And then back here, the pineapples are looking really good. I thinking like maybe in a month is about when I will um, pick them cuz they’re you can see they’re they’re filling in quite nicely. Um, but I’ve never seen this before and I probably should Google it, but hey, I’ll just ask you guys. It has three crowns. Oh my gosh. I think there’s four in there coming off the top of this thing that I have never seen before. So, that’s kind of cool. And I’m sure there is a cool scientific explanation for that. But for now, I’m just kind of enjoying watching it happen. The zenas are doing great. The weeds are going insane. And all of those little um the like looks like tassels on those weeds, those are seeds. So, this is going to be a big problem next year. But um but the landscape fabric, if you follow along, I put this landscape fabric in earlier this year and that’s been helping a ton. So, we’ll see what we do. I’m thinking on this section where I don’t plant anything and um especially cuz it’s mostly in the shade, I might just put some weed fabric on these parts here just for about a year. See if that helps. Um up there is wild flowers there at their end. And um the lemon tree is just surviving. Um down here, let’s see. Uh these need to go. Those were my daughter’s sunflowers. Um that’s kind of a story if you follow along. Uh apparently these these are pumpkins. Hi, sweetie. I’m talking. Remember these pumpkins down here really need to be poll or not pollinated. What am I trying to say? Uh they need to be fertilized. So I didn’t realize how yellow they were getting. This is what happens when you don’t go in the garden for like 2 weeks. Um yeah, same here. So here’s a pumpkin right here. This is um the both of these are the JB little. And so that’s a male flower right there. No female flowers yet, but see how yellow that is. Um the plant seems to be a bit stressed, so I should come fertilize these. And then we’ve got some jalapenos that I need to deal with. And then this mess. If I had come out here like two weeks ago, this wouldn’t have looked like this. But this is what it looks like right now. So, we’re going to harvest all these tomatoes and probably yank a couple of these plants while we do it. Um, so before we do anything else, let’s just stop and get that done. Oh, and this is a toatio that volunteered. I just realized it’s starting to vine around. So, that’s kind of fun. I don’t like I was just going to do a quick overview of these green beans which are growing up in the trellis. and I’m super excited about them. But I came in and there are tons of green beads. So, let’s grab these really fast. Um because I’ve been harvesting like six at a time. So, this is a lot more than six. Oops. There. Here you go. Are these green beans? Those are green beans that we grew. And I want you to count them. Count. Tell me how many we have. Four. Four. We got We got 11 13 14 15 19. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. I counted the wrong way. Wow. Not this one. I think we have enough for dinner for all of us. Here you go. All right. Now I have to look really close and see. Oh, I missed one here. pulling stuff off them. They’re going to be fun to eat, too. 29. That’s it. Look around. See if you see anymore. And 31. Perfect. Okay. So, I said I was going to pull this cucumber plant out a long time ago and I never did cuz it kept producing cucumbers. But then I go 3 weeks and of these. These are going to taste terrible. So, I’m just basically throwing them straight into my compost. I don’t mind if I have volunteer cucumbers next year in my compost, but it there’s a lot of these. I know that you can make like some special pickle stuff with them, but we won’t eat them. If I had if I had chickens, they’d be going to the chickens. This one I’m going to keep and we’ll take it inside and taste it, but I’m going to guess it’s not that great. These ones are supposed to be like small um small pickling cucumbers. So, you know, it’s fine. It’s fine. Okay, so just a quick update on the um ground cherries. Um we don’t really like them. So, we did uh we did successfully grow a ground cherry plant and I don’t know, let’s see. Yeah, they’re fine. Crap. They’re not my favorite. So, I’m glad that I tried them, though. Just a quick update on these sunflowers. Um, they’re pretty much done. There are a couple of small sunflowers on here. So, they’re pretty much done, though, as you can see from the top. And then this guy, I don’t like I don’t know what this is. So funny. Um, all of my seed packets say 5 feet and under that thing. I don’t know. I mean, I It’s on a hill right here, but like it’s probably 7 to 8 ft tall. So, and then there’s a couple more over here. Um, I’m not going to grab those right now, mostly just because it’s really hot and I don’t want to. Um, they are a bit more involved to pull out. Um, plus I kind of want to try to save this. Um, is it a stalk? Not sure what you would call. Um, but right now I don’t want to deal with it. So, um there’s also the zenyas right here behind us and they’re looking good and I I keep cutting the kale away and it keeps just popping back up. No avocados, at least none that I’ve spotted, um have survived this year, but I really thought that this was going to be the end of the avocados this year, and both of them have actually put on a decent amount of growth. So, that’s always encouraging. It’s getting hot, so I’m going to take a seat for a second. And I wanted to give you guys an update on the trees. The peach trees are done. I harvested the last few peaches. I don’t think I got footage of that. Um the birds and the um what do you call them? Japanese beetles just got crazy up there. I probably lost especially for the August Pride Peach. I probably lost about 50% of my fruit. Um, so like the when I I always keep track of how much fruit I got each year and this year the number dropped so much and I’m like I re it was at least 50%. I mean there were peaches constantly falling off the tree that were halfeaten. Um I didn’t net them this year. I should have. But my goal this year was to restore my trees and so birds eating the fruit doesn’t kind of affect that. So I guess that’s fine. The same thing also happened to the apples and the plots. The plots. I’m so disappointed. Um I think I lost so much of both of those. So, what we’re going to do today is um pretty much pick everything. Um if it doesn’t have bird damage already on it, we’re going to pick it. Um I mean, if it looks like it’s not even close to being ripe, that I guess we’re going to play play the game to see who gets it, me or the birds, um before it ripens. But anything that looks like it could ripen on the counter, I’m just going to pick today because I don’t want to lose any more fruit. I mean, I can’t tell you how much. Like, I’m looking around on the ground and just of plots because of the I threw the plots over here when I would find them. I can see one, two, three, four, 5, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. I can see 30 just from where I’m sitting that they um eat have eaten. And I haven’t picked the ones off the tree that they’ve eaten yet. Um, at least not today. And I can see I can see dozens on the tree that they picked at. And and I don’t mean like picked at like just a peck or two. I’ll show you what I mean when I get up there. It’s pretty bad. So, let’s just go pick as many apples and plots as we can and see see the damage. I lost so many apples. So many. I definitely I feel like I just threw just as many off the tree as I grabbed off the tree. And there’s a few on the floor before I got here. So now we’re going to move over to the plots, which there’s a lot of them missing as well. So, we’ll see what happens. They’re so tiny, but they’re just going to get eaten by birds if I don’t pick them. A mom cat down there. Bad ones. the daddy. Okay, I think that’s it. Oh, I missed one. Ha. Well, all right, friends. That is it for August. Um I I’m pleasantly surprised with how much we got. This basket um has a decent amount of tomatoes in it. I know it kind of doesn’t look like it from there, but they’re all buried under the green beans. There’s lots of tomatoes in there. And um those two big zucchinis will be added to the pile that is already in the house. Um my family is a little overeating zucchini. And while we all still love zucchini bread, um it just, you know, takes time to deal with that. So I have like five zucchini in the house right now. Um that’s okay. That’s how it is with zucchini every year. And this is the last of the peaches. Not peaches, the last of the fruit. Um so this is apples and both of the well both of the apples and both of the plots. just picked anything that was left on the tree. We are done with those this year. Um the birds have taken everything and I have taken the rest. So that’s the end of it. And then I just got a decent amount of um flowers that um I I threw out a bunch of the marolds, but I was able to salvage some of them. So we’ll have a nice little bouquet. And yeah, that’s it for August. Thank you so much for hanging out with me in the garden. And um I hope that you guys are enjoying your summer, whether that’s outside in the heat or inside in the AC, whatever it is. Um it’s been mild here up until now. It’s starting to hit the 100 degree weather. It’s toasty. This is not my favorite time to be out in the garden. Um I’m probably going to let some things go um in the next month. But if you subscribe or want to come back in September, I will show you what that looks like. So we’ll see if I let things go, if I planted anything new. Um, I know I’m starting my preparations for the fall. Um, just just mild plans compared to what I did in the spring, but it’s a good time of year um to plant things out here because our winters are so so so mild. So, it’s something that I get to do. So, um, let me know in the comments if you guys are already planning the next season, whether that’s putting everything to bed for the winter or going to have a fall and winter garden. Um, I’d love to hear about it. And I hope you’re all doing well. And thank you so much for spending some time with me and today my daughters as well. And I will see you guys next month.